William Benedek

First when I started to learn Latin from this book I was judgmental of its format. Many pages were filled in with what appeared to be minimal information. Actually, it was only a short while before I realized the value of the book’s teaching format. One can focus easily on a single concept and be satisfied with a relatively easy achievement after completing the lecture. I considered Wheelock’s and Henle’s books for learning, but they are more demanding condensed with their terse requirement for memorizing grammar. Furthermore, once their exercises are completed one has to go to extra length to verify the correctness of the exercises. That is not the way with Linney’s book! The answers are right at the end of the lecture. My way of learning was probably different from that of other people. I typed the Latin sentence into a column of a spreadsheet, and then I typed my English translation in the adjacent column. I did not check the answers until I had completed the translation of all ten sentences. It worked very well. One problem took me a long time solve. Typing the macrons designating long vowels can be done several ways, but many of them require too many keystrokes. After some research and elementary programming I can reproduce all long vowels by holding down an auxiliary key and the relevant vowel. This way it is less time consuming to represent those characters. The Latin Expressions segments are very useful additions to one’s English language knowledge. I would have enjoyed more than book presents. Some memory grinding was needed, but overall they were more enjoyable and easier than the other sources I considered. Linney made my Latin learning easier with his book and the free audio accompaniment. It deserves five stars.