Latin Grammar

Purchased for my child as they use it at school. Clearly structured, and accessible explanations. Johnny recommended.

This is an excellent and generally user friendly grammar, and a good deal less daunting, especially for the beginner/intermediate learner than Kennedy. However, in some cases (pun intended) it sacrifices brevity over clarity. I can live with the deletion of the vocative in the noun tables, although for us with a vague memory of reciting "dominus, domine, dominum..." it is a trifle disconcerting. My major complaint is in the treatment of pronouns - those pesky hics, illes, istes etc that make schoolchildren weep! The layout is frankly awful - no doubt to save space - and the explanation non-existent. It introduces "deictic" pronouns with no explanation of what that means - it is mentioned in the glossary, if you think to look at the back of the book - but the distinctions between, say "ille" and "iste" - eg "that man of yours " "this man near me" are not made clear. A brief summary of the various uses would have been welcome. As would an index of grammar points. The index itself is good - for instance, if you look up "seruio", it directs you to a list of verbs that take the dative - eg "I am slave TO" rather than - as would be more natural for English speakers - "I am the slave OF". Also, whilst each grammar section has a few practice Latin - English, English - Latin sentences, there is no key for the independent learner to check their comprehension. All in all, a useful summary of Latin grammar, which nevertheless is marred by its preferring brevity over clarity.

For teaching Latin to oneself: this compilation of grammar is extremely useful. For someone needing to revise before GCSE exams this summer: invaluable. For reference: perfect. After purchasing the Classical Greek equivalent, I invested in this little guide. Great size - can easily be shoved in my school bag. Great layout - easy to read and the pages are laid out in a logical manner. It includes both accidence and syntax which is brilliant when it comes to learning/revising and it is presented in a user-friendly manner which is better than some of the other books I have come across.

Very satisfied with purchase. Arrived promptly despite Christmas run-up and condition matched seller's description.

English skeakers can get along without spending much time on grammar but with Latin things are different. The words of a Latin sentence can be put in any order and correct grammar makes the meaning clear. Often the meaning of a Latin sentence is more precise than its English translation. This is made apparent in this Latin Grammar book. Before using it I would recomend beginners to learn a basic vocabulary of about 500 words. The book then provides lots of examples showing how these these words with their inflections can be put together. The letter 'v' does not occur in this book and so instead of 'cave canem', the warning reads 'caue canem'.

The failure to give answers to exercises is a gross mistake. You need lots of exercises and you need to be able to check all the answers. We are not all of us fellows of Wadham Coll. Oxford. Frankly, it is not a satisfactory replacement of Kennedy. Too much is assumed. How can a mature adult taking this up for the first time progress in the language? Impossible. I like it but I am unable to profit from it as much as I wish. William Scott Even Gwynn's Latin has answers to exercises. It should be a sine qua non.

The book is small enough to fit into even small bags but manages to cover a lot of ground very comprehensively. Things follow through fairly neatly. Everything has a neat little explanation and at least one example, this is very useful for creating your own practice papers as you can use the example and it's translation to create question papers and answer keys.

Excellent quality, being new, and received within a couple of days, thus superb customer service. Use of this dictionary is helped by excellent standard of printing. Being of similar size to the Oxford desk Dictionary, this makes a fine companion. It's extremely useful as a companion to my study of the subject (a hobby - at age 71).

Il faut savoir que cette grammaire est écrite en anglais; c’est tout à fait ce que je recherchais. Les déclinaisons suivent l’ordre dans lequel je les avais apprises, à savoir: Nom., Voc., Acc., Gen., Dat. et Ab. La grammaire est disséquée d’une manière classique et celle qui était en vigueur pendant les années soixante en Grande Bretagne; c’est également ce que je recherchais. C’est un livre qui présente succinctement, mais avec un degré de détail qui n’évite pas la profondeur analytique nécessaire. Je regrette que l’auteur n’ait pas jugé bon de donner les réponses aux exercices de traduction.

本書では､実際の文章を読む際のポイントが簡潔にまとめられています｡ 私はこのシリーズの古代ギリシャ語版も使用したのですが､ それと内容･構成などほぼ同じです｡ 従って､本書の良い点･悪い点もそちらと全く同じです｡ 入門者に勧められない点は､例文が全く入門者向けのレベルで無い点です｡ 英語の文法で言えば､中学生レベルの基礎の基礎を理解したのを前提に､ 高校生向けに発展･実践的な解説をしたような内容です｡ 例えば､7ページから始まる一番最初の例文では､ いきなり何の説明も無く､ 動詞の過去進行形やcanιsといった少々特殊な語尾変化をする名詞がいきなり出ます｡ 予め動詞･名詞の大量の活用を覚えて､識別する練習を少なくとも1ヶ月はやらないと､ 入門者が最初に読んでも全く意味不明になると思います｡ 本書の良い点は､仮定や条件など､ 実際の文章で出会う複雑な要素が詳しく解説されている点です｡ そして､充実した内容でありながら安価で､かつ本自体がコンパクトな点です｡ ネットに英語サイトで入門用に良いものがあるので､ それを終えた方にはお勧めです｡

Serve per studenti che hanno già buona conoscenza del latino.

Invaluable.

This is perfect for my purposes - a review of high school Latin and an attempt to read it again.