recommendations for adult beginning Latin

[gennyp]

I'm a new homeschooling mom, and I'll be beginning Memoria Press's kindergarten curriculum with my son next fall. I have a background in several romance languages up to the college level, and I'd like to teach myself Latin to get ahead of the game since he'll be encountering Latin in the middle elementary grades. Any suggestions for a good book or workbook-based curriculum to get an adult started on the basics? (Not interested in duolingo or other screen-based teaching methods.)

[HomeAgain]

I'd suggest what I suggest for kids: Getting Started With Latin.  It's easy enough to fit into a busy schedule and you can do 2-3 lessons a day before moving on to the companion: Keep Going With Latin, or something of your choice. Plus, it's non-consumable so that means your kid can use it later if you so choose.

[Heartstrings]

I think Memoria Press’s Latins Christiana would be good. I’m doing it with my kiddo now.  It’s slow enough for me to get all if it.  When I took college Spanish a few years ago it was awful because it was so much so fast.  

[Spy Car]

The classic traditional-approach text for adults is Wheelock's. Dale Grote wrote a very good supplementary guide for self-learners that's a pretty essential complement for those w/o a professor to clear up confusion. Grote has (or at least had) an online component as well. He has a great understanding about what trips people up in Wheelock's and he fills the gaps.

I had a great deal of fun using Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina, which is a "natural method" approach where one picks up Latin grammar and vocabulary via reading passages in his book. There is also a guide for Orberg. The guide isn't necessary for the initial chapters, but very helpful later. 

Bill

 

[marbel]

I liked Getting Started with Latin, and Lingua Latina. 

https://hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series

[Beth S]

And consider Prima Latina, the pre-cursor to Latina Christiana.

[Innisfree]

34 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

The classic traditional-approach text for adults is Wheelock's. Dale Grote wrote a very good supplementary guide for self-learners that's a pretty essential complement for those w/o a professor to clear up confusion. Grote has (or at least had) an online component as well. He has a great understanding about what trips people up in Wheelock's and he fills the gaps.

I had a great deal of fun using Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina, which is a "natural method" approach where one picks up Latin grammar and vocabulary via reading passages in his book. There is also a guide for Orberg. The guide isn't necessary for the initial chapters, but very helpful later. 

Bill

 

This approach would be my recommendation.

Wheelock provides structure and clear grammatical instruction. There are charts of conjugations, declensions, pronouns, etc. Since you have a good romance language background, you should be able to make fast progress and should understand the importance of buckling down and memorizing the forms as you encounter them in Wheelock. Students make a lot of trouble for themselves by avoiding necessary memorization, then finding the readings increasingly hard to grasp. ETA: I’m not familiar with Grote, which might be very helpful. I didn’t find a need for a companion text, nor did my dd, but we did have teachers, so ymmv. Dd has found Wheelock useful for tutoring.

Something I love about Wheelock is that it’s complete: you don’t need to buy years one, two, etc., though there is a reader for advanced students. It’s efficient. It’s better for competent language learners who want the instruction to move along smartly than for middle schoolers who are still learning what nouns, verbs, and participles are. That said, it’s used effectively by Lukeion, an online provider beloved by many here, in classes that include middle schoolers.

Another thing I like about Wheelock is that the readings are, from an early point, drawn from actual Roman texts. There may be slight alterations for student use, but essentially it’s classical Latin. I think that just works better for teaching *how to read classical Latin* than reading Latin translations, often clumsy, of paragraphs composed by modern instructors to try to illustrate that week’s vocabulary. 

Lingua Latina: Familia Romana is a very different approach, and the exception to my quibble about modern composition for teaching Latin. Here it’s done well. It’s fun, and gets you straight into following a story. There *is* enough there to learn the grammar, but you need to do the analysis yourself to a much higher degree than in any other textbook I’ve seen. Unless you’re working with a competent instructor, I think you’d make better progress treating Wheelock as your core text and Lingua Latina as a “living book” supplement, at least until you’re comfortable with the basics.

Hope that helps.

Edited March 31, 2023 by Innisfree

[Spy Car]

4 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

This approach would be my recommendation.

Wheelock provides structure and clear grammatical instruction. There are charts of conjugations, declensions, pronouns, etc. Since you have a good romance language background, you should be able to make fast progress and should understand the importance of buckling down and memorizing the forms as you encounter them in Wheelock. Students make a lot of trouble for themselves by avoiding necessary memorization, then finding the readings increasingly hard to grasp.

Something I love about Wheelock is that it’s complete: you don’t need to buy years one, two, etc. It’s efficient. It’s better for competent language learners who want the instruction to move along smartly than for middle schoolers who are still learning what nouns, verbs, and participles are. That said, it’s used effectively by Lukeion, an online provider beloved by many here, in classes that include middle schoolers.

Lingua Latina: Familia Romana is a very different approach. It’s fun, and gets you straight into following a story. There *is* enough there to learn the grammar, but you need to do the analysis yourself to a much higher degree than in any other textbook I’ve seen. Unless you’re working with a competent instructor, I think you’d make better progress treating Wheelock as your core text and Lingua Latina as a “living book” supplement, at least until you’re comfortable with the basics.

Hope that helps.

You said it better than I did.

Bill

 

[HomeAgain]

One thing also that I recommend: brush up on your English diagramming skills.  I have a similar linguistic background of the OP, along with a few others.  Case-based languages, like Russian, and a focus on English diagramming to really understand the function of each word in the sentence is much more handy than my French/Italian/Portuguese.  They provide vocabulary ease, but the struggle will be with the grammar unless a person is confident.

[stephanier.1765]

Does anyone know of a link to Wheelocks? When I Googled it, a bunch of options popped up so I'm not sure which one is the actual book from this thread. 

[Innisfree]

1 minute ago, stephanier.1765 said:

Does anyone know of a link to Wheelocks? When I Googled it, a bunch of options popped up so I'm not sure which one is the actual book from this thread. 

https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=3O9IHXRTPUA2G&keywords=Wheelock's+Latin&qid=1680285268&sprefix=wheelock's+latin%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-2

There is also the workbook below, but I don’t know it, and don’t know how useful it would be for home learning. The description mentions pages you can tear out to turn in, so I’m assuming it doesn’t provide answers to check your understanding. The original book above has exercises also.

https://www.amazon.com/Workbook-Wheelocks-Latin-Paul-Comeau/dp/0060956429/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3O9IHXRTPUA2G&keywords=Wheelock's+Latin&qid=1680285268&sprefix=wheelock's+latin%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-3
 

 

[purpleowl]

Team Wheelock's. 

You can request answer keys for both the textbook and workbook (I think the place to request is linked somewhere on http://www.wheelockslatin.com/ - sorry I don't have time right now to find it). 

And if you're interested in learning along with others, there are groups on the Latin Study list that work through Wheelock's. https://www.quasillum.com/study/latinstudy.php

[Spy Car]

28 minutes ago, stephanier.1765 said:

Does anyone know of a link to Wheelocks? When I Googled it, a bunch of options popped up so I'm not sure which one is the actual book from this thread. 

Wheelock's has gone into a 7th Edition.

I believe Dale Grote's latest companion is linked to the 6th Edition of Wheelock's. Not sure how different or how difficult it would be to use Grote's book with the 7th of Wheelock's. The differences may be trivial. I don't know.

Grote's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Guide-Wheelocks-Latin-Revised/dp/086516486X/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2SZFW95W8ZPJY&keywords=grote+wheelocks+latin&qid=1680286546&sprefix=grote+wheelocks+latin%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-4

Bill

Edited March 31, 2023 by Spy Car

[lewelma]

Adding my support for Wheelocks. I loved that the sentences were from original Roman thinkers.  My mind had to work differently to think like them.  When I would later go and read Latin that was from English, it was so easy and boring. Seems to me that if you want to read Latin, you probably want to read ideas from 2000 years ago, so it makes sense to practice with that kind of language style from the beginning.

[bookbard]

For something different, I recommend Telling Stories in Latin. It's a beautiful introduction, very simple, using short easily translated stories from Ovid's metamorphoses. You need to download the free teacher's guide and have a read, because there are a few mistakes in it though. 

[Spy Car]

3 hours ago, Innisfree said:

ETA: I’m not familiar with Grote, which might be very helpful. I didn’t find a need for a companion text, nor did my dd, but we did have teachers, so ymmv. Dd has found Wheelock useful for tutoring.

Looping back on this point. I was totally on my own and doing Latin for fun. I'm also not in the most-gifted language acquisition cohort. 

For me, it was as if Grote was clairvoyant. If I was scratching my head, he unfailingly pick up on the areas where I was perplexed in his work. 

For my own self-study, Grote was an essential component. Others might not need it. I did.

Made all the difference in the world.

Bill

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by Spy Car
Errare humanum est.

[Innisfree]

1 hour ago, Spy Car said:

Looping back on this point. I was totally on my own and doing Latin for fun. I'm also not in the most-gifted language acquisition cohort. 

For me, it was as if Grote was clairvoyant. If I was scratching my head, he unfailingly pick up on the areas where I was perplexed in his work. 

For my own self-study, Grote was an essential component. Others might not need it. I did.

Made all the difference in the world.

Bill

 

Grote sounds like a great resource. I’m glad to learn about the book, and might get one at some point. Sounds like a good thing to have around.

One other thing that occurred to me: I leapt to Wheelock with a very academic, high school or college perspective. That might not be what the OP wants. If her child is starting kindergarten, he’s not going to be reading the Aeneid in the near future, so her goals may be different too. If @gennyp is mostly interested in Latin as an aid in learning word roots for vocabulary development, and wants about a first year of high school level for herself, then she may not need or want to go very far in Wheelock. I do still think it would give her a solid foundation. Other books would probably be fine for that purpose also, but I’m not familiar with the ones mentioned above.

I’d also point out that elementary school is a fantastic time to help kids learn the rote-memory parts which are essential, but bore older kids to death. It’s not much different from learning a nonsense rhyme to say “Porto, portas, portat, portamus, portatis, portant.” Dd1 was rattling off conjugations and declensions long before she ever took a formal Latin class. Her path was much easier because a lot of the memorization was already done, and she was equipped with the “muscles” for learning the rest. Just keep it fun! Alongside memorization, for a young kid, I’d get Minimus, which is an enjoyable, easy, highly illustrated first textbook involving a Roman family stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and the very personable mice who share their home. 🐭 😁

Edited March 31, 2023 by Innisfree

[Spy Car]

20 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

Grote sounds like a great resource. I’m glad to learn about the book, and might get one at some point. Sounds like a good thing to have around.

One other thing that occurred to me: I leapt to Wheelock with a very academic, high school or college perspective. That might not be what the OP wants. If her child is starting kindergarten, he’s not going to be reading the Aeneid in the near future, so her goals may be different too. If @gennyp is mostly interested in Latin as an aid in learning word roots for vocabulary development, and wants about a first year of high school level for herself, then she may not need or want to go very far in Wheelock. I do still think it would give her a solid foundation. Other books would probably be fine for that purpose also, but I’m not familiar with the ones mentioned above.

I’d also point out that elementary school is a fantastic time to help kids learn the rote-memory parts which are essential, but bore older kids to death. It’s not much different from learning a nonsense rhyme to say “Porto, portas, portat, portamus, portatis, portant.” Dd1 was rattling off conjugations and declensions long before she ever took a formal Latin class. Her path was much easier because a lot of the memorization was already done, and she was equipped with the “muscles” for learning the rest. Just keep it fun! Alongside memorization, for a young kid, I’d get Minimus, which is an enjoyable, easy, highly illustrated first textbook involving a Roman family stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and the very personable mice who share their home. 🐭 😁

I had a very nice conversation with my (late) mother's longtime best friend on the phone today.

He reminded me of something about her that I know helped shape my character.

"You know what your Mom used to say," he said, "anything worth doing, is worth overdoing." LOL

Is it nature or nurture?

Non procul a proprio stipite poma cadunt.

Bill

[gennyp]

Hey there, this is the OP (I reset my password so am posting from my account now). Thank you everyone for your advice! I am going to start by giving Wheelock’s a try. Very happy to know about the Grote resource. But I also appreciate all of the other resources for down the road.

[Spy Car]

9 minutes ago, gennyp said:

Hey there, this is the OP (I reset my password so am posting from my account now). Thank you everyone for your advice! I am going to start by giving Wheelock’s a try. Very happy to know about the Grote resource. But I also appreciate all of the other resources for down the road.

Dale Grote had additional material, audio-based, up online at one time at was also helpful.

I'm not sure if that's still the case (it has been a long time for me), but might be worth a hunt.

He has the kind and caring type of voice that one would expect him to have from reading his writing. The consummate kindly professor who enjoys nothing more than helping others. Can't recommend him more highly.

I hope you come to feel the same way.

Bill