Customer Reviews

Cambridge Latin Course Unit 1 Student's book North American edition (North American Cambridge Latin Course)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is the series we used when I learned Latin in high school. It is the best language text I have ever read, and I have a soft spot for it in my heart. Many traditional Latin teachers are uncomfortable with the premise of the series: that Latin can be learned intuitively. Phinney wanted students to learn the grammar without effort, and the book is amazingly effective in its mission. This book begins with baby Latin that it is simple enough to understand, but no one ever wrote in Latin that way. Then each unit increases the complexity of the passages. In Unit IV, historic Latin texts are introduced.

The greatest problem with the series occurs in the transition between Unit III and Unit IV. You must learn the declensions, etc. in tabular form before you can truly parse historic Latin, and parsing is what ensures an accurate translation.

Fortunately, you shouldn't have any problem doing this, because the tables will make perfect sense to you due to the Phinney effect. All you should be doing is formally naming what you already knew. (As one reader points out, all this formal stuff is in the back of each book, too.)

If you are worried, I would suggest buying Phinney's Guide to Latin Grammar. It is meant to be used with this series from day one, and it has all the hardcore grammar you could desire.

This was one of the texts that were used in my freshman Latin courses at college. I found the first book to be very easy, almost ridiculously so, but appropriate for beginners of any age. There is little emphasis on grammar, with vocabulary and intuitive understanding of the language given greater importance. This makes the course move along more quickly and makes it much more fun, but it caused me problems later on when I began to move to advanced Latin. This book makes the Latin language look quite easy, and it ISN'T! The five declensions are really not covered in nearly enough detail and the lack of emphasis on grammar makes future Latin courses much more difficult than they would if one started out with a more soild introduction. Fun, easy, but it doesn't prepare one well for additional study. The skits were quite amusing, however, and a great deal of information of Roman culture was included. Might be better for elementary school students ot those who have no experience at reading classical Latin rather than college students or those who have had such courses in elementary or high school.

Although I am not studying the North American version,but the original version for the UK, I thought that I would place my views here. I am an adult independent Latin learner, currently involved in a project with the Cambridge School Classics Project, which involves learning Latin via the internet. I have completed Book 1, and am near to the end of Book 2. Our tutor places work each week on the Webboard for us to complete over the week.

I have given the course 4 stars, because as a reading course, it gives an excellent basic grounding. Once the emphasis of the course is appreciated, then it is easier to cope with the frustration sometimes of not having every aspect of grammar explained as one reads the texts. I guess it would be very different if a student was looking for help at the emphasis in translating from English into Latin. There is a lot of reading material in the Stages of the Books, and I have found that I am assimilating far more of the grammar by reading the numerous texts.

If one is patient then eventually all the points of grammar that are encountered in the texts are explained. I have learnt, that for myself, it is important sometimes to remain in a place of not knowing everything that is encountered, as it has given me the impetus to keep pushing myself forward. I have been studying the 2 books part-time over the past year, and a credit for the Cambridge Course is that I have not given up, as I have with other Latin textbooks.

I hope to start Book 3 shortly.

You won't get bored reading Latin with this series. I took Latin in high school for three years using this series of books, and liked them so much I bought the first two in the series (because that was all I could afford at the time). I plan to buy books 3 and 4, using 4 to teach myself further. Though the characters and stories you translate change from book to book, the continuing sagas in each help keep you interested and wanting to translate more. Not to spoil the ending, but I got so attached to the characters in book 1 after a year of working with them that when one of them dies at the end of the book, I actually cried- I was very distraught!

If this book seems the least bit confusing, it's not because it's badly written, as some of the reviews imply. It's because Latin is the hardest major European language to learn (yes, even harder than classical Greek, once you've taken a day to learn that alphabet). There is no simple way to approach it, but there certainly are worse ones than Phinney's -- such as the Oxford Latin series. After taking Latin for several years I started on French as well, which seemed pathetically simple (though it's a beautiful language) in comparison. I've never used such a good textbook -- the cultural information, the grammar exercises, the pictures (yes, the pictures), and the English vocab connectors make it a masterpiece. Don't expect to go and use it on your own, though. That holds true for any text-based language study.

I used the first two books in High School, and am teaching myself the other books. I felt like I caught onto the language almost from day one. These books are simple to grasp and have interesting stories that make you want to translate them immediately.

The book catches one's interest, with interesting stories to translate, and with the ease with which one is able to start reading Latin after just a few pages. The only thing I didn't like is the lack of a clear conjugation table in the front of the book. For those of us who speak more than one language, that is one of the first things one looks for, to compare it with Spanish, or French, for example. The teaching methods are solid, and I like the fact that no more than one conjugation is taught at a time, but it would be nice to have a full table close at hand, just for reference.

Do not buy these books if you want to learn how to read Latin. This has got to be one of the most insane methods for learning Latin ever prepared. First, forget Vol. 1...by the time you finish it, and it's impossible to use alone without a lot of (useless) effort, you'll still know practically no Latin. The hatred the book seems to have for grammar explanations is intolerable. Trying to reproduce the "way you learned English" is nonsensical for teaching a dead language we only want to read...I have never met anyone who used this course and went on to do proficient reading of real Latin. Cute stories...lots of glossy pictures...way overpriced books...no substance.

I'm learning Latin independently. The best way I've found to learn a language is to read, speak, and hear it; since I'm an older student, however, immersion alone won't quite do it. I need to understand the grammar. This series of books is excellent for giving one a large amount of appropriate reading material, but are deficient in their presentation of the grammar. I've found it best to use these in conjuction with a more rigorous text, like Wheelock's Latin. Wheelock's does a great job with the grammar, but doesn't have the long passages of reading material found in these books.

I used this course for four years when I was at secondary school and found it to be excellent. The vocabulary is slowly introduced so that instead of looking at a text and seeing a jumble of letters, like I did with French and German, you can understand most of it and don't need to be looking at the vocabulary lists all of the time.

The cultural parts are very interesting and link well with what you are studying and the story flows throughout the course so that you are interested to find out what happens next.

Although the grammar isnt forced into you, you do learn it by using it, which I think is the easiest and the best way. But I wouldn't suggest using this course without a teacher - mine was brilliant.