Via Latina by Cultura Clásica: Book Recommendation

Cultura Clásica has a wonderful monolingual Latin textbook that tells the myths and legends of Rome's founding while teaching grammar and vocabulary. In this video I explain the book and for whom I recommend it.

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[Cyclonus]

My Romance language familiarity - specifically Spanish and Italian - have helped me so far in understanding Latin. At least what I've studied so far. And my Russian knowledge has helped me with the concept of cases, which I know Latin employs.
Once again, it's amazing!

[VitorDeAraujo]

I'm currently following this book, I'm around chapter 4 now. I already knew a bit of Latin from studying it a bit at various moments in life, and I learned *a lot* from your channels and especially from listening to your Legio XIII podcast (thanks a lot for all these resources!), and I'm a native Portuguese speaker, so I've been able to follow the book relatively easily so far.

I'm pretty sure this book was made with a Romance language speaking audience in mind. I think it was an intentional design decision because there are several Latin words that are more promptly recognizable in the plural than in the (nominative) singular for a Romance speaker (e.g., singular mōns vs. plural montēs; singular latrō vs. plural latrōnēs), and these words are *only* used in the plural in the first texts they appear in. So the book definitely leverages the fact that the its target audience will recognize a lot of words without requiring much explanation, which allows it to move faster that one might expect from an introductory textbook (and to have a more interesting story), but it might not be as good a choice if you don't already speak a Romance language (or already have some basic level of Latin).

Another thing to note is that the exercises are not only there to test your knowledge, they are actually there to teach you stuff. The book generally only explains grammar points after they already appeared in the text and exercises, and some of the exercises are there to make you pay attention to grammar points that have not been explicitly explained before. So although sometimes it's tempting to skip the exercises *just to continue reading the story*, you will miss some information if you do that. (I also copy the whole text after a first reading, and say it out loud while writing it down.)

The book does not come with answers to the exercises, though. I think it was made primarily for use in classrooms. Maybe there is a separate book with answers, but I don't know. Some exercises don't really have one single correct answer (e.g., some questions about why something happened in the story, or questions asking you to describe an image using words from a list).

Overall, I like this book a lot, but it does assume some Romance or Latin background.

Thanks again Luke for all your videos!

[ALevelBetty]

This might be too intrusive, but have you ever considered doing a "tour" of your bookcases? As a book collector, there's nothing I love more than see what's in other people's bookcases, and I'd be especially interested in seeing what language books you've collected for yourself.

[thōmās-xn]

My copy arrived 2 days ago! I'm really enjoying it so far. LLPSI is still my main teaching tool, but I got Via Latina to get extra reading in (in addition to the Colloquia) and for a different perspective

[toforgetisagem]

Latina Latina is brilliant, however, there is always room for more. The more exposure to learning, the better! I am signing up for these books.

[jasonbaker]

I cracked up when you started whispering when talking about Wheelock’s 😅 (one of the forbidden names of which we shall not speak too loudly)

[DavidSinghiser]

You do so much. I hesitate to request or suggest this, but is there any chance you might make a "How to Learn Latin: The Ranieri-Roberts Approach" video and spread sheet?

[iberius]

This book definitely looks like a good companion or at least sequel to Familia Romana.

[mendicius_jade]

I've just got a copy of it and as someone who has around C1 level in Spanish, plus some exposure to Latin during my Catholic seminary days, I find first chapters of the book completely easy. I have to set it aside, nevertheless, since I am just starting with Ancient Greek because it's far harder than Latin (at least on my part).

[toforgetisagem]

There is no silver bullet. It's work at it. Have fun with it. My wish list is to have Lingua Latin servants version. I would love to hear the servants gossip about the antics of Marcus.

[SS]

Thank you for this recommendation! For an autodidact currently going through LLPSI for the first time, would you recommend picking up Via Latina after completing LLPSI? Or is there at a certain point in LLPSI (after a certain chapter) where you'd recommend starting to supplement with Via Latina?

[russreadsbooks]

Sum hesternus liber de Amazōn coemō! Benē video!

[julbombning]

Hi!
Will you ever produce your very own "Lingva latina per se illvstrata" equivalent in ancient greek?

[ailblentyn]

My boy has reached Chapter 28 of Familia Romana, so I’m guessing he could get something out of this as extra reading alongside Fabulae Syrae?

[trovaire]

A very good recommendation. Thank you very much. Now I’m using Le latin sans peine. Quite interesting. Do you know it?

[enricomarra]

0:26 Ecce Larentia...per chi abita a Roma quelle parole hanno un significato molto particolare, soprattutto molto triste

[Sasseverk]

Salve! This might not be the place to ask, but what "novels" do you recommend alongside llpsi? I've taken a beginner course and am currently taking the next course (translating classical authors with A LOT of help) and I've been using llpsi throughout which has been really effective for me. I read pugio bruti recently alongside llpsi and it was so nice to get something other than just Ørberg and Miraglia to enjoy, I'm kind of craving that again

[stefanieprescher]

Thank you for sharing 😃
Does the book have the results for the exercises included? So I could check if my answers are correct?
(If you said this in the video, and I overheard it, I am sorry 😃)

[kabacheouiza]

e vero que sappere italiano e molto bene per apprendere la lingua latina

[seaghanobuadhaigh]

Are the answers to the exercises available? I'll find out when it arrives anyway.