Wheelock's Latin, 7th Edition (The Wheelock's Latin Series)

Si vales, bene est. Ego valeo. I am learning Latin purely for the enjoyment and as a hobby. I couldn't really decide how to go about learning Latin as a complete beginner. I first ordered Lingua Latina and was going through it, but I found that I just didn't really understand everything that was being taught. Not only did I not really understand the Latin vocabulary, but I didn't understand the grammatical concepts that were being taught. I didn't even know if I was pronouncing things properly when reading out loud. After digging around, I found Wheelock's Latin and I'm very glad I did. It starts with the proper pronunciation in the introduction and introduces you to extremely basic grammar at the beginning and builds from there. Do you know what the 1st/2nd/3rd persons are? Plural and singular? Adverb/adjective? Nominative/genitive/dative/accusative/ablative/vocative cases? Pluperfect subjunctive voice? If not, Wheelock's Latin will introduce what those are to you in English, and then help you understand how they work in Latin. Some of those are in-depth concepts that are tricky to understand - even in my native language English. But Wheelock's Latin helps you understand what it is and then teaches it in Latin. There are 40 chapters, each with their own vocabulary lists, ample practice sentences for translation practice, introductory samples of ancient Latin in historical writings, and even a fun Latin writing from an archeological find. It also does interject good humor into some of the examples to try to lighten things up. It's a textbook, though. You've really got to dedicate yourself to the study if you want to go through the entire thing. It took me a little over a year (though I was also doing the Wheelock's Workbook as well as the companion Scribblers, Scvlptors, and Scribes books) to get through. And the later chapters are not easy! Sometimes I found myself asking, "Quid?" as I went through it. But if you dedicate yourself and truly go through each chapter, I think you'll make it. Some chapters you'll understand more than others, but overall you'll get it. The textbook realizes the difficulty and will give you encouragement as you go through it. There is a pretty advanced section from Cicero where he is telling a joke in one of his writings. I understood the joke as I read it and laughed to myself, and the textbook took the time to stop after that section and give me a "pat-on-the-back" for understanding the joke. I really liked that. The two highlights for me are the amount of ancient writings from Latin authors, poets, generals, and normal citizens. It was so cool to realize they are people just like we are. The other highlight was the little end-of-chapter sections on recognizing etymology - how Latin evolved into the romance languages, but also how much Latin there is in English! My wife and kids now hate that I snobbishly comment on words they say come that from Latin. Can you learn Latin another way? Yes. But this is a fantastic book to help you learn from scratch, especially if you need a little help with grammar along the way. I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could. Valete, amici!

If I can give this book 6 Stars, I would. It's obviously very well laid out, has a ton of great content, and I love the extra mile of giving historical background and the like. It's much more than I expected from a scholarly Latin text book. It's no wonder that it is so popular. I blew me away that I got this hardback textbook for like only $18. To me that was unbelievable. If you are interested in learning Latin, this is your book. The important terms are in bold, there are footnotes to give extra detail, and there are several appendices towards the end of the book. Do not skip the introduction, as it includes instructions on how to pronounce the vowels, diphthongs, and consonants and also gives interesting background in history on the development of book. I'm an adult learner, so I really appreciate the effort that was taken to explain some of the grammatical concepts, having been out of school for quite a while. There are many examples of key Concepts being presented in Table Fashion which I really like because I'm a visual learner. Don't get me wrong, you will still need to do your due diligence and do things like create index cards for vocabulary words so you can drill yourself. In other words, you are not going to learn Latin by osmosis. It's hard work, but well worth the effort. Well, flipping through the book while doing this review I just realized there's a self tutorial exercise section. I will definitely be using that. There are also supplementary reading and vocabulary lists after the last chapter. In fact, I just realized this book actually goes on for another 200 Pages after the last chapter which is chapter 40. Chapter 40 ends on page 350. Loci start on page 351 and ends on 411. Then there's a self tutorial section; a key to tutorial exercises; appendices; a vocabulary section, both from English to Latin and Latin to English; a section on abbreviations; a very detailed index; and more. If you're concerned about supporting materials, don't worry. I know this is just a review for the book, but there are available to you an associated workbook, reader, audio CDs, website, and more. I've also discovered that there's a fairly large community that uses Wheelock Latin materials and there are mobile apps and other websites regarding Wheelock Latin. I consider myself somewhat of a slow learner regarding language, but I am very pleased with the learning materials and have already started reading and comprehending small sentences after only two weeks. I'm also finding that this is helping me immensely in understanding Spanish which I am also in the process of learning. That is of course because Latin is the parent language for Spanish. I could go on and on about this book and the whole series of materials available, but I have other things I need to get done today. I should say, that I'm rarely this motivated to write a long review, but with this exceptional book I felt it merited an effort consummate with the effort they made in creating the book.

When I first started to raise potted plants, Walked into a florist shop asking the florist if she had the Dracaena marginata,a palm plant that I liked very much. I said to her, "Do you have the Drakayna marginata (the 'ay' pronounced like'eye', she immediately corrected me saying "Draseena". This book verified my belief that 'ae' would be pronounced like 'eye' in original Latin. likewise 'Caesar' would be pronounced like 'Kaiser' as it is in German. I looked at this book but did not intend to buy it at that time, but somehow it managed to make it to me anyway, so I purchased it. I find it to be a good aid for studying and learning Latin.

Wheelock’s Latin is often considered THE Latin textbook. I was learning Latin with Duolingo and wanted explanations and more than it covered. When I saw this book on sale, I bought it immediately. It was exactly what I wanted. I want to be able to read Latin literature, which is not something you will accomplish with Duolingo. This book has examples of Latin literature. It has explanations of grammar. It has a large amount of vocabulary. This is what you need if you want to read Latin literature. (Although for extra practice, I would also like to read children’s books that have been translated into Latin.) I don’t know how easy it would be for a self-study learner to use this book. I have studied linguistics, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and a tiny bit of Italian and Arabic - so I have experience with languages. I couldn’t fit in the Latin class in high school or in college, but always wanted to learn both it and Ancient Greek. I feel comfortable jumping around a little in the book when I decide there is something specific I am interested in learning, but for the most part I have gone from beginning to end. So, it has been a great reference and self-study book for me.

This book can teach you Latin. If you put in the work, pretty much everything you need to know about the language can be found here. I enjoyed it a lot, and I learned a ton. The book moves systematically through every part of Latin grammar, and offers up Latin texts of gradually increasing complexity. At the end are some excellent, authentic (or gently abridged) Roman texts that are rewarding to read. I have to drop a star though, because of the excessively pedantic approach to language learning. The authors treat Latin as a subject to be tackled from a scientific standpoint. Every time a new verb tense or declination is provided, we're hit with a table and told to memorize it, or a dictionary-ready paragraph full of formal exposition. Each concept is explained exactly once, with the understanding that the learner will require no reinforcement down the road. This is fine, and with effort it can work, but it's really going about things the hard way. I've used textbooks for seven different languages, and this one stands out for its encyclopedic approach. Languages are learned by speaking and writing, and most modern language textbooks teach via relatable every day scenarios and speaking and writing exercises. Latin today may be dead as an everyday conversational language, but it was once the common tongue of millions, most of whom would never have heard of the "third-person plural present passive subjunctive" conjugation, or any of the 100+ forms of each verb. They learned the way all babies learn languages: by listening and practicing. I don't see any reason why Latin shouldn't be taught as a living language, instead of an artifact to be dissected and decoded. Did you learn your native language by memorizing tables? If you became fluent as an adult in a foreign language, was there some component of immersion to your learning process? I would be surprised (and impressed!) if there wasn't. All that said, this book is an excellent reference. All the information is there. But I would strongly recommend supplementing with long sections of easy reading material, like from the Cambridge Latin Course, or eventually even Wheelock's Latin Reader. Even better, there is an abundance of spoken Latin audio available through podcasts and videos.

I may have bitten off a bit much by deciding to learn Latin solo, but I feel fairly confident with how in depth this book is. Very academic minded, definitely mix in some of his other works to delve more into reading and understanding.

Perfect for learning latin.

I am a retired physician, and have been spending about 2-3 hours a day for the last 9 months on Latin. I am going into chapter 28 (of 40). Love it. 1. I read the chapter in Wheelock. 2 I do all the chapter exercises in the back of the book. The answer key is in the book. 3. I do all the exercises in the chapter itself. The answer key is downloadable to a device (but cannot, I think, be printed) 4. I do all the exercises in the Workbook. key--same as 3. 5. I then read and do all the exercises in the appropriate chapter for Scribblers, Sculptors and Scribes. Somewhere along the way I read the story from 38 Latin Stories. I also started the Lingua Latina Familia Romana about 4 months ago, and am on Chapter 22 (of 35) The way my mind works, I would have been very frustrated to just use that--I want to KNOW things thoroughly. But I find LLPI superb as --raw reading material-- as in, reading it for an hour while walking on the treadmill. I read every chapter multiple times, getting something from them each time. The Companion to Lingua Latina is also useful The subtle difference in grammatical emphasis, to me, is enlightening. I have also benefited from having a Cassell dictionary, and punching searches into Wiktionary--the Wiktionary is great for looking up words in such a highly inflected language. In Wheelock's books, the Inscriptions, Poems (Martial is LOL good), Cicero, Virgil, and the Proverba and Dicta, Sententiae Antiquae, are my "candy"--the pay-off for the grunt work. Originally my goal was to eventually read Caesar's Conquest of Gaul in the original. But all the authors I am being exposed to have broadened my scope of interest--and it feels as though the keys to Western Civilization thought have been handed to me. Yes, like others, my volume is now shredded from use--I am ordering another copy right now. I don't think the kindle edition would work for me. (update, February 2019. I am on chapter 38. Still love it. Started LLPSI Pars II--Roma Aeterna, and, to me, the two work together well. Suggest also getting the companions for that series, and watching the chapter talks on the LLPSI web site. Because of the ornate sentence structure, I actually find the learning curve steeper with that set of books--but, again, that supplements Wheelck.)