Reddit mentions of Cassell's Standard Latin Dictionary

First and foremost, absolutely feel free to come back here and chat with myself and the others if you have trouble at any point in the course. I'm not particularly familiar with this AP test but I do remember my time with De Bello Gallico pretty well.

A few simple tips I can give without reading through it again:

Caesar has a tendency to tack a bunch of phrases together. It helps to start with the verbs if you feel a little lost. Once you get used to his writing you might find yourself liking his format though.

He likes idioms as much as we do in English. Some of these you'll be able to decipher just by thinking about the literal translation. If something seems out of left field then check some online resources a good one here.

I highly recommend a good dictionary like Cassell's. It does a good job letting you know about idioms and some of the more obscure uses of words that you will find when you do Vergil and others. More or less it is very helpful for the popular readings that you will be doing.

Try your best to enjoy it! Translating Caesar was a blast back when I first did it. He writes differently than other authors and you have an opportunity to learn quite a bit more about the language.

The Lewis's Elementary Latin Dictionary, easily. It's comprehensive without being overwhelming (I'm looking at you, OLD). Before that, when I was first learning, the Cassell's dictionary was surprisingly good for the price. Online, though, Wiktionary is my first choice, followed by whatever Perseus has.

That's very sweet of you; I'm glad you liked the music! Rossini is one of my favourite composers. If you've never seen all of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, it's so much fun. Donizetti's great too and in a similar style; here's an aria.

Italian will help you somewhat, and honestly, if you have a good English vocabulary, that will help you a lot too; no other languages necessary. Regardless of how you do it, it's going to require a pretty big time commitment. I majored in Latin, have been studying it for six years, and in fact I placed first in a Canada-wide competition for third- and fourth-year undergraduates in translating a previously unseen passage, and I still read Latin a fair bit slower than English. I can certainly testify to the utility of reading ancient texts in the original, though. I had a bit of an epiphany in fourth year when I was reading Plato's Phaedo (not written in Latin, I know, but it still applies). There was one point where I was interested in how different translators interpreted a particular passage, and when I compared four or five different translations, I couldn't help but notice how different each of them was from the others. It made me realize how much interpretive work goes into a translation, and it made me happy that my studies were enabling me to make those sorts of judgements myself.

If you do decide to tackle Latin, I can recommend two series to start you out that you could choose one of, depending on what kind of approach you like. In my university, we used a very grammar-based textbook called Wheelock's Latin. It covers almost all the important grammatical concepts necessary to read genuine Latin, and includes towards the end unedited passages of real Roman writing. The downside of the book is that it encourages a deciphering kind of approach, rather than learning to be comfortable with the language first.

The other, more welcoming approach is the one taken by the Cambridge Latin Course. I will note that I haven't used the textbooks myself, but I know it's extremely popular in high schools. Those books try to get students reading right away and gradually increase the difficulty and introduce grammatical concepts along the way. It's more like a modern language textbook. There are three or four books in the series. I suspect that these books would be better for an amateur learner than Wheelock.

If I were you, I'd see if I could take a look at both those textbook series before buying anything of them. Some copies might be in a nearby university library or a high school that offers Latin.

After textbooks, good first authors to read in actual Latin, depending on your interests, are Catullus's poems, Phaedrus's adaptations of Aesop's fables, Julius Caesar's accounts of his campaigns in the Gallic and Civil Wars, Cicero's letters and speeches, or bits of Ovid's Metamorphoses or Ars Amatoria.

If you get past the textbooks and are reading real texts, you'll need a dictionary. This and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Cassells-Latin-Dictionary-Latin-English-English-Latin/dp/0025225804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347668490&sr=8-1&keywords=latin+dictionary) are good choices. Anything by James Morwood, like this, is not. Having some kind of grammatical reference is essential as well. Woodcock's Latin Syntax is my favourite for its excellent explanations and its great readability, in spite of its thoroughness.

Edit: Huh, this got quite long. Sorry about that. Anyway, don't feel pressured or intimidated by the length of this. I just listed a few things in case you decide to give Latin a shot.

Yeah you need to throw that dictionary in the trash and get a different one. Here ya go.

Lewis has an abridged version called An Elementary Latin Dictionary which is cheaper, but still kind of expensive. Another solution might be to get something like Cassel's Latin Dictionary for the basics and use the online Lewis & Short as needed.

I also have Lewis & Short on an iPad app, which works great.