Learning Latin

[Edward]

Salvete!

So, I've decided to start teaching myself Latin, for no particular reason other than personal curiosity. I've been using the lessons on this site. I've watched the first two lessons and I think it's rather good, though the teacher's voice is a little annoying.

But I was wondering if anyone knew of other, free recources I could use to supplement the site I linked. Books I could buy or check out at a library would be helpful too.

If anyone knows of any helpful websites or books for learning Ancient Greek, that would be helpful too, so I don't have to make another thread if I decide to tackle it after Latin.

[Nanao]

We used this site in school, particularly the LatinPraxis portion. There are literally hundreds of practice exercises there, and I believe that they have answers as well.

For Greek, we used a lot of resources from Persus. They have a lot of downloadable information (and I believe some textbooks) in both Greek and Latin in addition to loads of reading practice.

As far as books go, I'm really only familiar with the ones that we used in school, but Wheelock's Latin which was an excellent course. Cambridge Latin Course is also pretty good. For classical Greek, Beginning Greek by Stephen Paine, Greek Grammar by Herbert Weir Smyth and From Alpha to Omega by Anne Groton are all good. I'm not sure about availability in your local library, but you could certainly check them out ^__^

Hope this helps and good luck with your studies!

[Rylynn4869]

My class used Wheelock's Latin, and it had lots of helpful charts in the back for all the different declensions and conjugations. I completed Latin II last year, so if you have any questions feel free to PM me! My class mainly focused on grammar, though, so my vocabulary isn't too extensive, but I can try to help you understand the language as best I can!

Good luck!

[Agloval]

The internet wasn't used a great deal when I was taught Latin, so I can't offer many helpful sites for starting the process. We used the Cambridge Latin Course at school, and it seemed to work well, though I've no way of comparing it to other options. I still use the Cambridge Latin Grammar as a lightweight, to-hand grammar reference.

But I know nodictionaries is a fun resource when you just want to bash your head against some original texts for a little while. You can use the slider on the right-hand side to control the amount of help it automatically gives you, and clicking on a particular word will reveal all the base words it might potentially be a form of. But this site's probably most useful once you've already got a bit of a grasp on Latin.

If you do at some point just need a big, full-on dictionary, you can find a full, searchable version of the Lewis & Short dictionary online here (site seems to be running slow for me right now, but I assume that's a temporary thing).

[LastLfan]

We use oxford latin course at my school, not sure if you can find it free though, designed for collage though so it definately helps.

[*fragment]

If you're particularly interested in Ecclesiastical/Medieval Latin, I've found John F. Collin's A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin to be a good textbook. Leo F. Stelten's Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin is very handy.

There isn't much of a substantive difference between Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin (it's mainly just differing vocab/pronunciations), so once you have the basics of one, getting to know the other is fairly easy.

More generally, I like Charles E. Bennett's New Latin Grammar.

Unfortunately none of these are free, as far as I can tell.