Online Latin courses?

warblersrule
Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:27:22 +0000

There’s so many good Latin resources out there that it’s very possible (and increasingly common) to teach yourself. The standard textbook is Wheelock’s grammar. After working through it, a student would be acquainted with the basics of Latin grammar.

http://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th-Edition-Series/dp/0061997226

Browsing the web should turn up some good online exercises. UVic has a website to go along with Wheelock, for example. For a kid with a smartphone, there’s many good Latin vocab apps. Learning vocab is always by far the most time-consuming part of learning any language.

http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/latin/wheelock/contents.htm

After finishing Wheelock, she’ll start transitioning toward real texts; most high schoolers read Caesar and Vergil. A good intermediate step is War with Hannibal: Authentic Latin Prose, which has many useful annotations.

Working on it daily, including daily vocab drills, she’ll be picking it up in no time. The hardest part for most students, especially high schoolers, is getting used to a highly inflected language. One of the benefits is that Latin can serve as a springboard by preparing students for other, more difficult Indo-European languages (e.g. Sanskrit and Old Irish).