Wheelock's beginner, general questions

[rabbit]

Greetings,

First, great website! I have visited on again and off-again over the last several years. The last time I seriously attempted to learn Latin was about four years ago. Since that time I have settled down, bought a house, had a kid, and started moving well into my 30s. These things, I increasingly realize, are equal to saying I will never return to grad school to pursue a Ph.D. in history. Since finishing the Masters in 2004 I have pursued numerous hobbies but have yet to find something that satisfactorily fulfills my academic fetish. So I believe that I will give Latin another try, and I hope that you all could answer a few questions for me.

I possess the following:

Wheelock's Latin, 6th edition
workbook for Wheelock's Latin, third edition
Wheelock's Latin reader
Benissimus' Wheelock's answers (printed out from this WebSite a few years ago)

my questions are:

Will these resources be sufficient for me to get a good enough grounding to have modest success translating a page of text from something like one of the Loeb classical library editions?

Would you suggest any other resources?

Has anyone used these particular editions and if so what kind of routine did you use?

I own a couple of the Cicero Loeb's that I picked up cheap and read the English, would you suggest any other editions for someone starting out?

Thank you for your time, hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

[modus.irrealis]

Hi,

I own a couple of the Cicero Loeb's that I picked up cheap and read the English, would you suggest any other editions for someone starting out?

My experience was that going from Wheelock's to reading the actual Latin texts was a little difficult. The thing that really helped me the most was the edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars by D'Ooge and other authors because it has extensive notes to explain difficult passages and I found it was really good with getting me used to indirect discourse and gerunds/gerundives and a few the other trickier constructions which I felt I didn't get enough exposure to using Wheelock's (although I didn't use the reader which I imagine would help with this). I also read some school editions (from early 1900s), which again were helpful because of the notes, although some of them are edited to make them easier (that was disappointing when I saw that and realized I hadn't yet read real Latin but they're still helpful in bridging the gap between textbooks and actual works). So I'd recommend something like that instead of going straight into the Loeb editions, where you don't get any help, just a translation -- I know it depends on the person but my experience was that translations are incredibly helpful once you've reached a certain stage but before that they can slow down your learning.