Reddit mentions of Exercitia Latina I: Exercises for Familia Romana (Lingua Latina) (Pt. 1, No. 1) (Latin Edition)

You want books to learn Latin and Greek, but you don't want books that are written for the purpose of teaching Latin and Greek?

I'm going to throw a textbook at you anyway, but you might like it:

Familia Romana: https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205

Get the Exercitia too: https://www.amazon.com/Exercitia-Latina-Exercises-Familia-Romana/dp/1585102121

Hi! It's great that you want to learn Latin yourself - I was in a similar position not long ago, and can share my experience. Firstly, it's not going to be very easy, but it will be a lot of fun - learning Latin will teach you a lot about linguistics, history, and even English.

It seems to be a consensus at /r/latin that Wheelock's, while being a good textbook, teaches to translate, not to read. It focuses on rote memorization of grammar. Lingua Latina, on the other hand, focuses on reading comprehension and is considered by /r/latin users to be a superior learning method. It's based on the natural method: it is written completely in Latin, beginning with very simple phrases which speaker of any European language can understand, and slowly progresses further. To give you an idea, its first sentence is "Rōma in Italiā est". You can understand it easily, and you've already learned 4 words!

While Lingua Latina is a great textbook, I would advise getting some supplements to augment your studying process. All of them can be bought on amazon, or acquired by other means if you wish to cut your costs. Excercitia Latina, which follow Lingua Latina chapter by chapter, will give you enough practice to get a firm grip on each chapter's material. I would recommend not just filling the gaps in, but writing whole exercises out in a separate notebook - making the mechanical memory help you memorize words and grammatical structures. Latine Disco and Neumann's companion are useful companions, which will help you understand grammar introduced in each chapter of Lingua Latina (you only need one of them).

Finally, memorizing words is necessary with any language, and Latin is no exception. Some students find Lingua Latina's method to be sufficient for spaced repetition of new words, but it wasn't enough for me. I used anki, a spaced repetition software based on flashcards, to study words. There is a Lingua Latina deck available for anki, divided into chapters: thus you can easily add words into your flashcard pool after completing every LL chapter.

I hope this helps! If you'll have any questions on the material, redditors on /r/latin are very nice and are always willing to help.
Good luck with your studies!

Valē, amīce!

Familia Romana by Hans Ørberg is the one that I see recommended the most often around here. It takes a more immersive approach to learning Latin where you jump right in and start reading rather than focusing on grammar tables right off the bat. The Exercitia and Latine Disco books go with it.

There's stuff like this:

http://www.amazon.com/College-Companion-Oerbergs-Vocabulary-Grammar/dp/1585101915

http://www.amazon.com/Exercitia-Latina-Exercises-Familia-Romana/dp/1585102121

Acquiring a language takes time. There is no shortcut. Reading the book once or just a few times is NOT enough. A single book like [Familia Romana] (https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-per-Illustrata-Pars/dp/1585104205) would normally take 2-3 years (300-400 hours of classes, homework etc) in a classroom setting. So, if you do the math, you should spend about 10 hours on each chapter! If you intend to spend all that time 'just reading' that would boil down to reading each chapter 20-60 times depending on your reading speed. You'd probably have acquired the Latin by then, yes. I would however prefer a bit more variation.
E.g. read aloud, record and play back. Read Colloquia Personarum, recording one part with pauses and then speak the other part, then switch roles. Also read Fabellae Latinae. They all cover the same ground as the main book. Do the Exercitia Latina and note that each exercise is in fact a summary of (part of) the chapter, which you could just re-read as such... now combine 2 of those to create a larger overall summary... then, using these as models, try to write a summary by yourself. Keep re-reading everything. As long as you are working with the chapter's text for 10 hours...

Thank you so much! This is very useful information.

>LLPSI generally recommend using the grammar companion

Are you referring to this book or this book? It sounds like really sound advice. My only hesitation is that the grammar book seems to be rather short (around 30 pages).

>This didn't go too well and after banging my head against authentic Latin for a while I started losing motivation and eventually stopped Latin. Took me years (and an encounter with Medieval Latin) to become interested in it again

That's really interesting! How did Medieval Latin get you back into Latin? I would assume Medieval Latin is as difficult as authentic latin.

Also, during your journey through Latin, did you ever utilize audio and speaking resources? I've been thinking about getting the LLPSI audio book since it looks helpful. The extent of my speaking is basically reading the words aloud. I don't have the money to attend one of those immersion programs.