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117 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surely it can't be this easy?, 18 Dec 1998
By A Customer
As a member of the hoi polloi (sorry Peter), I was always far more interested in ancient history than I was in the modern stuff. It was really depressing for me at school when those evil teachers dragged me away from shields, swords and Rex Harrison as Caesar, and forced me to learn all that nonsense about Bismarck, Real-Politik and the dreaded 'Too Little, Too Late' essay about one of those Russian Alexander blokes.And I was always terrible at languages too. The best I could ever manage was 'je ne comprende pas' or 'ich verstehe nicht ganz'. Hardly scintillating, especially in two awful French and German oral exams. But after a lifetime of speaking only chip-shop English, a friend got me to read Alan Massie's 'Augustus' which I loved (it helped explain why Richard Burton was so defiant to that fella from Planet of the Apes in Egypt), which in turn persuaded me to read Virgil's 'Aeniad', which then arrowed me into Homer's 'Illiad'. Marvellous, but wouldn't it be even better to read it all in the original? You must be joking I thought, as I slipped Peter Jones book over the bookshop counter to a smirking assistant. But it has been a revelation. Simple, fun and quite simply the best language book I have ever read. I'm only up to Chapter three but I know I will finish it. Okay, so all I'm able to read is 'God is in man, and man is within God said Paul to the crowd', but it's in ancient greek lettering, from the original New Testament, and I actually understand it on the page. I cannot wait to finish the book, and then get onto the Latin one too. Marvellous. My only question is, why can't all language books be as simple as this? Why did an extremely dry Xavier always have to be helping his dreadfully dull mother buy boring sausages at the charcuterie (or whatever)? And why did some of those smug modern language teachers speak to me like I'd just crawled out of a drain because I couldn't remember the third participle of the second noun declension of the imperfect tense of the dative nominative gobbledegook. Was it me who could not learn languages, or was it them who could not teach? I had always thought the former, now I'm inclined to believe the latter (yes, OK, I may be just a little bit bitter and twisted). Witty, fun, and easy to read (while remaining disciplined) Peter Jones should be made to write books on French and German. And then perhaps some of those Johnny Foreigners might actually direct me to a nearby toilet rather than avoiding me dans la rue oder am Strasse. Top work.
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by Peter Jones
by John Taylor
by James Morwood
by Morwood James
by Joint Association of Classical Teachers
