Cambridge University Press Latin Course Book 1

Great book and easy to read and use

The Cambridge Latin course consist of wonderful stories, with clear vocabulary and grammar explanations. After high school I never read any Latin any more so this is a great course to restart. Immediately jumping into Ovidius or Vergilius is way too hard after not having read Latin for 25 years, but this course is both entertaining and solid.

After using Wm Linney's Getting Started with Latin (which was very good but very basic) we were interested in something more challenging. Cambridge Latin is just what we were looking for. I purchased the UK edition and sampled the Unit One material on the Cambridge Latin website. This is an excellent program suitable for learners of all ages. My son, 11, has no trouble with the material and we both are learning a lot. This book is designed to go with the online/tutorial course, which is currently GBP 170. It's still much cheaper than hiring a private tutor, assuming you would be able to find one in your area.

A few of my friends had studied the Cambridge Latin Course at school, and having always wanted to learn Latin I took up their advice and bought this for myself. This book is suitable if you have absolutely no prior understanding of Latin, or indeed languages in general. Lingustic terms that are important for the understanding of the language are clearly explained (e.g. nominative, pronoun, infinitive). I believe this book was aimed at pre-GCSE level children so it's definitely suitable for a wide range of ages. The pacing of the learning is gentle and there is relatively little expectation at this stage for vocabulary (there is a list of essential vocab at the end of each chapter - though you may want to go ahead and learn all the words introduced if you're an older learner). The way the book is set out means that the stories are grouped into chapters which have a common theme and introduce new vocabulary (though vocabulary features in previous chapters also appears). Because of this it is important to read through the book in the correct order, as you are less likely to come across unfamiliar vocabulary (though if you do there is a comprehensive Latin to English dictionary of all the words in the back). Another point to make is that there is a good number of freely accessible online activities relating to the CLC at all stages, including vocab tests, games and further reading. The best thing about the book is that it uses recurring characters in various scenarios, which really helps when putting the words in context and getting a feel for the uses of various words. This also gives a good understanding of the types of lives Latin speakers had, and unlike modern language courses, the vocabulary is geared towards this rather than modern lives. One of the previous reviews mentioned that there is no pronunciation guide within the book. This is true, though it should be noted that the entire course is geared towards being able to do no more or less than comprehend and translate pieces of Latin text - not to speak it, nor to understand spoken Latin, thus pronunciation would be superfluous. Additionally pronunciation of Latin is subjective, as well as being much more phonetic than English. All in all this is a great buy, I have no regrets about buying it and would readily recommend it to anyone interested in picking up some Latin.

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