How do you think about languages as you are studying them? Ideally, you will take each piece of wisdom, every punctuation mark, letter (the particles) and the verbs and nouns, adverbs (verbs for other verbs), adjectives (nouns for other nouns) and study them in order to make connections later. But on the Internet, these connections may either be more clear, less clear, or muddled. The Internet has no editors. This can sometimes be a good thing, but it can also sometimes be a bad thing. The beauty of language is that it has conventions, and rules. The Internet does not. Wikipedia does not. As you explore the Wikibook in Latin, it will require critical thinking, and we shall teach you how to do this.
You will never go wrong in trying to study a language if you remember that exposing yourself to a language, and practicing the language, even if you stumble a few times, is in itself learning. You will learn that this document is more poetry than fact for instance, if you have read documents like this in the past.
However, exposing yourself to incorrect or contradictory information is not productive and may in fact be counter-productive.
Looking things up too much can be a crutch. Stretch your memory. Read slowly. Re-read. As you will soon discover, you are about to study a language that is rich and full of meaning, including many roots that we inherited from Latin and use in Spanish, French, Italian, other romance languages, and even in English.
...Latin is like any other language. Do not assume the ancient Roman culture is like any other culture. Through studying Latin literature or even just the grammar, you will learn that every culture is different, and yet the values of the culture are surprisingly similar. The questions with which the Romans grappled continue to have universal appeal.
You must develop a Latin muscle, and a willingness to write or type things out, or drill using software, or with a friend. When you were a child, you played with colored blocks and were fascinated by patterns. You were willing to accept that you knew nothing. Accept that now.
Note the patterns after you have memorized the forms, not before. Allow yourself to be mesmerized by them. Similarly, seek out explanation only after you have memorized forms. Memorize forms, then make sentences.
In Israel, children are introduced to Hebrew letters at a young age. A Rabbi told a young child, "Yes, they dance." When the Latin grammatical suffixes, stems et al. dance in front of you, you will know you have studied a concept well.
If you also want to hear a teacher read out the declensions and verb conjugations aloud you can find spoken lessons that would be a useful adjunct to this textbook for free at http://latinum.mypodcast.com . These lessons can be downloaded to an MP3 player, and repeated over and over, until you have memorised the declensions, conjugations, etc.
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