I am after a good Latin Grammar book that is an equivalent to The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek. I find the style and way information is presented in the Cambridge Greek book to be incredibly helpful and well written and would like something like it for Latin. My preference is for UK textbooks if possible as I am in Australia and we follow the UK style of setting out our noun declensions i.e nom/voc/acc/gen/dat/abl rather than the US style where gen follows nom.
Having said that if there is a good US textbook with a similar style to Cambridge Greek I’d be interested in that too.
Sorry if this has been asked, I couldn’t find anything specifically like this in a search.
I don’t know if it’s comprehensive enough but there’s A Student’s Latin Grammar published by Cambridge. I have the US edition but I would think there’s a UK edition.
Nothing like CGCG but do you know R.Colebourn’s Latin Sentence and Idiom? It’s geared to Eng.-Lat. composition but doesn’t need to be used for that and it’s a pretty neat survey of Latin syntax. (And it’s British, like the Cambridge Latin Grammar.)
I haven’t seen it, but you might check out Morwood’s inexpensive Latin Grammar. I have his Greek Grammar, and I’m impressed by how succinctly and clearly he presents the main points without excessive, encumbering detail. You would still need a more detailed reference grammar, but the two standard English-language reference grammars – Gildersleeve & Lodge and Allen & Greenough – are woefully out of date and not particularly user-friendly. The two-volume Oxford Latin Syntax, while comprehensive and informed by modern linguistics, is aimed at linguists, not at casual readers of Latin needing a reference grammar, and is even less user-friendly.
Am I correct in assuming that, being a UK publication The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek follows the British style of setting out the noun declensions, as mentioned by Villanelle? When the grammar first came out I thought I read a review bemoaning the fact that it followed the U.S. style of N,G,D,A, but maybe I am mistaken.
Thanks to someone who would kindly clarify this for me, and my apologies for discussing Greek in the Latin section
Michael
I stand corrected here as I just checked the CGCG and it does indeed follow the US pattern of nom/gen/dat/acc/voc. That always throws me off when I see it in a book. However the CGCG is a brilliant book and I find it readable and more importantly comprehensible for the often complex nature of Greek Grammar.
I did get a copy of the Colebourne book second hand and it is quite good, but I have found nothing so far that gives me a Latin equivalent of CGCG. I will keep looking, and if anyone on the Textkit Board manages to find something and inform us here that would be excellent.
