An Introduction To Latin With Just In Time Grammar

By Wes Billingham

Many language books hit you with all the grammar at the beginning, making it overwhelming for many people to begin learning a language. The 'Just In Time Grammar' approach doesn't do this. Instead, it gradually introduces new grammar when it is needed and not before, where it would serve only to intimidate students. This book has been engineered to give students a firm foundation in the language of Latin and readies them to pursue higher-level skills more confidently and effectively. It contains exercises at the end of each chapter, where the student(s) is/are encouraged to practice what they have just learned by translating not only Latin into English, but also English into Latin. This gives them a deeper understanding of the basics of the language and this is what, we believe, sets this book apart from other Latin books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wes Billingham
• Release date: Sep 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311648686

Book preview

1. INTRODUCTION

Our grandad is Emeritus Professor Brian Stone and he retired at the end of 2008 as Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Western Australia. Our mum started home schooling us in 2007 and it was essential for us to learn a language because of our curriculum. She recalled that our grandad had learned Latin at school and had said how thankful he was that he studied it. As a result he was asked to teach us Latin and began in mid 2009. Our grandad has won many teaching awards and one of the things he has found is that when you have to teach a subject you understand it better. Also it is when you first learn a subject that you find out what is difficult. Later on, when things are clearer, you can forget what you once found difficult. So as a project he suggested we write (with his help) a book on the way we were taught Latin so that we would learn more and maybe even help others. We also wrote the book as we went along as then we were able to try and explain clearly the things that seemed difficult at the time.

As our grandad is an engineer he used a rule based approach to Latin. This is how we learn computer games. You learn the rules and then you play the game. He also used a 'just in time' approach so that we only learned the grammar as we needed it. Many books hit you with all the grammar at the start or assume you know it already. We found that we learned the grammar as we went along. We also found it more interesting to keep on learning something new about Latin and its grammar, rather than just learn lots of vocabulary. Some books aimed at young people seem to take too long to get to anything new. So this book has not too much vocabulary but aims to introduce the Latin grammar at an interesting rate. In any case we found we could always look up the meaning of any new Latin word that we needed.

When some grammar is introduced for the first time it will be written in bold and underlined, e.g. noun. A summary of these terms is given in Appendix 1.

Sentences or words in Latin or English that need to be translated will be written in italics. Any word quoted from such a sentence, e.g. need will also be in italics.

There are exercises throughout the book. We found it much more difficult to translate from English to Latin than vice-versa but learned more by doing this. The exercises in this book include both Latin to English and English to Latin.

Wesley and Oliver Billingham

2. ABOUT LATIN

We like to know, at the start, why we study a subject. Will it be interesting? Will it be useful? As today Latin is not the language of any country, how could it be useful? Latin is an old language and has died out, how could it be interesting? Here are some of the reasons that we found motivated us.

1. A lot of history is written in Latin, including inscriptions on buildings and monuments - it would be good to be able

Reviews for An Introduction To Latin With Just In Time Grammar

[Caren Flack · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very easy but a good start for a child or someone who wants to try Latin. Vocabulary is minimal, but enough to make sentences. Grammar presented explains concepts which are troublesome for many students, and comparison to English provides excellent crossover.