Latin First Year

by Robert J. Henle

First year Latin course published in 1958.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, School, Education, Read For School, Reference, Classics

514 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1958

Reviews

[Ashley DeWick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good Latin beginner series. However, I think Wheelock's Latin would be much better for anyone who is more serious about learning Latin. See my review for the Henle Latin grammar book.

[J. Boo]

NB - not my review, rather a comment by TerriW on the "Out In Left Field" blog, which makes this series sound rather wonderful

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blo...

"... It has a quite restricted vocabulary in the first year (about 500 words) and is extremely noun-heavy in the outset -- just enough verbs (videt/vident, laudat/laudant, orat/orant, etc) to get you kickstarted while you nail all the declensions before moving on to adjectives, then verbs, etc.

But the real joy of Henle is that it was written in 1945 by a Jesuit priest -- and the example sentences are GLORIOUS. And I mean that about half-literally. A chunk of them are Christian content and the rest are very Roman, very martial. Very, very martial.

"on account of the slaughter of the soldiers"
"Who will praise our great leader Caesar after the slaughter of all the noble chiefs of Gaul?"
"Soldiers, lay waste to the fields of the barbarians. Burn their corps. Attack their towns. Kill their hostages. Seize their towns, hills, and bridges!"
"The leader being about to die, the soldiers fled."

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I could see how this might be considered a negative, but my daughter and I find it hilarious, and it's helping to motivate us quite nicely through the book."

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have studied the first half of this diligently for several years, each year eventually losing steam. A year ago I determined to complete every exercise of every lesson. As I accomplished my goal I came to see Henle as that strict, unyielding, somewhat old-fashioned teacher that you at first resent but come to love.

[Brooke · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNFd at 1%

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an okay textbook. Latin is not easy but I do have to say that this textbook was simpler to follow than others I have seen.

[Tabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

For school

[Dwane Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://dwanethomas.com/book-review-5...

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazone

Best Latin for independent learners

I’m not a beginner in Latin (two years at school, two semesters of Ecclesiastical Latin as a post-graduate), but I never liked Latin and it was always the weakest of the five foreign languages at I read. I’ve used various materials over the years to remedy my grasp, some of them good. Nothing, however, has done me as much good as Henle.

To begin the list of advantages: there is a key for each of the four volumes in the series, essential if you don’t have a teacher.

Second, although this series was written in the early 1950s, it has one huge advantage over more recent courses, a feature supported by the extensive research into language acquisition since Henle’s time: it gives the learner masses and masses of practice. A lot of the other texts give the learner lots of grammatical explanation, a list of vocabulary and then a handful of sentences to read before expecting the learner to translate out of and into the Target language. Language learning doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing wrong with grammatical explanations or memorising, but to learn a language, you have to have substantial exposure to it. Henle gives you this in spades. Yes, in the early volumes a lot of this is ‘made up’ Latin. I fail to see the problem with this: we all learnt to read English with ‘made up’ English, that is, texts specifically designed for a child. Texts that use only what they call ‘real’ Latin simply cannot provide enough text for a beginner, or even intermediate level, learner to practise on. Henle has exercises, reading passages and ‘boxes’ (short, pithy sayings from ‘real Latin’ texts), all of them carefully pitched so as to be manageable for the learner so you get lots and lots of practice.

Yes, there are a couple of features some people won’t like. The illustrations haven’t been updated at all and are just awful—but if you want colour pictures of The Colosseum, you can rummage on the Internet. Yes, Henle OVERUSES all caps—but you get used to it and cease to notice. Yes, there is a lot of Catholic content: the title page indicates Henle was a Jesuit, the publisher is the press of a Jesuit university and Henle was writing for American Catholic high school students of 70 years ago—but his books wouldn’t still be in print if there weren't plenty of other people buying them. I get more annoyed by the rah-rah American bias, but I accept that I wasn’t his target audience and he was writing shortly after a major world war.

The drawbacks of Henle are very minor in comparison to the huge advantages of his course. I’m halfway through book two and have already bought book three. I hope to go to the end and read Virgil. No other text has given me the desire, let alone the confidence, to do this.

Nina Willoughby

[Leila Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah! I finally finished Henle Latin (on my own, without an instructor) after starting it 3 years ago! I know that sounds very slow, but in that time I had to set it aside during two difficult pregnancies, in which I was too sick and tired to do any Latin.
But after I picked it up again, I started where I left off. Henle has soooooo many exercises that it really made the grammar sink in for me. Other reviews complain that it does not have a lot of vocabulary, and that is true, but the small amount of vocabulary is meant to allow for a quicker mastery of the grammar. Before Henle I had tried many other Latin programs, but for various reasons Henle was the one that stuck. I didn't like other programs either because they had too MUCH vocabulary, dove too quickly into "real" sentences that I could barely understand, didn't have enough exercises, didn't have translation exercises into Latin, or did not have a readily available answer key. Henle solved all those problems for me. There are many, many exercises, and exercises that make you translate into Latin. It is tedious, yes, but the repetition really helped me. I got the answer key published by Our Lady of Victory school, as it is a bit more thorough. And I liked that the textbook itself contained all the exercises I needed. I did every single one, except for the sentence parsing, I find that dull. I also purchased the quiz book from Memoria Press. It made the perfect self-study course for me.
It is true that I am getting sick of Caesar and Gaul. I'd like to switch to a program about ecclesiastical Latin, but I already purchased the answer key for book 2! We will see, but I was thinking about trying A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by Collins. It is also true that Henle doesn't contain any"living" Latin such as hello, how are you, what is your name, where do you live, etc. I did the Duolingo Latin program to supplement what Henle is lacking.
I should add that I have an MA in translation, and studied a fair amount of linguistics. So for me the grammar is not that hard to understand, but for someone who is a grammar newbie, you may need something a lot easier than is.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henle gets criticized for being boring and difficult to understand because of the way it is set up. I didn't find that to be true. I think it's very logically arranged. There is a period of getting accustomed to Henle's style, but if you learn how to use the book and accompanying grammar (rather than relying on the dozens of "Henle help materials" that are out there, it's really very straightforward.

[Margaret Chind]

Mine is lavender.

[Sophia P. K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

you were good. ty

[Anjanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

You either love or hate learning with Henle. 💗

[Davis Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've worked my way through all four of these books plus the grammar, but I'll only review this one. Henle is undoubtedly old-fashioned and badly in need of an update, but it's a really solid course of study if you're not in a hurry to learn Latin as quickly as possible; in which case go for Wheelock's. The major pitfall of Henle is that early on it mostly only gives you vocabulary from Caesar and the Roman liturgy with some Vulgate sprinkled in, so good luck taking the National Latin Exam, etc. (a Henle student jumping into Wheelock's at a random point won't even recognize half the vocabulary). But if you plan to stick all the way through the course and if you devote time to the exercises, it should get you reading Latin fairly fluently within a couple years—though it definitely is a lot slower-paced than most comparable curricula, I see this as a benefit so that you're constantly humbled and you aren't tempted into trying to tackle Vergil without even knowing what the gerundive is, etc. Now, mastering the relative pronoun cases and actually remembering all the verb forms is a different story...

[Isaacpants · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a good one, but I was too lazy to get anything out of it. and I didn't finish it, though I am done with it.

[Elevetha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Till next year...

[Alisha]

Fascinating. Working my way through this book with my 7th grade son this year.

[Eric Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine way to learn the Latin language, nicely organized. Would have been even better if Latin wasn't so darn complicated to learn.

[Miriam Kaiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great Latin guide. Challenging, but rewarding when one finishes.