Greetings from a Beginner

[Kurek]

Hello everyone.

I came across this site by luck whilst searching for online based latin teaching sites. I am quite impressed with this site, a fine selection of ebooks.
Anyway, I am totally new to Latin, I think I may have learned the odd word back when I did Classical Civilizations back in college, but I cannot remember a word.
I have downloaded all of the Latin Grammars, I shall look through 'Beginner's Latin Book' by Collar and Daniell and Latin For Beginners by Benjamin L. D'Ooge as they seem to be quite recomended in these fora.

So what would be the best way for me to understand and learn Latin? Should I progress through these Beginners books? Should I read the basics, purchase myself a Latin-english dictionary and attempt to read some Roman books or documents?
What of these Readers? Are they any help to a beginner? Or should I leave them for later?

Thanks
Kurek

[mariek]

Hi Kurek! Welcome to Textkit. I'm glad to hear you managed to find the Latin Grammars available for download on this site. And you downloaded all of them? Wow, that's such a time consuming task even if you do them concurrently.

I think one of the two beginner Grammars you downloaded would be a great starting point. Take a look at both of them and use the one whose format "speaks" to you. Regardless of which you choose, know that you can get plenty of help on the forum here. Feel free to post any questions you have. A Latin-English dictionary would be helpful. And a reader for beginners is also a good supplement for when you don't want to hit the grammers.

[tadwelessar]

Hi Kurek,
I think you should have a good latin dictionary (unfortunately I'm Italian and I don't know any English-Latin dictionary!). If you want an easy Latin text you should try the Bible or Phaedri Fabulae.

[Carola]

Hello Kurek & welcome. I had to go back and start again with Latin as I had forgotten everything I learnt at school many years ago. I found the best way for me was to just start slowly and translate just a phrase here and there, then go back and look again in a few week's time and see if any more made sense. After about a year of this I signed up for a BA in Classical Studies and have been able to to keep up with the work and can now translate Cicero, Caesar and so on. I still can't just read through it like I can with English but I imagine this will come after another year or so. I found a few old school text books in second hand shops that had simple exercises and of course you can always post some questions on this site. The main thing I found was to give your brain time to absorb all the new information - it seems to happen at a certain speed and you just have accept that and not get frustrated.
I hope you keep on with it as it is a very absorbing and fascinating subject.