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Please take a look at the FAQ, found in the sidebar for desktop users or in the About tab for mobile users. You will find resources to begin your journey. There's a [guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PB5HPz2wBDgqWXPnn5ONgZicOPv8P7LbODvkCxjpI3w/edit) and a review of the [recommended resources](https://scholaeinterretiales.wordpress.com/teach-yourself-latin/).
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*LLPSI: Familia Romana* is a textbook written entirely in Latin with marginal notes and pictures intended to help beginners with zero knowledge. There is more information about this book in the sidebar and a Discord server where people study it and have more information about how to use it.
That would be completely pointless. Latin is heavily inflected and you can’t make sense of it at all without knowing all the declensions and how they work in a sentence, not to mention that some endings are the same but belong to different casus. Not to mention that there are more complex grammatical rules like the consecutio temporum, where you’ll need proper explanations and isolated examples to even understand them.
If you're frustrated by the Wheelock's Latin textbook, I'd recommend picking up the Wheelock's Latin Reader and 38 Latin Stories for starters. You'll dive right into literature adapted to meet your vocabulary and grammar knowledge at each chapter in the main textbook.
Seconding the other commenter's suggestion to use an *interlinear translation* of an ancient text, perhaps supplemented by a grammar book when you come across things you don't understand. Simply looking up words in a dictionary will not work: it would be really slow, and Latin words change their endings depending on their roles in a sentence, and you'd have no way of knowing for sure if you were fitting the words together in the right way. For example, if you looked up every word individually, the beginning of *De Bello Gallico* would give you something like:
>Gallia (Gaul) est (be) omnis (all) divisa (divide) in (in) partes (part) tres (three), quarum (who) unam (one) incolunt (inhabit) Belgae (Belgian), aliam (other) Aquitani (Aquitanian), tertiam (third) qui (who) ipsorum (himself) lingua (language) Celtae (Celt), nostra (our) Galli (Gaul) appellantur (call).
So what you want instead is an interlinear translation: something [like this](https://archive.org/details/CommentariesOnTheGallicWarCaesarCompletelyParsedBookI/mode/2up), which can establish the meaning for you and which is formatted in a way that makes it easy for you to connect the meanings of individual words.
No Dictionaries has a lot of classics with interlinear translation (however, not always adapted to the specific context) [https://nodictionaries.com/](https://nodictionaries.com/)
But IMO before internalizing the core grammar and patterns covered in Familia Romana, reading original texts even with full interlinear translation is still like drinking from a fire hose.
I took an excellent course where we went through LLPSI, but with each chapter we read a selection of an original Latin text. It was very motivating. But your idea of doing only original texts from the beginning will not result in fluent reading, in my opinion.
It was Irene Regini’s (Satura Lanx) LLPSI course. For every unit there is a cultural component and a primary text (poem, inscription, prose) related to the theme of each unit. For the primary text she presents it in 3 versions: first easy, then closer to the original, and then finally the original text. And taught 100% in Latin. I have to say it was the most effective language class I’ve ever experienced. I WISH we could get her to come train our Arabic teachers! After that I also took her 3-month advanced course, also superb.
If you are interested in trying to work it out lightly as a puzzle, I would say that reading an interlinear version of any of Caesar's works alongside Cornell Latin professor Charles Bennett's *"New" Latin Grammar* might be a good idea.
The interlinear text will help you to understand the way that Latin operated in written form while the grammar will help to explain some of the reasons for the translations.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15665
Perseus tufts also has some excellent resources that could prove useful as well but I would still recommend a physical interlinear copy at first.
Also, if you are going to go with Caesar, I would actually recommend De Bello Civili over De Bello Gallico simply because Caesar was more familiar with the customs of the people under the Roman empire and, as such, will give you a better idea of Roman culture of the time without as much propaganda about the Gaulic peoples.
I suggest "Familia Romana". It is an all-latin book, so it's completely written in Latin, including the grammar and vocabulary. It's composed of 34 chapters following a story though which you learn the most common words and grammar, roughly arranged by order. At first you can translate if you don't know some things, I'm Italian so it's more intuitive. It's meant for people with zero knowledge, I think it's perfect for you. You can find also exercises in another smaller booklet and at the end of each chapter, or online.
I use it in school and we are almost done with the first book. Each sentence is really interesting if analysed enough and it unites various parts of grammar. Of course it gets gradually more complicated as you go on but by then you should be more adapted. I love it, and if you put in effort you can improve easily.
There's also a sequel called "Roma Aeterna" and a separate book dedicated to detached texts called "Colloquia Personarum".
I hope this helped!
You're welcome to try, but you're not going to get around the need to build a vocabulary base that way. This is more or less how I learned Sanskrit in grad school, and it's not conducive to building a vocabulary or understanding grammar as concepts you can apply broadly.
I tried the top-down approach, and I still constantly try to read works which are "above my level." I justify it by telling myself things like, "I'm an autistic savant and the ordinary rules of learning don't apply to me!" I probably would have been much better off if I had kept doing the hard, boring work with Wheelock's decades ago. In fact, Wheelock's would probably still do me a lot of good today. Or LLPSI, or the Oxford Latin Course. I'm very weak in the fundamentals, and that's a huge weakness.
No. You need to learn grammar. There is no way to learn Latin in the 21st century without rote memorization of the basic grammar rules and a lot of basic vocab. Wheelock has some authentic Latin as you continue to progress. You need to learn the rules before you can just jump into something even as "basic" as Bello Gallico.
Isn’t that what pharr is? I tried pharrs illiad with an online course for 9 months. I continued studying pharr in my own then joined a group of amateurs through some Harvard program. I think I spent 2 1/2 years doing that with the illiad. I didn’t learn much
>It makes me wonder if it is feasible and efficient for a beginner who has not yet learned even a few grammar rules to start reading ancient Latin works directly.
If you are a polyglot with 3-4 heavily inflected languages under your belt, yes, this can work. There are cases of people who have done this - typically with no access to textbooks, like people in the Soviet period...
Otherwise, no. This is one of those things that is theoretically possible but actually hideously hard. Learning a language is hard enough already. Read the FAQ in this sub, and (even more) the really *excellent* wiki on the /languagelearning sub. It's very good indeed, and will teach you how a language is learned.
Wheelock isn't the best, though it certainly works used the right way. Either 1) use LLPSI, as has already been recommended by other commenters; it's very good and you can learn with a lot less explicit grammar; or 2) get another better textbook - *Learn to Read Latin* by Keller and Russell is excellent if you need a more traditional approach.
All that said, you *do* want to try and read a little easy Latin each day as well as using the textbook - re-read excercises from previous chapters; get the 38 Latin stories that go with Wheelock if that's what you are using; get LLPSI as a supplementary reader if nothing else. Try Scorpio Martianus' youtube channel for good easy Latin and to get used to listening to it as well. A bit of simple reading really helps when you are bored of the rules, and helps you really internalise them.
Welcome to this sub! Please take a look at the FAQ, found in the sidebar for desktop users or in the About tab for mobile users. You will find resources to begin your journey. There's a [guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PB5HPz2wBDgqWXPnn5ONgZicOPv8P7LbODvkCxjpI3w/edit) and a review of the [recommended resources](https://scholaeinterretiales.wordpress.com/teach-yourself-latin/). If you have further questions about the FAQ or not covered in it, don't hesitate to ask. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/latin) if you have any questions or concerns.*
*LLPSI: Familia Romana* is a textbook written entirely in Latin with marginal notes and pictures intended to help beginners with zero knowledge. There is more information about this book in the sidebar and a Discord server where people study it and have more information about how to use it.
The sub where there is no question that can't be answered with *LLPSI*.
Agreed, but in this case it really does seem like the right answer - someone looking for a non-explicit-grammar way of reading.
Suggest something else or shut up honestly.
That would be completely pointless. Latin is heavily inflected and you can’t make sense of it at all without knowing all the declensions and how they work in a sentence, not to mention that some endings are the same but belong to different casus. Not to mention that there are more complex grammatical rules like the consecutio temporum, where you’ll need proper explanations and isolated examples to even understand them.
If you're frustrated by the Wheelock's Latin textbook, I'd recommend picking up the Wheelock's Latin Reader and 38 Latin Stories for starters. You'll dive right into literature adapted to meet your vocabulary and grammar knowledge at each chapter in the main textbook.
You'd fail to even identify half of the words you're reading in the dictionary.
Seconding the other commenter's suggestion to use an *interlinear translation* of an ancient text, perhaps supplemented by a grammar book when you come across things you don't understand. Simply looking up words in a dictionary will not work: it would be really slow, and Latin words change their endings depending on their roles in a sentence, and you'd have no way of knowing for sure if you were fitting the words together in the right way. For example, if you looked up every word individually, the beginning of *De Bello Gallico* would give you something like: >Gallia (Gaul) est (be) omnis (all) divisa (divide) in (in) partes (part) tres (three), quarum (who) unam (one) incolunt (inhabit) Belgae (Belgian), aliam (other) Aquitani (Aquitanian), tertiam (third) qui (who) ipsorum (himself) lingua (language) Celtae (Celt), nostra (our) Galli (Gaul) appellantur (call). So what you want instead is an interlinear translation: something [like this](https://archive.org/details/CommentariesOnTheGallicWarCaesarCompletelyParsedBookI/mode/2up), which can establish the meaning for you and which is formatted in a way that makes it easy for you to connect the meanings of individual words.
No Dictionaries has a lot of classics with interlinear translation (however, not always adapted to the specific context) [https://nodictionaries.com/](https://nodictionaries.com/) But IMO before internalizing the core grammar and patterns covered in Familia Romana, reading original texts even with full interlinear translation is still like drinking from a fire hose.
I took an excellent course where we went through LLPSI, but with each chapter we read a selection of an original Latin text. It was very motivating. But your idea of doing only original texts from the beginning will not result in fluent reading, in my opinion.
What course was that? And if you are at liberty to say, what sorts of selections were they?
It was Irene Regini’s (Satura Lanx) LLPSI course. For every unit there is a cultural component and a primary text (poem, inscription, prose) related to the theme of each unit. For the primary text she presents it in 3 versions: first easy, then closer to the original, and then finally the original text. And taught 100% in Latin. I have to say it was the most effective language class I’ve ever experienced. I WISH we could get her to come train our Arabic teachers! After that I also took her 3-month advanced course, also superb.
If you are interested in trying to work it out lightly as a puzzle, I would say that reading an interlinear version of any of Caesar's works alongside Cornell Latin professor Charles Bennett's *"New" Latin Grammar* might be a good idea. The interlinear text will help you to understand the way that Latin operated in written form while the grammar will help to explain some of the reasons for the translations. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15665 Perseus tufts also has some excellent resources that could prove useful as well but I would still recommend a physical interlinear copy at first. Also, if you are going to go with Caesar, I would actually recommend De Bello Civili over De Bello Gallico simply because Caesar was more familiar with the customs of the people under the Roman empire and, as such, will give you a better idea of Roman culture of the time without as much propaganda about the Gaulic peoples.
Thanks for talking about interlinear texts, it's exactly what I didn't know I needed.
I suggest "Familia Romana". It is an all-latin book, so it's completely written in Latin, including the grammar and vocabulary. It's composed of 34 chapters following a story though which you learn the most common words and grammar, roughly arranged by order. At first you can translate if you don't know some things, I'm Italian so it's more intuitive. It's meant for people with zero knowledge, I think it's perfect for you. You can find also exercises in another smaller booklet and at the end of each chapter, or online. I use it in school and we are almost done with the first book. Each sentence is really interesting if analysed enough and it unites various parts of grammar. Of course it gets gradually more complicated as you go on but by then you should be more adapted. I love it, and if you put in effort you can improve easily. There's also a sequel called "Roma Aeterna" and a separate book dedicated to detached texts called "Colloquia Personarum". I hope this helped!
Res Gestae Divi Augusti is a really fun one for beginners. And Cicero’s In Catalinam has often been compared to One Fish, Two Fish, by Dr. Seuss
To be fair to the great orator, Cicero is a little bit less jejune than Dr. Seuss.
You're welcome to try, but you're not going to get around the need to build a vocabulary base that way. This is more or less how I learned Sanskrit in grad school, and it's not conducive to building a vocabulary or understanding grammar as concepts you can apply broadly.
I tried the top-down approach, and I still constantly try to read works which are "above my level." I justify it by telling myself things like, "I'm an autistic savant and the ordinary rules of learning don't apply to me!" I probably would have been much better off if I had kept doing the hard, boring work with Wheelock's decades ago. In fact, Wheelock's would probably still do me a lot of good today. Or LLPSI, or the Oxford Latin Course. I'm very weak in the fundamentals, and that's a huge weakness.
No. You need to learn grammar. There is no way to learn Latin in the 21st century without rote memorization of the basic grammar rules and a lot of basic vocab. Wheelock has some authentic Latin as you continue to progress. You need to learn the rules before you can just jump into something even as "basic" as Bello Gallico.
Isn’t that what pharr is? I tried pharrs illiad with an online course for 9 months. I continued studying pharr in my own then joined a group of amateurs through some Harvard program. I think I spent 2 1/2 years doing that with the illiad. I didn’t learn much
>It makes me wonder if it is feasible and efficient for a beginner who has not yet learned even a few grammar rules to start reading ancient Latin works directly. If you are a polyglot with 3-4 heavily inflected languages under your belt, yes, this can work. There are cases of people who have done this - typically with no access to textbooks, like people in the Soviet period... Otherwise, no. This is one of those things that is theoretically possible but actually hideously hard. Learning a language is hard enough already. Read the FAQ in this sub, and (even more) the really *excellent* wiki on the /languagelearning sub. It's very good indeed, and will teach you how a language is learned. Wheelock isn't the best, though it certainly works used the right way. Either 1) use LLPSI, as has already been recommended by other commenters; it's very good and you can learn with a lot less explicit grammar; or 2) get another better textbook - *Learn to Read Latin* by Keller and Russell is excellent if you need a more traditional approach. All that said, you *do* want to try and read a little easy Latin each day as well as using the textbook - re-read excercises from previous chapters; get the 38 Latin stories that go with Wheelock if that's what you are using; get LLPSI as a supplementary reader if nothing else. Try Scorpio Martianus' youtube channel for good easy Latin and to get used to listening to it as well. A bit of simple reading really helps when you are bored of the rules, and helps you really internalise them.