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Comment by jbarrs | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, I'd like to recommend to people the Cambridge Latin Course (https://www.cambridgescp.com/)

This was the course I followed learning Latin in school. Whilst it may be tailored more towards a school audience, much of the content of their books is available for free online, which includes lots of translation and vocabulary practice. The books and stories are all very light-hearted and fun and teach a lot about Roman history as you learn the language. This could make good supplementary learning material for anyone trying to teach themselves Latin for free.

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I believe the other popular suggestion is Ørberg's Lingua Latīna:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg

Yes, several other commenters have made that suggestion, and I agree it is a good one. This tool is aimed at those interested in a public domain text, or people who using other tools who are looking for additional practice in the form of interactive exercises with explanations.

I thought the common suggestion for a modern Latin textbook is Wheelock.

https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226#

From my own casual investigations, Wheelock is considered a perfectly good textbook (particularly for people with lots of experience learning languages, e.g. grad students in the humanities), but also a bit "traditional," focusing more on learning grammatical rules and less on developing an intuition for the language. Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata is at the other, "immersion"-oriented end of the spectrum.

My latin teacher used both wheelock and lingua latina. They complement each other really well.

It is common, but that does not mean it's good, especially with all the research that's been done in learning over the past few decades. As someone remarked, Wheelock:

> It teaches about Latin, teaching you the Latin language is not the goal of this book […]

* https://old.reddit.com/r/latin/comments/8rp222/

Wheelock can be used as a technical reference if you want to know the exact structure. But it's like trying to read the C++ ISO spec if you want to program.

The consensus seems to be either Ørberg and/or Cambridge if you want dead-tree materials.

Why call it dead tree which sounds negative and not carbon sink instead...

Yes! Orberg's is neat in that it's all in Latin, and you just infer what everything means from the pictures as you read.

I got referred to it from this earlier HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14448974

For me it is the best book for language learning I have ever seen, irrespective of the target language.

Thanks for the link to a great resource. I don't mean to detract in any way from any of the other terrific resources available online - free or otherwise. I created selfstudyclassics.com to scratch a very particular itch. When I started to re-learn Latin after many years, I was looking for something which was focused on examples and featured a lot of practice with instant feedback - something like Khan Academy, which I love. My hope is that it is helpful to others with a similar itch.

Yes I totally understand, and I don't think you've detracted from the others at all. The more resources are available, and the more accessible they are for different learners and different styles of learning, the better.

Ecce Romani gets no love despite the exciting saga of the main characters being stuck in a ditch for half a book.

I have many fond memories of learning Latin with Ecce Romani. Raeda in fossa est, whatever will they do?

Who could forget the spiritual predecessor to the oregon trail, the via appia?

It's really important that these texts have this lightness of mood to engage kids - and the way that so many adults remember Caecilius and family is a testament to how effective it is. Timeless too - I was amazed and delighted when my daughter used the exact same texts. In similar vein, for Greek we used Thrasymachus, which follows a plucky kid on his adventures encountering various characters from mythology.

Also new this year for Lockdown, the Oak National Academy produced an intro course: https://classroom.thenational.academy/subjects-by-key-stage/...

Wow, this is great. Thanks for the link. I hope to take Selfstudyclassics a little farther than this one goes over time, but this would be a great place for anyone to start.

The other resource you might be interested in is Minimus, designed to introduce Primary school children to Latin, and to allow non-Latin speaking teachers to lead a course. None of the interactive elements you offer, though there are CDs :) http://www.minimus.com/

Caecilius est in horto.

Caecilius est in Matella.

Grumio est in Metella.

Caecilius in hortō sedet

I can almost feel and smell the textbook.

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