Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30295 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
Taken from the "QED" series of teach-yourself Latin articles published in the "Daily Telegraph" and the "Sunday Telegraph", this book aims to give its readers a basic knowledge of Latin in a short space of time. It covers just enough to give a basic understanding of Latin, and to enable readers to read and understand parts of the Bayeux Tapestry, the love poetry of Catullus, or Saint Jerome's "Vulgate". This book also aims to give a deeper understanding of modern European languages, such as English, French, Spanish, and Italian, through an understanding of the ancient language at their heart.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant
I want to start by saying that i'm a language obsessive and have in total over 50 language books. This is the best out of all of them.
Starting with grammar rather than set phrases means that you progress incredibly fast without it seeming like a battle.
Buy it!

bonus non optime
If you are reading this review you probably do not need me to convince you that Latin is not useless in our contemporary era of PC and Playstation and you will probably share my enthusiasm in greeting any serious attempt at diffusing the language.
Prof. Jones's is a very serious one, coming from a competent latinist, even if each and everyone of his explanations is intermingled with funny puns.

His goal is to stimulate his reader by providing a very basic grammar and authentic, interesting texts so as to lure him/her into loving the language before the necessary effort wipe out his/her enthusiasm.
Unfortunately he might have achieved this particular goal but he fails at the rest.

First, his approach is a traditional one: explanations - examples - exercises.
It is my firm opinion that if Latin is to survive as a school subject any beginner's course should handle the language as if it were a modern one, with a modern approach: lots of dialogues and pictures too. Grammar should be left for later.
There are pictures in this course - even if I do not like Mr Benoit style they are more useful than heaps of examples- but they are not enough.

Second the exercises are not nearly enough to memorise the language: unless the reader is so highly motivated as to translate each single sentence into Latin and back a couple of dozen times he/she will forget almost everything soon.

Things change if you have already had Latin at school and wish to refresh it: in this case this course will be fun and it will help you decide whether you really want to pick it up again.

Latin really made easy (comparatively!)
This is a brilliant little book that does exactly what is says: teaches you to read (and write) in Latin in easy and accessible steps.

Having said that, it's less than 2/3s of a GCSE and sets its own limits, so if you're serious about the language from an academic point of view then it's a great confidence-boosting introduction but is no replacement for a more serious course (such as Jones/Sidwell Reading Latin).

I have no background in Latin but need to learn it for my PhD and am starting a 'proper' course in October, but this was recommnded as a fun starter to get ahead of the game and I'm loving it.