Customer Reviews

Cambridge Latin Course: Unit 1, North American 4th Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I recently took a 5-week crash course in Latin, and we used the first two volumes of this series (which I remembered from my high school Latin class many years ago!). My instructor uses it for both children and adults and has had great success with it. It's a very good way to get started, particularly for those whose goal in learning Latin is being able to pick up any text and figure out what it says (with a dictionary) rather than acquiring the ability to pass an exam in Latin grammar and syntax. By getting you into reading texts right away rather than memorizing grammar and syntax charts, this book does a great job of building the student's confidence. Each stage starts with cartoons above simple sentences and then moves into a series of longer stories before concluding with grammar and syntax sections and cultural details. The stories and characters are often amusing, and there's a lot of basic information about Roman life and culture. Although a classroom setting is best for learning Latin, I suspect this book would also be very effective for those working through it on their own. Highly recommended.

Let's say you have read some fiction set in Ancient Rome, the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough or the books of Steven Saylor, for example. Let's say you have read some history books. Perhaps you have visited some Roman Ruins. Perhaps you have even read Caesar or Cicero or Livy in translation. Now you want to read them in the original. If this describes you, then this book is for you. It is the beginning of a 4 book introductory Latin course. Each book has a theme. This first one is set in Pompeii on the eve of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We observe the life of a banker named Lucius Caecilius Iucundus and his family. Caecilius was a real person: his Pompeii house was excavated and can be seen today. We read increasingly complicated stories with the help of the provided vocabulary. The style is engaging and tongue-in-cheek as it presents the life of the Caecilius household, warts and all. I thoroughly enjoyed this view of Roman society. Notice that if, as I have indicated above, your interest is primarily in learning to read Latin, then this is exactly what you want. Latin is an easy enough language for English speakers, because the roots of many of our words are Latin. If you have a smattering of a Romance language like Spanish or French or Italian, then it is easier still. Each chapter also provides background information on Roman history and culture.

Eventually, however, one has to learn the conjugation of Latin verbs (four categories) and the inflections of the nouns (three declensions). And so from a gentle start, by the end of the book we must fully confront the guerilla warfare of learning grammar through tenses, cases and conjugation that bedevils the study of any language. One hopes that by reading enough texts one can pick this up intuitively as one did one's first language as a child, but this is probably a vain hope. At the end of Unit One, then, having journeyed across the pleasant plains of the easy beginnings of language study, having sadly witnessed the destruction of Pompeii and the characters we have formed a bond with, we now behold the foothills, and beyond them the snowcapped peaks, that we must scale as we move on to the subsequent Units in the course.

This review is on The North American Fourth Edition paperback.

Firstly, I've never taken Latin before, so I haven't been exposed to Wheelock or any of the other courses out there or in a formal, structured educational setting. I have toyed with Rosetta Stone's Latin Language CD, which is also a good place to start. Back to the review.

I've been looking for a decent "Beginner's Latin" book for a few years now and happened to stop at the local brick and mortar bookstore and found this treasure. I'm a designer by trade, so this book appealed to me on many levels:

1) It's visual.
2) You're launched right into a lesson in Latin.

At first you find yourself looking at images and then at the sentences, trying to understand what the text really means. If you don't understand, don't worry,
3) You are presented with a vocabulary list that covers most if not all of the words in each lesson. There might be one or two that are *assumed* but it's generally not a problem.
4) There are grammar and syntax discussions and variations on translation to help students see that there is more than one way to state a concept and how to identify the best way.
5) Lavishly illustrated with drawings and photos that tell a story to help students really understand Latin in a historic context.

I found after the first chapter, that I was able to understand a full segment with little effort.

Great series.

I recommended that you pick up the North American Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1 Audio CD. Though I am a little annoyed having listened to the CD to find that I have both the North American 4th Edition CD and Course book and have found that the audio doesn't always match. I ran into the problem in Chapter 3.

I am using the 4th edition with my home schooled 7th grader. I bought the omnibus, cd, reader and teacher manual also. The package is perfect.
I have tried 3 other Latin programs before and was about to give up until I found this one. One Latin program had hundreds (not kidding!) of mistakes in the text.
I love the historic approach which draws my son right in. We watched Pompeii movies, Roman movies, etc. It will take us a year to get through the first book. He will be well prepared to take the SAT subject Latin after the 3 unit books.
I do urge you to buy the whole set of books/cd. They really complement each other.

This is a GREAT book to learn Latin from. My nine year old is having a blast learning from it!

I know I know, the title of this review is trite, but it's true. I took four years of Latin in high-school and have kept up with it to some extent, but I am looking to start over, so to speak. My end-goal is to find a way to train myself to read Latin "natively", where I concern myself less with trying to break down each sentence into constituent parts and sew it back together in English (after all, the Romans wouldn't have read it that way), and so far I think this series may be just the ticket. The approach throughout book 1 is very gradual and, as other reviewers have pointed out, it is as well-suited for young learners as for old. Those with some background in Latin likely will appreciate the stories and the "About the Language" sections more than the chapter-intro comic-book-esque and cultural background sections but all told I didn't find any of the book too redundant or extraneous.

I like that ideas are sometimes presented before the chapter in which the explanation is given (e.g. the imperative case is used towards the end of the book, but is not covered until book 2). This gives the reader a chance to get used to using (or reading) a particular construct in it's natural setting before getting the "why's" of its usage. It's akin to the manner in which we learn our primary languages; our parents don't make us memorize basic grammar rules when we are several months old, we simply begin by using those things that we hear in everyday conversation.

I also found myself enjoying the story and the readings for themselves. The writers have done a fine job of balancing interest with new concepts. They introduce enough characters from enough backgrounds to maintain a steady flow of side-stories in conjunction with the over-arching plot-line. I've just begun book 2 and so far it is very much like book 1. Hopefully the series maintains all those things which works so well for it throughout the four books.

I just finished the first book in this series and was very happy with it. Although the vocabulary and end-of-the-chapter lists aren't well designed, this defect is more than compensated for by the illustrations and the tons of texts in each chapters. The book was a quick work through and I am looking forward to the next in the series. Even though in the first book, you technically only learn three cases, the authors indirectly expose you to several more without explicitly telling you of the fact. I like that they are able to handle complex material in this way (letting you think you completely understand something without going into an overly detailed explanation). The historical information in English is also very interesting and would motivate the purchase of the book in its own right. Lots of pictures and background to motivate you.

Since our school district no longer provides books for take home, this was a needed purchase. My daughter has maintained a B+ average and can make notes or highlight important information...great investment. Will purchase course 2 for second semester. I received it in a timely manner....what more can we say!

My teacher used this book for my Latin Class only for the homework for good reason. This book does not teach much and teaches the wrong materials at the wrong time. Also what and how they teach is to little to completely understand, in sense translating the stories in the book blindly hoping you get it right. Its Vocabulary is pretty good as it has a full section dedicated to the translations of each word.

If you do have a teacher explaining the work to you, then this book is great for review because it gives examples and fun stories to translate. It also has fun cartoon translations which are a pre tense of whats to come and a way to learn some vocab.

Its history section this book includes is decent because it does not seem to describe/answer things fully. Dont get me wrong, it teaches you some cool things but the amount of info is not very much.

This is how I see it....No Teacher = No Book......You have a teacher = Good book to pick up for Review

I do not like this book at all for various reasons.

1. It's more focused on Latin culture than Latin language: this is a typical "misunderstanding" of many language books written by Anglo-Saxon authors.

2. Grammar explanations are so easy that I think they are meant for children, not for adults. I have not find any simple, crystal-clear tables of declensions (just a very rough list in the Appendix) and not even the genitive case is explained in book 1!

3. Grammar explanations do not follow a logical sequence: 2 past tenses are illustrated before the full present is explained! And all of them are mixed up in one page! Without table, without pronouns, without a clear grammar setting looks like a "guess process" or a "remember as match as you can" competition

3. The book is very slow, full of pictures, that take up too much space. Same words are repeated very frequently in slightly different sentences. You have the impression to have your brain stuffed with many things, but in fact you don't: this high repetition rate makes you fell "drunk of words".

4. The size and high quality printing of the book are not good/appropriate to write notes on the pages.

On the whole a quite bad book if you want to learn the Latin languange