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

Languages consist of words. Even if you have a fair scheme of the grammar (certainly imperative in Latin) if you do not know the words, you may as well have had your tongue cut out.There is a secret here. The core vocabulary even of great languages is not all that big (which is why teenagers can exist). Consider English: 'haruspicate,' 'newel post,' and 'pastern' are perfetly good English words, present in dictionaries. If you are not a vet. or a house-carpenter how ofen do you use them? Once in five years? Never? Now consider 'revere,' 'invest.' This book has discovered--one would think by computers, but the foundation work was done in 1939--that 85% of the vocabulary of 200 classic Roman writers consists of 1325 words (another hundred or so are added separately for Medieval writers--whom this book quite rightly takes seriously). This can easily be learned by any studious person.It gets better. Many of these words have English descendants and are very easily learned. Many other are compounds of other words and so have identical grammar (this book, quite rightly, makes you learn the declensions of nouns and adjectives and the conjugations of verbs).It is very well organized. The words are first presented by class (noun, verb, adverb) then, again, by context (war, religion and the gods, law and society, etc.). There is a section in which words are presented precisely by frequency of use (the most common word in Latin is 'qui (quae, quod).'There is also a back section of digest grammar and grammatical paradigms. If you start to study Latin youi will find your living room littered with these, for most books supply them. But these are beautifully clear and admirably set forth. These alone are worth most of the price of the book. I agree with another reviewer that the prepositions are a nightmare--but that's the Romans, I think, not this book.The book is extremely generous in second and alternate meanings of words. This, as you advance in Latin, is essential. The full vocabulary of Latin, as of Italian, is not vast; like Italian it solves this by attaching a great many meanings to many words. This, most especially in poetry, is a waiting trap. The word that supplies our "petition" is "peto--ere" often "ask for" or "seek." So, a sentence, "Germanun petivit, et corpus in silvam proiecit." "He asked the German, and threw the body in wood." What? Well, no. It turns out the first meaning of "peto"--nothing to do witih "petition"--is "to fall upon, attack." If you thoroughly read "Essential Vocabulary" you woiuld know this. Tricksy it is, very tricksy.If you are learning Latin in or out of class, get this book! It's that simple. It will make every exposure to Latin text vastly more secure, hugely more enjoyable. This book is a treasure. It is incredibly worth the price.

Enormous help in learning Latin. Important aspects of the language are clearly and concisely described. A couple of comments.1. The order of the cases is adopted from the common in the UK: accusative before genitive. This is a serious improvement to the USA standard.2. There is a silly typo in the running head for one of the chapters: "frenquencies" instead of "frequencies".

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.

When I ordered this book I was wondering why I was. The "1400" list, known to Latin teachers because it is the 1400 most frequent words in Latin is available throughout the internet for free.What makes this worth the purchase is the further classifications of words that Williams does. The traditional grammar-oriented lists (1st declension, 2nd declension etc) exist but also topical lists such as feelings, body, texture and density, etc which makes writing my own stories for TPRS and comprehensible input easier. I will use it to also emphasize words in our Latin textbook that are the most important.One thing I appreciate is the proofreading. While I am sure computer logarithms were used in determining these 1425 words, no weird errors appear. I once bought a "Most common words in Vergil" app which suggested suo, suere to sew was one of the most common verbs in Verbs. No. Aeneas doesn't smock. This book, gratefully, has been vetted by a conscientious teacher and many peers who cared about the accuracy. I have not found a single macron out of place.