Cambridge Latin course

What Hacker News says

1. jbarrsMar 2021
   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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2. aleffertApr 2025
   Caecilius who, spoiler for a decades old Latin textbook, dies when Vesuvius erupts, is from the Cambridge Latin Course. The dog, who survives, is in fact named Cerberus.
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3. jamesfinlaysonSep 2021
   Having learnt Latin through the Cambridge Latin Course I really struggled with reading the classics. That said, I could understand all but three words on the Bayeux tapestry so Cambridge Latin Course was reasonable.
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4. JdeBPSep 2020
   "pulcher" is a fairly elementary piece of Latin vocab. It's in Book I of the Cambridge Latin Course, for example. This is much the same in other courses. So anyone, Indian or not, who has done basic Latin in school is likely to have encountered it and hence be aware of "pulchritude".

   * https://www.dl.cambridgescp.com/dl_course/book-i

   A random other example: https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/221512-gcse-latin-j282-defined...

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5. bshimminJul 2017
   My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek).

   I studied Latin to degree level a decade-and-mumble years ago, and to my great shame have not kept it up at all. On the rare occasions that I am required to translate some Latin - an inscription in a church, for instance - I try my best, but I am usually a far cry from Indiana Jones. (I do have a moderately extensive selection of pretentious phrases in Latin that I can deploy when necessary.)

   We used Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer and The Cambridge Latin Course at school; I think the latter starts pretty much from the basics, and the former covers probably all of the grammar you'd ever need to know. I think you can get some of the Harry Potter books in Latin, if that sort of thing takes your fancy. Once you've acquired a moderate mastery, you will find something like Caesar's Gallic Wars to be quite an easy read (though stylistically he ain't much cop).

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