I have a few years before I am going to teach my kids Latin. I would love to have a basic grasp of the language first. Can you all recommend a program for me to use? I was thinking about getting some of the Henle books, but don’t know if you can do that on your own. Thanks!
I’ll assume you mean paper books. On the off chance you don’t: Online scanned books for Latin are absolutely everywhere on the internet. Older books are easy to find at books.google.com. Bolchazy-Carducci (my former employer) puts up previews on Google Books. About 20% of each book.
If you have the patience for not having a translation or answer key, Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se Illustrata is great and well-priced. I’ve not seen Peter Jones’s Reading Latin, but his Reading Greek is cheeky and irreverent. I suspect the same could be true of the Latin edition. Wheelock’s Latin is at nearly any chain bookstore. It’s pretty far down the grammar-translation road, but it has gobs of ancillary resources.
Otherwise, go to the local public library and see what they’ve got. The Teach Yourself series Latin book isn’t bad if it’s free—better if they splurged for the recordings. Latin for Dummies is nothing special, but if it’s free… Everything Learning Latin was a fun read for me.
Henle is ok if you’ve already got it, but I wouldn’t pay full-price for it. In my opinion is isn’t even very good for grammar-translation.
I’m a big advocate of using many books. This gets expensive quickly. Your library should be able to help. So should internet resources.
Good links to know:
http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/ Laura Gibbs has some amazing stuff online.
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_prima Though the Latinity isn’t always pure, it has articles on many topics that may be of personal interest.
http://rogueclassicism.com/ Though not so much about Latin as the ancient world.
http://latinum.mypodcast.com/ I don’t know where this guy gets his energy.
We used Karen Moh’s “Latin’s Not So Tough” series for our elementary school learning. It was a great foundation. I kept one or two years ahead of the children, starting them in the workbooks in 2nd grade.
We start off every class together chanting the Latin endings:
http://rustymason.com/edu/lang/latin/latin_chants.pdf
Beginning about 6th or 7th grade, we do all the work in D’Ooge’s Latin for Beginners, finishing in three semesters. About the 9th and 10th grade, we begin studying for the AP Latin exam, using two interlinears and Barbara Boyd’s Aeneid book and workbook.
If I were to change anything, I’d have had us reading 30+ minutes a day in Orberg’s Lingua Latina and the elementary readers which are free on Google Books, alongside D’Ooge. Reading is absolutely the fastest way possible to improve.
Did you put in an example words, or merely read out the endings themselves aloud?
Just the endings.
So how does – or -s render?
I too am supportive of the large library approach. We all do not see the same problem in the same way & this appplies to solutions also.
Amazon is filled with cheap Latin books from as little as $3.00, used, so they are readily available. I found my first Latin book in a basement which ended up costing me nothing & no, I did not steal it.
Have fun searching and reading!
I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
I used -s because it is so common, though there are other endings. When we get to – we all say “aliquid,” meaning “something.”
Was mostly wondering what you chanted when you came to a lonely consonant or a — 
. Or when you chant m/o. Is that mmm aut o?
In the case of single letters, we usually say the sound, just like all the other endings. In the 3rd declension, for ease and speed, we often say, “sissy em-eh,” though I throttle us down sometimes so that we are forced to remember the individual letters. We don’t try to hold the long syllables two counts because it breaks the rhythm. The shorter and faster we can say them, the easier they are to recall.
For the present personal endings, we say the letter names and sing them to the tune of the old Mickey Mouse Club song, thusly: mmmm, o-s-t, m-u-s, t-i-s n-t.