Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer

Learning Latin is never easy. The reality is that learning the conjugations and declensions of this highly inflected language is a daunting task. The traditional solution of schools was to impose rigid learning by rote of every declension and conjugation through endless repetition day in and day out until it all stuck.

Not the most interesting approach, but it worked.

SInce the 1970s there have been many efforts to change the learning methods applied to Modern Languages. Textbooks are colourful, lively and lavishly illustrated. The main thrust of the approach is to reduce exposre to the grammar of the foreign language and to somehow smuggle it in.

Even the teaching of Latin has been overhauled to conform to the new approach, a good example show more being the Cambridge Course which is very popular in schools.

There is even the Natural Method adopted by 'Lingua Latina/Familia Romana' is which there is not a single of word of English and in which vocabulary lists are given in Latin only. It's an interesting approach.

My own concluded view is that whichever modern teaching course is followed sooner or later any serious student of Latin will need recourse to an old fashioned Latin Primer such as Kennedy's. There is no substtiute for a methodical reference work such as this. I would regard Kennedy's as the best of its kind.

The American equivalent, Wheelock's, sets out the declension of nouns in an order of cases which will be disconcerting to anyone who came across Latin at school in Britain, so be advised. show less