Latin: 1st Year (Henle Latin)

My name is Matthew (the name above is my Mom's name). I am a 16 year old homeschooled student, who wallowed through this terrible curriculum during my freshman year of highschool. I am a conscientious student, and typically do not experience much trouble with my subjects, but I found Henle Latin utterly tedious and frustrating. ( I know that sounds pretentious, but this review would mean nothing if I was a sloppy student). This curriculum consists of seemingly endless vocabulary, declensions, conjugations, rules, (and exceptions to those rules). Despite the copious amount of material students are expected to memorize, Henle provides virtually no review exercises, and moves so quickly that students have hardly committed a list to memory, before a new one appears! By the end of the year, I possessed none of the fluidity and confidence necessary to enjoy and appreciate Latin. Translating sentences became like busting a cryptic code, full of muttered declensions or conjugations, and countless trips to the index to look up forgotten words. This is NOT the way Latin should be! How do you think children in Ancient Rome learned to speak? Through listening to the people around them constantly conversing properly, they painlessly succeeded in mastering this potentially difficult language. Instead of memorizing that "Servus," when referring to more than one person, takes the "Nominative Plural," they simply learned through observation that a group of servants is referred to as "Servi." This natural method is the technique employed in Hans H. Orberg's curriculum "Lingua Latina: Pars I," which I have joyously switched to after a long and discouraging year of Henle Latin. I believe Latin can be an extremely enjoyable and rewarding language to learn - but not with this curriculum! In purchasing this product, you are keeping yourself from a potentially wonderful experience!

This is a great text for first year latin students. However it is necessary to purchase the Latin Grammer book also.

I wanted to learn Latin on my own and have just finished the first year text. If you are diligent and willing to finish all of the examples and exercises given in this book, it is extremely helpful. Yes, the vocabulary is limited, but I found myself knowing all of the different declensions of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. without even thinking about it. After all the practice, it just started coming naturally. I think that as a beginning book, the memorization of the forms is more important than vocabulary, especially since in Latin, one little wrong letter and you have an entirely different meaning. The only criticism I have is that an answer key is not provided. Many an hour I sat there trying to understand how a sentence was translated, but in the end, I was able to translate 99% of the exercises on my own, and if you already have a background in Latin, it would of course be much easier. I borrowed a Wheelocks Latin Grammar and read through the book in order to compare the teaching methods. Wheelocks is definitely organized more stringently, with all the topics together in straightforward chapters (which I liked) but the exercises were such that one would have to spend an exhorbitant amount of time trying to learn what the words meant, how it was declined and so forth, and the exercises themselves were flimsy and minimal. And contrary to what Wheelock wrote about it being more important to translate from Latin into English, I would have to disagree. It is just as important to have exercises translating from English into Latin-one actually has to concentrate on the declensions as opposed to opposite way, where one can really get by merely by guessing what the declension means because of the fact that Latin and English langauge have so many words in common.

This classic Latin text, having stood the test of time and still in print after decades of use in schools and homes, offers a fairly simple, but rigorous introduction to reading and writing Latin. A diligent student will take from it, not only a useful grasp of vocabulary (which can be very helpful on the SAT as well as for those going into scientific or medical fields), but a better understanding of the English language, the experience of a mind-broadening exercise and the development of a more precise and logical way of thinking about language.

The text is designed for high school (and three more volumes follow this first year text), but could be used as early as 6th or 7th grade if taken at a slower pace and with some supplementation. Its companion Grammar volume is an essential component.

Henle uses a relatively brief vocabulary (focused primarily on Caesar's Gallic wars) in order to hone in on the grammar concepts. By the end of this book, a student should have a solid foundation and be ready to start translating some basic Ancient texts. This text does assume a certain grammar foundation prior to tackling Latin. Some of this can be reviewed while studying the Latin. A helpful prior grammar understanding would include: basic diagramming and an understanding of the following terms: subject, verb, direct object, indirect object, pronoun, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, possessive adjective, predicatve nominative, etc.

The downside of the limited vocabulary is that the rather un-varying vocabulary can make the book somewhat tedious. In our homeschool co-op, where I've been teaching Henle to a group of teens, it has worked quite well to spread this text out over two years, but supplement with other material. We have added some fun vocabulary to our working base from the "Latin is Fun" text by John Traupman (which we had studied before Henle). Each student also has a Latin dictionary.

I frequently assign the students to write additional sentences (in English or Latin) for their fellow students to translate. These are particularly enjoyable when the students are encouraged to write funny sentences. We play some games on occasion - Latin Bees, Latin "Pictionary", Latin Rummy (write Latin words on playing cards and try to make grammatically correct, if silly, senntences), etc.

We have also recently started reading from "Lingua Latina" by Hans Oerberg in addition to Henle. This has worked out well as pronunciation practice as well as helping the students think through some of the Latin without translating.

Another fun assignment is a "Latin Treasure Hunt". I gave the students a list of common Latin words, phrases and abbreviations that are used in the U.S. today - such as "emeritus" and "bona fide" (you can find a very extensive list of such words in "Amo, Amas, Amat and More" by Eugene Erlich). The students translate the list and look for examples in text, print, conversation, on the Internet, etc. and see who can come up with the most. This has really opened my students eyes up to noticing relations between the Latin language and "real life."

Finally, a good exercise for the mind that requires some of the same multi-level thinking skills as Latin is to play chess!

Latin: First Year by Henle will give you a solid base in the language. Even though it is titled First Year, the material may take over two years to cover. To use this book you must also have Henle's Latin Grammar book. The Latin Grammar is referred to throughout this book, right from the start.