Cambridge Latin Course, Unit 2: The North American, 4th Edition

I wrote a review for the first book of the series and my thoughts about this book are pretty much the same. The book does a great job at reinforcing the "native" speaker paradigm. I find myself reading sentences and even entire passages without having to deconstruct the grammar to extract the meaning. That said, I have found that when those situations do occur, as is typical with Latin, that the grammar presented has given me more than enough information to figure out the meaning. I have yet to find myself trapped and out of ideas. I also have actually enjoyed the little stories that they string together for the books. They seem to do a nice job of taking little breaks from the main story then returning you to the action just when you begin to wonder what happened to so-and-so. As a side note, I finished this book a few weeks ago and have been working through the third text in the series and I am very pleased to say that I am finding it as useful as the first two. Hope that helps!

The book is great and makes Latin super easy to understand. I had to buy it for a class but the book is basically the course and it’s great. The quality is good and it’s super easy to understand what they are teaching.

This text was required for my son's class. He liked the way the book was organized and the explanations provided.

I am teaching Latin to my 12-year-old daughter along with two of her friends, and this book has been perfect. My daughter did the first Cambridge course as well, but her friends went into this having only studied a little Latin from other more paradigm-centered sources. Latin is really fun this way, the storyline is interesting, you really gain confidence in translating and beginning to think in Latin. I like to stop once in awhile and review paradigms as well, encouraging memorization of conjugations/decensions, so I do supplement a little, but having tried several programs this to me is the best and retains the most interest, probably because it most closely follows the way people naturally learn language.

I used both the first and second books of the Cambridge Latin Series this summer for my latin study this summer, and they were amazing! Everything was clearly explained, and the beautiful color photos certainly helped visualize the ancient cities! This book is really an excellent text to use when learning latin. However, this is not the BEGINNER BOOK! This is the SECOND BOOK. The first book is in red with a mask on the front cover. This book picks up with more advanced latin. Best of Luck with your Latin Studies! Addendum: I purchased five copies of this item and each one was in the very best condition.

If you are reviewing this particular book you have probably bought and done Unit I. The series starts with cartoons and slowly goes to long passages of text. The story is somewhat addicting. By the time you finish Unit IV you will be sight reading Latin which is the authors goal. Romans generally read out-loud when reading even when alone. I found it helps the learning. Good book also to use in a classroom setting.

Excellent book -- learning Latin is very hard and Cambridge makes it much more accessible. What really helps are the stories are all interlinked and you can figure out what's going on by context if you don't know the exact translation of each and every Latin word. You won't walk away a scholar after finishing this book but you will understand the writing you seem at museum exhibits of Ancient Rome.

Unit 2 of Cambridge Latin Course is similar to Unit 1 in that the lessons begin with black and white illustrations to teach you the basic grammar points using simple sentences. You then get longer texts with glossing of some of the words in the text. The lessons finish with some exercises and some historical material in English. I like the exercises because they don't make you translate from English to Latin like some books do, which I find to be tedious and a waste of time as most people are using the books to be able to read Latin, not to become English-to-Latin translators. Unit 2 is split into two parts, one on England and the other on Egypt whereas Unit 1 was about Pompeii, so you get some different characters. Hopefully, Units 3 and 4 are about Rome (the blurb on the back of the book seems to indicate that this is the case). I was disappointed to find that Unit 2 only has 8 lessons (13-20) whereas Unit 1 had 12 lessons, so I feel a little cheated as the lessons are about the same length as Unit 1 (this is the main reason I give the book 3 stars in addition to the random glossing of some words and not others). The grammar summary at the end of the book is slightly larger, so maybe that compensates?

I'm using this series by Cambridge to learn to read Latin. It works. rather than memorizing grammar charts, reading is emphasized, the grammar introduced gradually. No complaints. Although, I'll likely attend classes at the University next all to do just that: memorize grammar charts. I'll have a solid background in reading and familiarity with the grammar. My aim is to read The Gallic Wars by Caesar.

I'd recommend this course, because there is a lot of material available you could also use in class. Although the "Workbook" ,that complements the "Student Text" above, offers a lot of exercises, it should have more language drills for the students.

Received the item damaged, not new. Corners were bent and curling.