Customer Reviews

Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Latin

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I am a first year, first semester student of the Latin language and I ordered this book from Amazon a few days ago to help me gain a better understanding of what I am being taught in class. I must confess that this book has been a wonderful and helpful tool. One of the beginning difficulties of any language is pronunciation, and this book totes an "idiot proof guideline" for pronunciation and usage. Moreover, the book helps you develop a strong vocabulary with "vocabulary builders." However, what I am slowly realizing is that understanding Latin grammar/context, etc. involves learning, memorizing and understanding the endings of words (i.e. verb, noun, adjective endings). This book helps the reader to grasp these endings and gives tips on remembering them and using them (this has been very helpful). The last thing I have found helpful in this book is its simplistic way of helping me through the grammar (which is easy to get bogged down in). If you are just starting out in Latin, or you simply want to brush up on your existing knowledge of Latin, then this is definitely the book for you.

If you're a beginner trying to learn Latin on your own, the Complete Idiot's Guide is not the best way to do it. It reminds me of a bad high school language class where you have to memorize lists of words, but never learn to put together an actual sentence. This book attempts to make Latin easy on you by presenting only the bare minimum of grammar, but as another reviewer pointed out, grammar is all-important in Latin for figuring out who does what to who in a sentence. This book earns the second star only because it's clearly written, funny, and includes interesting tidbits such as the differences between medieval and classical Latin. While it is (barely) possible to learn Latin from this book, there are much better textbooks out there.

Lots of people here have recommended Wheelock. With all due respect to them, I practically fell asleep reading it in the bookstore. It is obviously rigorous, but it's also dry as dust. I recommend instead "Latin via Ovid," which I bought after much research. Not only am I actually successfully teaching myself Latin, I get to read great mythology stories! Slightly easier are the books aimed at the high school level such as the Oxford and Cambridge textbooks and Ecce Romani. Try one of these books instead of the Complete Idiot's Guide.

Yes, Wheelock's is the standard text for this topic--but for anyone who's interested in learning Latin on their own without the assistance of a college professor, it's less than appealing. That's where Harwood comes in, full of energy and humor and yes, hard work. There is still study involved in learning Latin--there are exercises and you will need to practice, like any other foreign language--but this book does make the subject more enjoyable than many of the other texts out there, with a logical structure (Harwood's years of teaching experience and lesson plans led to a killer outline) and lots of relevant examples. There is no comparable book, really--nobody else manages to take a light tone yet still convey all that is still relevant about the infamous "dead" language. It's more alive here than you'll find in any other instructional book!

There are quite a few things that I did not like about this book. Luckily I borrowed it from my Spanish teacher in 8th grade and did not have to continue my life knowing that I wasted my money on a bad book.

Some people will tell you that learning vocabulary is the hardest thing in learning a language. This is most certainly false. With proper learning techniques learning vocabulary is not difficult at all; I did, however, feel that this book introduced far too many vocabulary words at one time.

The author attempts to retard the importance of the study of grammar while learning Latin. To be successful in your study of Latin, however, you must have a very _clear_ understanding of the language's grammar. The explanations in this book cause one to develop a very fuzzy understanding that is insufficient for clear thinking, reading, translation, and composition.

I highly recommend that you do not purchase this book and instead purchase Wheelock's Latin. I am going through that book right now, and everything is very clearly explained; the number of vocabulary items introduced in each lesson is perfect in my opinion -- not too much, not too little -- and I do not ever develop that "fuzzy" understanding that came from reading this book.

This book might be ok if you just wanted to brush up on your Latin, but for the beginner, there are two major flaws. First, not enough attention is given to noun declensions and verb conjugations. The author passes over a lot of this and says that it's not really important. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is nothing more important in Latin than the noun declensions. Without a sound understanding of declensions, you will be left guessing who did what with what to whom. Second, words or topics often show up on the end of the chapter quizzes before they are covered. This is very frustrating when you are really trying to learn the material. One of the things this books does really well is to bombard you with new words. Learning vocabulary is often one of the most difficult things in learning a new language, and this one does a great job of presenting this vocabulary to you. However, because of the flaws in this text, I would recommend Wheelock's Latin instead of this text for the person wishing to gain a sound understanding of Latin.

I'm giving this book two stars instead of three because the author felt compelled to waste so much white space on her leftwing, feminist agenda. Ms. Harwood has published several articles on the supposed sexism of Latin textbooks, and so litters her book with largely pointless textboxes containing "gender-specific historical tidbits" which she calls "Hysteria's Herstory." (Something tells me that doesn't have quite the alliterative ring the author intended.)

Likewise, what Ms. Harwood refers to as "the Christian Church" of the so-called Dark Ages is in reality the Catholic Church. Presumably, the correct identifier didn't sit well with her progressive sensibilities.

For an agenda-free discourse on Latin, get the Dummies book or stick with Wheelock's Latin 6e.

I am a high school Lating student who until recently had problems getting it together. I picked up the complete idiot's guide, hoping it would improve my understanding of this amazingly comples language.

To put it mildly, it didn't. This guide is extremely fluffy, filled with useless facts about Roman civilization that do nothing for actual comprehension. For anyone looking to REALLY learn Latin by themselves this may be a good starting point. But if you are a student of the language for over like three months, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY.

The fact is, you are better off with the newest edition of Wheelocks. Latin is a language that requires hard work to learn, there are no short cuts. This guide only exemplifies that point.

[I gave it 2 stars because if you are JUST starting Latin this book puts everything in extremely simple English, which helps.]

Finding myself in need of learning Latin in a short amount of time, I picked up Harwood's book. It looked clean and clear. More importantly, it offered entry-level learning exercises and an answer key to check my translations, something that many other guides did not. However, the book was very disappointing.

Numerous typos marred the text -- not only in the chapters, but in the grammatical appendix. Once you knew enough, you could pick them out, but as you start not knowing anything... She often used concepts, such as noun cases and verb tense and voice, before she described them, leading to confusion. In addition, while some simplification is necessary for an Idiot's Guide, I found that she glossed over areas that were necessary to translate even simple Latin properly. Lastly, while her translations of Latin assignments were at times lyrical, I found myself desiring a more literal translation to help me understand how the translation was constructed.

However, once I threw the text away and turned to Wheelock's Latin, I did find that I had picked up several concepts from Harwood's book. Without the nights and weekends struggling with the Idiot's Guide, Wheelock would have been much more difficult.

Still, I can't really recommend Harwood's book. Wheelock's not easy, but it explains necessary ideas that Harwood does not. The lack of an answer key renders Wheelock less than ideal (Wheelock is written for high school students; understandably, the answers to the main chapter questions are not provided, although there is a short self-quiz section in the back of the book). Doing it again, I would have chosen one of the less pretty, but more instructional and useful personal guides to supplant both Harwood and Wheelock.

Good luck.

As one who has struggled with this language for years, this book has been perfect for me. The easy (but intelligent) approach and lively orgainzation kept me involved with each chapter. This book has finally made Latin accessible to me and has me convinced I am now studying Latin at a "A-plus" level!. Also, a ton of historical and literary references makes this stand out from your run-of-the mill Idiot's Guide.

I purchased this years ago and tried to read it but found it hopeless. The style, mistakes and flat out omissions make this useless. Wheelock's Latin is far better and worth the money for textbook as well as the workbook.