[B-Greek] Corresponding Latin grammers suggestion?
John McChesney-Young
panis at pacbell.net
Fri Apr 1 21:56:50 EST 2005
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:36:39 -0800 "Keith Saare" <ksaare at masters.edu>
wrote:
>>> Does anybody have a recommendation for learning Latin in the same
>>> tradition as these classic grammars? I notice that Barne's & Noble
>>> carries the Wheellock's (sp?) series
and George F Somsel <gfsomsel at juno.com> wrote:
>>Wheelock is a "classic grammar" which would be of value for learning the
>>language. For reference purposes I would recommend Allen & Greenough
>>(Lewis & Short for a dictionary).
and "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:
>I'd have to second the "nomination" of Wheelock ...
Wheelock is the most commonly used college-level textbook, and
besides the snipped positive points mentioned by Professor Conrad,
there's a useful companion website:
http://www.wheelockslatin.com/
with ancillary materials (including audio files) and links to still more.
With your background in Greek, you might find the rather more
intimidating textbook by Moreland and Fleischer, _Latin: An Intensive
Course _ to your liking. Some people think it's better than Wheelock
at preparing students to read "real" Latin straight off.
You don't mention your purpose for studying Latin, but if reading
church Latin is your goal you might also consider the ecclesiastical
text based on Moreland and Fleischer, John Collins' _Primer of
Ecclesiastical Latin_.
Professor Conrad continued:
>On the other hand, I long since ceased to think that learning languages the
>old-fashioned way with chapters introducing new grammar ...
An alternative to both the grammatical (as with Wheelock) and reading
(as with the Cambridge Latin Course) approaches is the "natural"
method of Hans Oerberg in his _Lingua Latina_ series (not to be
confused with the texts of the same name by John Traupman). See:
http://pullins.com/txt/LinguaLatina.htm
They're *pure* Latin, no English (nor Danish). There are however
supplementary materials which can be added to make it usable for
self-study.
Also, I'd like to second gfsomsel's suggestion of Allen and Greenough
as a reference grammar. There are other similar grammars which cover
much the same material (Gildersleeve and Lodge, Hale and Buck, Lane,
Bennett, Roby) to a greater or lesser extent, but A & G is a good,
balanced, easy-to-use choice. The original edition is available in a
hypertext version at the Perseus Project:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0001
and as a free download from Textkit:
http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/109/author_id/42/
There's also a paper edition from Focus Publishing with a revised
section on metrics, the only part of the work that's been
significantly outdated by more recent research:
http://pullins.com/Books/00420Allen&Greenough'sNewLatinGrammar.htm
Finally, if I *had* to limit myself to just one Latin dictionary it
would by Lewis and Short, but the _Oxford Latin Dictionary_ is about
a hundred years more recent and therefore benefits from the
scholarship of much of that time. However, if you're primarily
interested in ecclesiastical texts you'll find the OLD not worth your
while, because it stops at (about) A.D. 200; L&S goes on at least
spottily as late as Bede and Boethius.
If you're interested in more recommendations of texts, grammars, and
other reference works, feel free to write off-list; I don't want to
impose on the patience of the other members nor of the moderators by
continuing on and on.
Best,
John
--
*** John McChesney-Young ** panis~at~pacbell.net ** Berkeley,
California, U.S.A. ***
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