D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners
79 lessons from the alphabet and pronunciation through the subjunctive, each with vocabulary and exercises, then easy Latin readings, tables of forms and full vocabularies.
Scanned from a University of California copy.
Homeschool · Latin
Latin
Two classic first-year Latin courses from the early 1900s, free to read here or download. D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners has a step-by-step teaching guide for every lesson, written so a parent who has never studied Latin can teach it.
Start here
Start with D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners, about ages 11 to 14 (or any age after that). Each lesson teaches one piece of grammar with a short vocabulary and sentences to translate, and the guides walk you through it and give answers.
For practice beyond the book, use the site's Latin flashcards and sentence drills.
- Pick a lesson (start with Lesson 1).
- Press Teach this lesson.
- Follow the steps one screen at a time, with the book page beside you.
About the books
Benjamin L. D'Ooge (1860–1940) taught Latin and Greek at the Michigan State Normal College, a teachers' college in Ypsilanti. His Latin for Beginners (Ginn, 1909) became one of the most popular first-year Latin books in American schools. It moves in small steps, has many short exercises, and ends with easy Latin stories, including the labors of Hercules.
First Year Latin by William C. Collar and M. Grant Daniell (Ginn, 1901) is a similar course from a few years earlier, by two Boston-area schoolmasters. It is a good second book for more practice. Both books use classical (Roman) pronunciation and mark long vowels.
The books
Collar and Daniell, First Year Latin
Another complete first-year course: forms, syntax, exercises and simple readings, with vocabularies.
Scanned by Google from a University of California copy.
About these copies
For Greek, see New Testament Greek.
Every book here was published in the United States before 1930, so it is in the public domain there: free to read, print and share. The scans are kept by the Internet Archive, which shows them on this page and supplies the PDF downloads. The teaching guides are written for this site. Modern reprints are also sold, if you prefer a clean printed copy.