Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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84 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book for the Very Beginning Student, August 30, 2000
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.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Even complete idiots can find a better book, August 28, 2004
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.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Innaccuracies abound, September 11, 2005
Dang! I wish I had read reviews of this book before having purchased it. There are so many errors in the English grammar in the text that I cannot trust the Latin grammar examples. I have found so many examples of mistakes I have despaired of enumerating the individual instances. The categories of mistakes: grammar, pronunciation, etymology and typographical. After attempting to wade through the errors in this book, I wonder if this is a vanity press exercise. The author certainly seems to relish the ability to say that she has published something. A pity that she did not enough interest in the execution of it to produce something accurate. Please don't waste your money on this book. BTW, the form requires that I give the book at least one star in order to submit the review. A reference work that has so much wrong with it does not deserve even a single star.
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