First Steps in Latin : A Complete Course in Latin for One Year (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from First Steps in Latin: A Complete Course in Latin for One Year

The aims of this book is to furnish pupils who have given little or no attention to the study of English grammar a complete course in Latin for one year.

The book opens with a short and easy review of English grammar. In the lessons, the changes in the forms, uses, and relations of words are explained and illustrated, so far as is practicable, from English, before introducing the Latin forms and constructions. In order to avoid or to lessen the bewilderment usually produced in the mind of the young beginner by the use of a complete Latin grammar, everything not essential to the structure of a simple sentence has, at first, been carefully excluded. In short, no effort has been spared to smooth the way for the beginner, and to prepare him for the intelligent reading of Caesar or of any of the less difficult Latin authors.

Much care and study have been expended on the order and arrangement of the lessons, especially in the earlier part, aiming mainly at two things: First, to introduce very early in the course the simple verb-forms, which are easier than the nouns and open the way to a wide range of expression; and, secondly, to give not bare words and their inflections, but sentences from the start, with both questions and answers, in natural and easy succession. The vocabularies at the head of each lesson and the exercises for translation, both Latin and English, will afford abundant material for drill on the forms. The teacher, however, will find it an excellent oral exercise to combine these words into new sentences (both Latin and English), requiring the pupil to give the translation. The first associations with any language, especially when learned by the young, should be such as to make it as nearly as possible a living tongue; the scientific study of it should follow, not go before, some elementary knowledge of what it is in actual speech.