Over the last years, as I’ve entered retirement after 40 years of teaching philosophy, I’ve been returning to Latin after quite a long hiatus. As a college student in the mid-1970s, I learned Latin from the Moreland and Fleischer Latin: An Intensive Course. That was such a new book at the time that we had it in typescript rather than properly printed. I wasn’t a fan of that book. It throws too much at you too fast. No surprise since it was developed for an intensive summer program. The Classics faculty at my college use Wheelock and so I have been working through that. I find that a more useful approach (though perhaps I should look back at Moreland and Fleischer to see whether it would be more helpful now). The way Wheelock rolls out grammar in an orderly and well explained manner works for me (especially as I’m working through it a second time, now quite deliberately since I’m fully retired). I did take a break from Wheelock to work through Familia Romana via the Legentibus site. Having Latin read at you did help me to start to actually read Latin rather than “decode” it. But I can’t imagine how I’d have managed with Familia Romana without having already gotten a handle on grammar via Wheelock.
It is fun to return to Latin after almost 50 years. When I changed my grad school plans from Medieval History to Philosophy, I switched my focus to German, French, and especially Danish (my research focus is Kierkegaard). Doing that swept my Latin out of my mind, which frustrated me. I’m glad to go back to revive it. I’m surprised that I am reading it much better than I did in college despite now having a 67 year old set of faculties. If I’m not as quick to memorize, I’m better at analyzing passages. I really think in my impatient youth it was very hard to work through Latin sentences analytically. My ultimate goal is to read Medieval Latin, a nod to my abandoned plans to be a medievalist. A friend compared that interest to checking up on a high school girlfriend decades later. I appreciate having this site as a place to seek assistance when I get stumped.
Welcome to the forum!
Welcome!
But I can’t imagine how I’d have managed with Familia Romana without having already gotten a handle on grammar via Wheelock.
You wouldn’t know this from using the Legentibus app, but Familia Romana has a student guide which gives exlicit grammar instruction in English, two additional exercise books (here and here) and three additional graded readers to give you more comprehensible input (here, here, and here).