So You Really Want to Learn Latin Book 1: A Textbook for Common Entrance and GCSE

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The best thing to do is to read Fab­u­lae Syrae first as there will be a lot of over­lap­ping vocab­u­lary and sub­ject mat­ter. In the second half of the book, Quintus tells King Cogidubnus about his journey to Alexandria, where he met Barbillus, a friend of his father. I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that the learning of it should necessarily be pleasurable.

Featuring a glossary for quick reference and comprehension questions, the book also includes a full explanation of language points and grammar practice exercises. He didn’t think—or didn’t give the impression—that there were countless irregularities and so never any point learning the rules, which is the sensation I had a bit when I was younger. The chap­ters first intro­duce the gram­mar point with expla­na­tions in Eng­lish with exam­ple sen­tences in Latin elu­ci­dat­ing the points. It has all the hard stuff—and, as you say, it’s very heavy on grammar—but his examples are a little lighter and more pleasurable than the 19th century ones.For this rea­son, it is writ­ten in a straight­for­ward style, with fre­quent use of the most com­mon turns of phras­es from Cae­sar, e. Harry Mount (and Katie Walker) recommend the best books for learning Latin—the language of a small, central Italian tribe that managed to conquer most of Europe. The book starts with some prepara­to­ry exer­cis­es, which are very sim­ple, but the actu­al exer­cis­es are more difficult. I had previously tried Peter Jones' 'Learn Latin' and had then tried reading the Latin translation of the 'The Hobbit' (a book i'm highly familiar with in English) and some Julius Caesar - thinking i'd be able to 'fill in the missing gaps', but i soon realized i was going nowhere fast!

On the whole, if you have 10 words of Latin in a sentence, translating that into English, you end up with 15 or 20 words. Fab­u­lae Gal­li­cae is, there­fore, a wel­come breath of fresh air, as it pro­vides some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to read. First of all, he recommended that if your really want to get to the heart of Latin, you should learn passages off by heart pretty regularly.

An example I give in my book is the Latin word ‘candidus,’ the adjective meaning white, pure, unvarnished. There are an awful lot of parents who learned Latin and Greek who are concerned that their children no longer are.

Below I’ve not­ed the ones I deem to be of most inter­est, both large schol­ar­ly ones and small­er ones for begin­ners and inter­me­di­ate students.But do not despair, there are courses out there and support is available for those studying alone or working with a Latin tutor. Each chapter beings with a story with accompanying necessary vocabulary and Latin comprehension questions. Plus, I’ll let you into a little secret: children aren’t only motivated by fun: they are also motivated by challenge, so long as they are given the tools to succeed. Moving on from the destruction of Pompeii, Book 2 captures the daily lives of the inhabitants of two provinces at opposite ends of the Roman Empire, Britain and Egypt.