LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

1.
Peter L. Corrigan
College Latin: An Intermediate Course

Providing a much-needed grammar review, along with a variety of readings that will suit many different teaching preferences, this textbook helps students make the transition from beginning- to intermediate-level Latin. After using College Latin, students will be reacquainted with all major Latin grammar topics and be able to hold their own in continued higher-level studies.

2.
Jean-François Mondon
Intensive Basic Latin: A Grammar and Workbook (Grammar Workbooks)

Intensive Basic Latin: A Grammar and Workbook comprises a dynamic reference grammar and related exercises in a single volume. The book presents forty individual grammar points, covering the core material which students would expect to encounter in their first year of learning Latin. Grammar points are followed by contextualised examples and exercises which allow students to reinforce and consolidate their learning.

There is a particular emphasis throughout on familiarising students with real, unadulterated Latin and the task of teasing information from the Latin via translations. To this end, there are matching exercises with unedited Latin excerpts and rough English translations in the chapters, encouraging students to take a hands-on approach in their learning. In addition to this, a short reading relating to the adventures of Hercules is presented at the end of almost every chapter; these readings, which become progressively more complex, give the course a strong sense of narrative cohesion and interest and provide students with opportunities to develop their comprehension and translation skills.

Key features include:

Clear, accessible format and jargon-free explanations of grammar
Many useful language examples
Abundant and varied exercises with full answer key
Controlled usage of vocabulary throughout, allowing students to concentrate on building up their grammatical knowledge
Review chapters at intervals throughout the text, providing exercises specially designed to consolidate knowledge of language points covered
Useful English-Latin and Latin-English glossaries at the back of the book

Written by an experienced instructor, Intensive Basic Latin: A Grammar and Workbook is an ideal resource for beginning students of Latin. It can be used as a textbook, grammar reference and practice resource and is suitable both for class use and independent study.

3.
Peckett C.W.E., Munday A.R.
Principia – A Beginners’ Latin Course

“Principia” is intended to cover the first part of a two-year Latin course which aims at giving pupils a sound working knowledge of the Latin language, so that they can write, speak and, above all, read it with reasonable ease, and can tackle the original texts with some degree of confidence. In the view of the authors of this book, the teaching of elementary Latin is primarily the teaching of a technique to be mastered rather than of a “subject” to be learnt. The aim of a beginner’s course ought to be, we feel, to teach the pupils how to use for themselves the set of tools that the Romanshad to hand in the task of communicating ideas, and not merely to instruct them in the details of a “dead” language. This implies a functional rather than an analytical approach to Latin.

4.
Ranjan Sen
Syllable and Segment in Latin (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics)

Syllable and Segment in Latin offers new and detailed analyses of five long-standing problems in Latin historical phonology. In so doing, it clarifies the relative roles of synchronic phonological structure and phonetics in guiding sound change. While the phenomena can predominantly be explained by a reductionist view of diachronic phonology, claiming that demands of speech production and perception alone motivate and constrain historical development, the author shows that synchronic structure played the pivotal role of governing significant (but not immediately apparent) categorical and gradient surface variants, and that some phonetically explicable developments were in fact initiated and constrained by structural analogy.

Ranjan Sen considers examines clear and dark /l/; inverse compensatory lengthening; syllabification before stop + liquid in vowel reduction; vocalic epenthesis in stop + /l/; and consonantal assimilations. He ascertains the phonological conditions for each phenomenon, reconstructs the motivations for the changes, and develops a methodology for the appropriate use of evidence from non-current languages to evaluate theories of diachronic phonology. He evaluates the likely phonetic and phonological influences by investigating studies across languages, establishing a secure evidence base through detailed philological examination, and reconstructing the phonetics - through both general principles and pertinent experimental studies - and the relevant phonological structure of the language.

The book will appeal to graduate students and researchers in historical linguistics, phonology, Classical philology, and Indo-European linguistics.

5.
Susan C. Shelmerdine
Introduction to Latin

Shelmerdine's text is designed to be a complete, but streamlined introductory course in Latin. It covers all aspects of Latin grammar in a familiar pedagogical flow, with brief explanations of English grammar as needed within the text itself, providing students with an intext reference point for new Latin material. "Real Latin" readings occur throughout the text, early and often, in the form of sentences and short passages. They are unconnected, providing the instructor the option of covering them as time and need allows. A variety of exercises provide different approaches to mastery of the language, especially in the early chapters. The text is designed as a streamlined and uncluttered approach to Latin and grammar, providing a complete course, but without the nuance of more advanced explanations that hinder the first year student's mastery of the material. Shelmerdine's text focuses on the first year students' need to know and ability to master, in the hopes that success itself will breed further success and satisfaction on the part of the student.