Which composition book should I pick?

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi all,

I’m approaching the end of “Latin for beginners? by Benjamin L. D’Ooge. Unfortunately the time I have to study Latin has been reduced and in the best days I can spare 20 minutes, so I will probably need at least 3 months to end the book.

I have decided to buy “Lingua Latina? after ending the D’Ooge book, so I can practice reading on a long and sequential text. It also would have the advantage that the complexity of the text will increase little by little and to learn from a different prespective.

But I also would like to exercise in writing Latin, as I would like, in an unknown future, to be able to read, speak and write Latin.

Although I won’t be able to start it in the near future, but to keep my motivation as higher as possible and also because printing about 300 pages on front and back on my printer can also take a month, I would like to ask what is the best Latin composition book from the books available in TextKit?

From a practical point of view I would think that the “Latin prose composition? by North and Hillard would be the best choice as it is also available a key for it. On the other hand I’m thinking on start reading “real? Latin with Caesar books of the Gallic war and the “New Latin Composition? by Charles E. Bennett is based on Caesar works.

I’m aware that this question, like the question of which book to use for starting Latin, can have, at least, as many answers as the number of books available. Even so any comments and suggestions of these books would be enormously appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any help and for reading this long post.

Andrus

2

Andrus,

Hello. In my experience, a prose composition course is best when you have an answer key to check your work. You could drop in on Textkit to get an answer, but I prefer to have the answers at hand if I need them.

I have used North and Hillard with some success.

Best,
WB

3

N&H isn’t the best book out there; but Textkit has the answer key, and without either a key or a professor to check your work, any other book won’t service you very well. For what it’s worth, I think Colbourne’s Latin Sentence and Idiom is far superior to N&H. If you can find a key to that book, then I highly recommend that you use it rather than N&H.

4

Hi William and Rindu,

Thanks for your advice. I agree with you, the best is to use NH because the key. I will probably use the Charles E. Bennett as second source of exercises and learning (but not print it).

Once more my thanks,

Andrus

5

My experience (as well as Lucus’, obviously :smiley:) is that LL is the only thing you’ll need, especially now that you’ve almost finished D’Ooge and have a good background in grammar; it’s an excellent resource for speech too if used right. It helps you get a feeling for the language immediately primarily because of the context, something that most grammars don’t, in my opinion, put enough focus on.

I’d recommend, now that you’re going to buy it anyway, saving the printer paper and using just LL for a while to see if it suits you. Also being in Portugal you should be able to get it relatively quickly and cheaply.

My two cents anyway :slight_smile:

(I like long posts! write away..)

6

I find that working on composition really improves my reading comprehension, so it would be very worthwhile to do even if you never intended to speak or write Latin. I have been through some of N&H and would simply agree with the others about the answer key – without a key (or an expert to guide you) you just have a book of English sentences. Of course you can post questions here, but I found I learn the most not from the sentences that I struggle with (and thus might ask for help with), but from the ones where I think I’m right and then discover I’m way off.

7

Valde consentior, Ed et Noste.

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Hi all,

Thanks for the advises, Nostos, Ed and Lucus.

I totally agree with you Ed, working on composition helps a lot the comprehension of reading. And that is the reason I first thought on complementing my Latin studies with a prose composition book.

I also have learned more from the answers I thought it were correct and then saw that I was wrong then from the ones I had more difficulties to make.

NH and LL will be my working books when I manage to end the Dâ€:trade_mark:Ooge book. I only hope that my wife doesnâ€:trade_mark:t put me out of the house when she sees me arriving with a new set of books. :laughing:

Best regards,

Andrus

9

Bonam fortūnam, Andre. :slight_smile:

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LOL! I know what you mean. My husband sees me at my desk and says, “You’re doing Latin AGAIN???”

11

:laughing:

My wife just accepts it these days :smiley:

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I only hope that my wife doesn’t put me out of the house when she sees me arriving with a new set of books.



LOL! I know what you mean. My husband sees me at my desk and says, “You’re doing Latin AGAIN???”



My wife just accepts it these days

heu, ubi est “alter idem” de quo Cicero multum scripsit?

(muliere non ducta, iam otiosus sum sed non, ut videtur, semper ero.)

-david

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muliere non ducta, iam otiosus sum sed non, ut videtur, semper ero.

Could you help me with this, please? Having used the dictionary (a lot), the best I can come up with is:
My wife doesn’t believe me that I’m at leisure now, but will not always be so.

But frankly that’s a guess. I think it’s the first phrase causing the problems - is this an ablative absolute? (I remember these briefly from 6 months Latin 30 years ago but the details were never really understood then and the interval between hasn’t really helped much…

Regards

David

14

Could you help me with this, please? …

muliere non ducta, iam otiosus sum sed non, ut videtur, semper ero.

My wife doesn’t believe me that I’m at leisure now, but will not always be so.

…I think it’s the first phrase causing the problems - is this an ablative absolute?..

I’d be glad to! The first phrase, in fact, is an ablative absolute. Both muliere and ducta are in the ablative. Whenever you see a noun and a participle agreeing with each other in the ablative case, and if they seem to be related to the sentence only in a temporal, circumstantial, or causal way, you’re probably got an ablative absolute.

In this case, ducta may be throwing you off. Duco can mean “consider” (like “believe”), but it’s also used in the expression ducere aliquam in matrimonium, literally “to lead a woman into marriage,” one of the Roman idioms for “to get married to a woman.” (The idiom is different for a woman marrying man: nubere alicui.)

So, rather literally, “a woman not led, I’m at leisure now but, as it seems, I will not always be.”

Here’s what I’d say in English: “Since I’m not married, I’ve got plenty of free time right now, though I bet I won’t always.”

You got the last half of it almost completely right. Good job on that! I’m glad you’ve retained that much Latin after so many years.

Thanks for humoring my little Latinity.

Regards to you too, from another

David

15

Bellum - are you sure such an abl. abs. is in place there? I mean, you are saying that you aren’t married. Since you are the subject of the sentence why use an abl. abs.? Your sentence to me seems to say:

“An unmarried woman; I am lazy now but, as it seems, will not always be.”

How about:

“non maritus iam otiosus sum, etc.”

16

Personally I think this is fine: ‘with a woman not led [into marriage, semantically implying ‘by me’ with no syntactic attachment], I am now lazy but’ etc.

It may not win the Nobel Prize in Literature :stuck_out_tongue:, but the composition is not incorrect.

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BP et al,

Many thanks for your responses.

The reason I asked about the abab was that coincidentally yesterday I was reading the relevant section in the ‘Intelligent Person’s guide to the Latin language’ and the construction you used seemed to fit the bill, but I was a little thrown by the same thoughts as Kasper had - ‘unmarried’ seems to relate to you as the subject of the rest of the sentence.

But that lesson in Lingua Latina not yet having been reached [*], I shall press on…

[*] If I’ve understood the argument correctly (as put by nostos), this can also be in the abab because while ‘by me’ can be understood, this does not create sufficient a link to fall foul of the ‘can’t be the same subject’ rule. In other words, the woman or the lesson remains the subject of the clause and the ‘by me’ implication is irrelevant for these purposes?

Or have I misunderstood?

David

18

You’ve got it :slight_smile: . The way I understand ablative absolutes, from a translation-heavy perspective (not having learned them yet the real way :stuck_out_tongue:) so long as the subject is not syntactically identical with any part of the rest of the sentence, then you’re fine. Hence the (horribly inappropriate) term absolute from ‘ab-solutum’: ‘[syntactically] unbound’.

However there may be something I’m missing, Kasper. If so, please inform!

I too find it remarkable that you’ve retained so much not having studied Latin since the 70s. Press on, amice!

19

The problem is that there isn’t a perfect active participle in Latin. The thought that came to my mind when writing the sentence was, “Having never married, etc.” Since there isn’t a deponent verb in Latin for the concept I’m getting at (as far as I know), I had to find an alternative.

One common way is to use the ablative absolute, which is commonly paired with the perfect passive participle. As nostos said, it’s syntactically unbound from the sentence. In fact, some believe that it began as an ablative of attendant circumstance (if I remember correctly). Nostos is right: the subject of the ablative absolute must not be elsewhere present in the sentence. If it were–you could just throw the relevant participle or adjective with that noun.

Wrong:
duce interfecto, trans flumen portavi eum.

If duce and eum refer to the same person, the sentence is ungrammatical. Fortunately, just combine the two!

Better:
ducem iam interfectum trans flumen portavi.

Another common way of getting around the perfect active participle problem is with a cum clause. cum mulierem non duxerim, otiosus sum….

I like the non maritus option. How about this one: otiosus muliere carens…. Here’s the present participle at work. Perhaps more elegant?

Best,

David

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I was only questioning nostos! I’m in no position to inform anyone of anything in latin (except perhaps the most basic stuff).