Essential Latin Vocabulary: The 1,425 Most Common Words Occurring in the Actual Writings of over 200 Latin Authors

by Mark A.E. Williams

This book is designed to help beginning and intermediate students master the vocabulary necessary to read real Latin with fluency and comprehension. It also serves as a resource for instructors and tutors. The text presents 1,425 words that allow a student to comprehend about 95 percent of all the vocabulary they will ever see in an actual Latin text. The terms found in the present book have been culled from statistical analyses of the works of more than two hundred authors in order to identify the core vocabulary. Were students to start out by learning the 25 most common words on this list, an astonishing 29 percent of all the vocabulary ever needed would be at their command. If a student masters the 300 most frequent words in this list, well over half of all the vocabulary necessary for fluent reading will be theirs. The goal of the book is to provide the student with the most efficient way to learn vocabulary. Chapters 1 and 2, in particular, are designed for drill, review, and study. The first chapter draws together all words that share the same grammatical classification. For example, all third declension neuter nouns are brought together in one place, with their definitions. By listing the vocabulary in grammatical groups, all the words that share a set of endings are assembled for the vocabulary and endings thus reinforce each other. Furthermore, each list of terms is broken down into groups of five words for ease in drawing up vocabulary lists to work with. Within the grammatical lists, each part of speech is preceded by an account of how the terms within are distributed. A student thus quickly learns that while there are 413 verbs that need to be mastered, well over one-third of these (157) are found in the third conjugation, while only about one per-cent (21) will be found in the fourth conjugation. With such information, independent students or instructors can prioritize their study and assignments more appropriately. In the second chapter, large parts of the vocabulary, with their attendant definitions, are regrouped by topics. A student who wishes, therefore, to focus on nature, human emotions, or military issues, will find such vocabulary conveniently grouped together. Chapter three lists the vocabulary terms from the most frequently occurring words to the least frequent. Students or instructors who wish to lean more heavily on the most (or least!) frequently occurring terms within their drills and studies can thus consult this frequency list. After the frequency list, the fourth chapter presents an alphabetical index of the terms. Two final chapters close the text. The first is a list of endings and paradigms for nouns, adjectives and verbs. Complete paradigms and endings are given for review. The final chapter provides the student with an additional one hundred words that are uniquely common in the Latin of the Middle Ages. These one hundred words, if added to the mix, would give the student a Mediaeval vocabulary that would match the efficiency of the Classical vocabulary that is the main focus of the book. For the effort of learning an additional one hundred words, another 1,000 years of Latin texts open up before the student. As a whole, then, this book offers the vocabulary that forms the core of one thousand seven hundred years of Latin literature. If the goal is to learn to read Latin with joy and ease, then the vocabulary terms in this book are one of the major keys to success. By learning these terms, a student’s vocabulary should be ready to tackle the Latin of any era from the Classical period to the Renaissance.

Genres: Language, Reference

212 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2013

Reviews

[Riobhcah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful study aid for anyone who is planning to read the great Latin classics. It's suited to several learning styles, with word lists classified by parts of speech, frequency, topical lists and then a list of all the words in alphabetical order. I would highly recommend it.

[Daniel Evensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In concept, this book is quite helpful. Rather than finding herself struggling to balance learning dozens of paradigms with the entire Latin vocabulary, the learner can now focus her efforts on the words that she is most likely to encounter. The 1,425 words listed in this book are based on a list included in a 1939 dissertation on Latin pedagogy, and comprise about 95% of the vocabulary that the average learner will encounter in actual Latin texts. This list is also superior to the similar list at Dickinson College in that it includes several hundred words in each part of speech, allowing the diligent learner to be exposed to enough of the language to allow true fluency to blossom early on.

In other words, the concept here is excellent - even in the digital age. You'll get a lot more from this book than you will trying to trawl Wiktionary or some random list of Latin words for your conjugation practice. You'll also find this a lot more useful than Wheelock's infuriating focus on the minute and rare.

That said, the book is not perfect.

There are mistakes from place to place. Thanks to the internet, none of these mistakes are damning. Still, it is quite frustrating for the nascent Latin learner to stumble across words without definition, such as virgō. The noun respublica is not hard to understand once you know what part actually declines; however, one wonders why in the world Williams couldn't be bothered to explain this coherently. There are also a number of words that appear to be missing macrons, though this is admittedly a nitpicky point.

Some details are given in a passive-aggressive manner. For example, the learner is informed that third declension nouns can include an "i" before the -um ending, but that not all words include this letter. "There is no simple rule that will guarantee success in this matter" is Williams' explanation. However, he does note a few third declension nouns that add this "i", such as nix, while noting that sēdēs, bōs, iuvenis, and mare do not take the extra "i." If the author is willing to tell the reader this information for these third declension nouns, why not simply denote this for every third declension noun? After all, the reader has likely purchased this book in order to learn the language without having to frequently consult conjugation tables on Wiktionary. Our poor young Latin student will have to put down the notebook and go back to the blue screen to find the answer and learn the word correctly.

My personal recommendation for studying this is using Anki or similar spaced repetition software. It is not hard to create decks that include all possible permutations of these words, and testing oneself daily on random declensions works well - especially if you combine this with plenty of example sentences.

Overall, I recommend this book for all young Latin learners, warts and all.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

some mistakes
frustrating but still useful

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Amazone

An excellent resource

I already have Latin Key Words (Toner) which is in effect just a bare list of the most common 2,000 words in order of frequency, which has a number of flaws (see my review of it).

This new book is far superior; even though there are fewer words - 1,475, with 100 of these being from medieval Latin - in total it still covers, according to the introduction, about 95% of the words you will come across in a classical Latin text, the list collated from the most frequent words amongst hundreds of thousands taken from over 200 authors. It also says in the introduction that it covers the core vocabulary for GCSE.

Where this is much superior to Latin Key Words is in its arrangement. In the first section the words are arranged grammatically, so you can for example learn all the 1st declension nouns or 2nd declension verbs together and nail down the paradigm. The second section categorises the words by topic, so you have "the divine", "time", "nature" and so on - not every word is found in these lists.

The third and fourth sections list all the words by frequency and alphabetically respectively. The alphabetical list indicates the grammatical category in which the word falls, and the topical list in which it can be found if applicable. One downside of the frequency list is that it has no further indexing, so you would have to first look in the alphabetical list to then find it in the grammatical or topical sections. Thus the book doesn't really lend itself to easily learning words in frequency order in the same way as Latin Key Words, but then the grammatical and topical arrangement may well be a more profitable way of learning. Also there is no English to Latin lookup unlike in Latin Key Words, but that doesn't feel like a great loss.

After the word lists come a full section of noun, adjective & verb declension paradigms, and the final section as an addendum supplies the most common 100 words peculiar to medieval Latin.

One very minor thing of note perhaps is that whereas in the Amazon preview the shading is in yellow, it is in grey in the printed edition.

This is an excellent resource for learning core Latin vocabulary. My only real small complaint is the lack of direct indexing in the by frequency list.

E. L. Wisty

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Learn Languages at Home

A strong vocabulary is just as vital in fluency and Latin comprehension. Containing 1,425 Latin words, Essential Latin Vocabulary allows students to learn about 95% of all the Latin vocabulary that they will encounter in actual Latin text.

What’s great about this vocabulary book is its structure. One of the best books to learn Latin, it is classified into grammatical groups (based on declensions), topical (nature, emotions, body, etc.), frequency of use, and in alphabetical order.

Meaty, organized, and very easy to follow.

[Can Uğurpala · Rating 3 out of 5]

cümle içi ornek yok ne yazik ki, kisisel egilimim tek tek sozcuk ezberlemek degil cumle icinde gormek olduğundan bana pek yarari olmayacak ancak yine de iyi bir kaynak donup donup bakmanin her turlu yarari olacaktır. diger zorlugu bu sözcükleri once ıngilizceye ardından türkçeye çevirmek gerekiyor
latincenin ingilizceye kıyasla en buyuk kolaylığı sozcuk dagarciginin kısıtlı olup turkce gibi çekimlerle anlamin ortaya çıkması ki tüm sözcükler-kitaptaki- var olan klasik metinlerin yapısının %90 ini oluşturuyor