Latin

[Alwyn ap Huw]

Can anybody recommend an on-line tutorial, teach yourself book or distance learning courses for learning Latin for family and local historians?

[Geoffers]

Can anybody recommend an on-line tutorial, teach yourself book or distance learning courses for learning Latin for family and local historians?For a book - you could try 'Learn Latin - the book of The Daily Telegraph QED series' by Peter Jones, publ. Duckworth, ISBN 0 7156 2757 0.

If you already have a smattering of Latin to be able to work out what is written and are just interested in words you may find in documents useful to family historians, then try 'A Latin Glossary for Family and Local Historians' by Janet Morris, publ. Federation of Family History Societies, ISBN 0 907099 89 0

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[Alwyn ap Huw]

Thanks Geoffers, I will put both of these books in my letter to Santa.

I "did" Latin in school but didn't think that I would ever need it in the modern world, so took little interest in the lessons - nobody told me at the time that I would grow up to be a family historian who needed to read Latin Wills and legal documents - if anybody had dared to make such an insinuation I would probably have smacked them in the teeth.

I have enough Latin to follow the parish registers and I can work out the gist of marriage settlements, deeds and wills but I am uncertain about some of the tenses and relationships and I can't quite work out if a particular filius is the son of the testator or the son of his brother previously mentioned, which is a serious a problem when trying to work out family relationships!

Hopefully these books will help me overcome these problems

Thanks again

Alwyn

[Ladkyis]

I hold the dubious distinction of being the only person ever, in my school, to faint after turning over the latin paper in an exam. I have found the Latin Glossary extremely helpful in my research
Ann

[jackie charman]

I'm going to be taking 'Reading Classical Latin' with the Open university next year, just for fun and to polish up the old school Latin. Maybe I'll be of more use this time next year!

Jackie

[DeeDee]

I've used this site for other languages, and they are quite good. Checked the list and they do do Latin!

http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html

This one also looks good: http://www.phrasebase.com/learn/latin.php

regards
Dee

[robdurk]

A good textbook starting with the real basics (though the author graciously allows that some people may wish to start at Chapter 4) is

Latin for Local and Family Historians, by Denis Stuart, published by Philimores.