A question

[chickenfeet]

Supposing I were insane enough to want to relearn Latin (last given any serious thought the day I took the 'O' level exam in 1973), what would be a good text? I know there are plenty of classicists and mediaevalists lurking out there.

Comments

[damiel.livejournal.com]

I still find Wheelock's Latin (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060956410/) a fairly useful, comprehensive, and friendly guide to learning, or relearning, Latin, and that is what I have used to relearn it myself. It lets out a couple of quaint and dated nonsensical prescriptivist anachronisms here and there (e.g., we translate the future by using shall for the first person and will for the remaining ones), but overall I think it's a good text to work with, at least at the introductory level (you might find yourself swiftly moving through the first few chapters). I've read other people bemoan the quality of more recent editions, but I wouldn't know which one to recommend. I am using the latest (6th. ed.).

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

It lets out a couple of quaint and dated nonsensical prescriptivist anachronisms here and there (e.g., we translate the future by using shall for the first person and will for the remaining ones),

That has to be one of the oddest 'conventions' in English. Despite that, I still tend to follow it, resisting the Gadarene rush to universal employment of the auxiliary future.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

I too learned from Wheelock (fifth ed., I think), in a class, but two instructors claimed fiercely that Wheelock teaches Wheelock-Latin, not actual Latin. Perhaps chickenfeet2003 might supplement his inquiry with a less ...massaged grammar? The one recommended to me in my third-semester class was Charles E. Bennett's, reprinted during the 1990s by Bolchazy-Carducci (0-86516-261-1). I include the extra information not because I'm trying to get anyone to buy it but because I was told it isn't very readily available. A used bookshop near a university might have it.