Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227147 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
A completely new guide to writing Latin from scratch, this user-friendly book includes key features such as: broad coverage - all the major grammatical constructions of the Latin language are covered, reinforcing what students have learnt from reading Latin; thorough accessible explanations - no previous experience of writing in Latin assumed; hundreds of examples - clear accurate illustrations of the constructions described, all with full translations; over six hundred practice sentences - graduated exercises leading students through three levels of difficulty from elementary to advanced level; introduction to Latin word order - a brief guide to some of the most important principles; and, longer passages for practising continuous prose composition - more challenging passages to stretch the most able students.It also includes features such as: commentaries on examples of Latin prose style - passages from great Latin prose writers focus attention on imitating real Latin usage; and, complete list of vocabulary - all the words needed for the exercises and a valuable reference for English-Latin work in general.

Customer Reviews

Excellent, up-to-date and easy to use
At last, a modern, handy and user-friendly guide to Latin prose comp. True, "Writing Latin" is not quite as exhaustive as trusty old Bradley's Arnold, but it is much easier to use. The grammar explanations are clear, concise and easy to understand (contrast with the recent book "Introduction to Latin Prose Composition" by Milena Minkova, where the English is difficult and full of academic/grammatical jargon terms).

The exercises are interesting and apposite, too: short graded sentences at the end of each chapter divided into A, B and C sections -- the latter for revision only once you've covered all the topics. There are longer paragraphs for practice every few chapters as well, and passages from Cicero, Livy, Tacitus et al at the end with notes explaining how and why they write as they do.

Refreshing, too, that the authors have a sense of humour: you won't find sentences like "After we had left the philosopher, we went to the brothel", or "She was the kind of girl who liked older men" in Bradley's Arnold or North & Hillard!

Although I haven't looked at them yet, the authors have provided answers to all the exercises which are available online for download.