Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Latin Complete Course

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

 

 

This is an advanced Latin text and not for beginners. It moves faster than a college text. If you want to review the Latin that you learned years ago in school, this may be just what you are looking for.

Much material is presented at one time: vocabulary and grammar. You should be prepared to study on your own, as there are no practice exercises to help the student learn each point presented.
There are however, sentences to translate that include new and previous grammar and vocabulary. These sentences are quite unusual, interesting, and difficult, and rewarding when correctly translated. Give yourself a gold star....

The translated sentences are in a special section in the back, along with verb conjugations and a vocabulary list.

Let me be sure to say that I do like this text. I enjoy the challenge! If you like languages, grammar, and puzzles, go for it.

Very easy to use if you want to teach yourself latin. I was able to translate simple sentences in a matter of days.

I haven't taken Latin since middle school, high school, and college. This book is a thorough review of those years, with the wonderful addition of many quotations from Latin authors, which is the best way to see how Latin actually works.

This book is certainly not for beginners. It's more of a review for someone who already has a firm grasp on conjugation, cases, and so on. If you're an autodidact working your way into Latin, forget this one. My recommendation would be to spend your money instead on something like Lingua Latina (a direct-method reader) and/or Wheelock's.

It's my opinion that this book will serve more to confuse right up front and very likely discourage further study into the language.

clear and useful to study on your own--where most self study aids fail this excels.

A serious study of Latin grammar - not for the casual reader. More for the very well-versed. Not the book we wanted. Includes 5-page index, and 41-page Latin-English dictionary. The print is good, and the book looks reasonably well organized. Title is highly misleading.

If you have the secret desire to get up before first light and teach yourself LATIN before anyone in the house can interupt you, this is the book you're looking for.

While the product description lives up to its word in saying progression comes quickly in this user-friendly guide, there are far too many inexcusable flaws in this text. First, a number of the readings are not explained fully, leaving a layperson in the dark about why a certain case is used when all the rules say otherwise. Second, the glossary is laughably thrown together. It gives many of the words used in the actual book, but there are some which are not found in the glossary, so some may find themselves going to another latin/english dictionary. It is absurd how this came to be the final product, when so many of its faults are obvious.

On a good note, the material in each chapter is presented piecemeal, so one does not feel bogged down. There are also historical pendants at the end of some chapters, giving one some background on the language.

In response to the other unfavorable reviews on here, I can only say that I myself had no trouble with the author's grammar. It was, I believe, the editing process that was slipshod.

I don't recommend this book for beginners, and I'm sure experienced Latin learners could find a better refresher course elsewhere. The book seems to go out of its way to present everything in as dull and user-unfriendly a format as possible, from huge tables of declensions with very little accompanying information to surprisingly bad descriptions of grammatical functions (this book features the worst description of a pluperfect tense I have ever seen).

For those like me who are interested in working their way into the language slowly on their own time, I recommend the Oxford Latin course, which is quite simple (sometimes too much so) but not hopelessly discouraging, as this book is.

If you're a beginner to Latin, don't know a lick of Latin, then this book is not for you, regardless of what the title says. The author's English grammar isn't very good; and by the time you finish a paragraph you'll wonder what he is talking about, unless you're a linguist. It's an alright book for the first few chapters, but then it just piles on loads of confusing and incomprehensible grammobabble (unless you're a linguist) after about chapter 7.
Some of the answers in the back of the book are wrong, too.

If you're new to Latin, look elsewhere.