Name: Lingua Latina
ISBN: 9781585104208

Lingua Latina

"Entirely composed in Latin, Part I, Familia Romana, provides an excellent introduction to Latin, including the essentials of Latin grammar and a basic vocabulary of over 1500 words. The thirty-five chapters describe the life of a Roman family in the 2nd century A.D., and culminate in readings from classical poets and Donatus Ars Grammatica, the standard Latin school text for a millennium. Each chapter is divided into two or three lectiones (lessons) of a couple pages each followed by a grammar section, Grammatica Latina, and three exercises or Pensa."--Publisher's description.

What Hacker News says

tptacekNov 2025

I like comparing it to Lingua Latina Familia Romana, a book that teaches Latin basically without any English; it opens in Latin and just keeps going that way and somehow you're able to follow along. Both are kind of trippy experiences.

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tptacekOct 2025

Wholeheartedly recommend it, just remember we're not the core market for it (that's high school students, though the curricula goes all the way through the normal college math sequence).

Minutes later

In case I've spooked anyone, they have an adult course series (Foundations I, II, and III) that's accelerated by trimming out all the material their authors believe are important only for things like school placement exams; the modal adult Math Academy person is doing I, II, and III as a leadup to their Math for Machine Learning course, which is linear algebra and multivariable calc.

I think it's one of the three most mindblowing learning resources I've ever used. One of the other three: Lingua Latina Familia Romana. In both cases, I have the uncanny certainty that I am operating at the limit of my ability to acquire and retain new information, which is a fun place to be.

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monnokJun 2023

I love the book on so many levels. My copy is swollen and waterlogged, and held together with packing tape. I love it for all the Latin I relearned, but I love it even more for everything it indirectly teaches about teaching.

I’ve always treasured polished and well edited textbooks, but this thing makes the best textbooks feel like the work of amateurs. I always think of Neal Stephenson’s Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer when I’m reading it. It’s like parts of your brain being unzippered to discover understanding your didn’t know you already had.

I think of Lingua Latina in a surprising number of conversations… it reminds me to be considerate of how much new information can be absorbed, but also to fully trust my audience with that new information. I don’t need to belabor the presentation of ideas. I simply need to share my ideas in the context they matter, as if my audience already understood completely.

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voldacarSep 2021

I would recommend some combination of Lingua Latina and Wheelock's Latin. That's what my Latin tutor used and they complement each other very well.

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teatasterMar 2021

I think Lingua Latina is an amazing book!

PSA: you only need the first book. The second is pretty much a reader. It is still great, specially if you are interested in Classics. If you are interested in reading the Vulgate Bible or medieval works, you can go ahead with those after the first book.

Medieval latin is significantly easier than classics, so it may even be worth you while going through those even before going further with classics.

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jan_InkepaDec 2020

I find it interesting reading about legendary language teachers. https://www.amazon.de/Chinese-Through-Poetry-introduction-tr... for Classical Chinese and https://www.amazon.com/Familia-Romana-Lingua-Latina-Book-ebo... for Latin are by amazing language teachers who refined their material over decades and finally published wonderful books that contain so much wisdom and good taste.

( If you know of similar books for other languages, please let me know! I didn't even have any interest in learning Classical Chinese, but was drawn in by Barnes's book more or less immediately... ).

As much as language-learning is a lot about hard work, some people seem to be exceptionally good at teaching, and slaving away struggling to learn a language under a dreary teacher is the worst.

Language teaching seems to have its own particular flavour of impact on the students and their relationship to their teachers? I guess it's far more common that their teaching will have a gigantic impact on someone's life, if they are going to be using the language every day, than many other things that people learn. Less likely of Latin, but it still seems that people can be nonetheless grateful to have a gifted teacher even there!

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