I’m almost through with two semesters of Latin. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I’m learning Latin as opposed to Spanish or French (Those are the three languages at my high school). I can’t use Latin to communicate with anyone, and there isn’t a large enough Latin community to justify writing in Latin.
I’m not Catholic and don’t need to read the Bible or anything else in Latin. What is there written in Latin to justify taking another three years of the language? What I will I be able to do with Latin after another three years of study?
It seems like either French or Spanish would be far more useful than Latin, and there’s a lot more interesting material in those two languages.
I think knowing Latin helps you understand your own language better and it teaches you actually how to learn a language. Also, studying the Roman culture teaches us more about our own, because ours evolved from theirs. Besides that it’s an all around beautiful language and it’s interesting to learn about Ancient Rome!
There is a lot of literature in Latin and it’s neat to read in its original form rather than an altered, loose translation.
Well yes, but it’s not a translation of the words of course.
How come you doubt the usefulness of Latin when you intend to study Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic? If you have theological intentions it will certainly be an advantage to know Latin since much of the early christian and pretty much all christian medieval writings are in Latin.
Well I guess that the usefulness of learning Latin is a very subjective question.
It will make possible for you to read the originals on many subjects like history, philosophy, theology and others.
About the problem of haven’t anyone to communicate in Latin I think that you are better then most of us as you are taking classes so I presume you have colleagues to talk to, opposing some of us that are learning by ourselves and are considered weird people from must of persons that know us.
Would be more usefulness to learn French or Spanish? Taking the arguments to a ridicule size why are they more usefulness? In our days English is the International language, there aren’t almost any place in the world where you can’t be understood at least from some percentage of the population if you know English.
I think French and Spanish would also useful to learn as there are a lot of great authors on that languages in many subjects, as there are in any language of the world but you probably will find easily good translation to your own language.
I’m basically learning Latin so I’m able to read “classical” writes as in Portugal there is few translations and very fragmented (I could buy a Latin & Portuguese book I of Livy but they never edited the others ).
I would also like to learn Greek to be able to read the philosophers and historians of Classical Greece as, like you, I’m not a religious person and find refreshing to read philosophy without the religious frame that I don’t believe. But I also want to read St. Augustine writes and others.
But these why I found useful to spend my free time learning Latin, probably everyone here has they own reasons to do it.
It will improve your understanding of your own language. (Perhaps, but then you could probably better spend all that class time studying your own language’s grammar)
It will improve your vocabulary. (Again, then why not just study vocabulary?)
It will improve your SAT etc scores. (There are books and courses that focus just on that test)
Most of the “reasons” I’ve heard are fairly superficial and I doubt they are the real motivation most of us actually feel for studying the language. Of course, if your goal is to read classic authors in their own language, then it’s a natural choice, but this rarely motivates school-aged students.
Perhaps a better question to think about is what does it really mean to be useful? Why learn to play basketball (or fill in some other sport)? Is it useful? I would say that having an enjoyable pastime that improves your body is useful, even if it is not something that will ever be a part of your job or make you any money. Likewise, studying Latin or Greek can be incredibly enjoyable and it can exercise your mind and improve how you think.
It’s not for everyone, and if you don’t enjoy it you may never find a reason good enough to make it worth your while.
I will add, though, that (about 20 years ago) I chose to take Spanish in college even though I had had 3 years of high school Latin. I never enjoyed the Spanish, never found it useful, and today I can’t speak a word of it. But I still study and enjoy Latin.
If you are going to study any other ancient language, you will find that older grammar books on those languages are usually comparative grammars–they compare the language to Latin–which means knowing Latin is necessary to understand those grammar books. So, if you are going to study Hebrew and Aramaic, knowing Latin will allow you to use such comparitive grammars. BTW, you will find that older printed editions of Greek and Hebrew texts have Latin prefaces and so on (more recent printings may have German prefaces) so you may learn Hebrew and be able to read a Hebrew text but not make heads or tales of the preface that actually explains what sort of editing the text went through (very important!) if you don’t know Latin (or in some cases German). You may ask “does anyone still write prefaces in Latin?” Whether they still write them in Latin or not, I don’t know, but I know that only a few months ago I went to a religious bookstore and saw a Greek text (brand new, recent printing) with a Latin preface and other material. (OH, and also, critical apparatai are in Latin I think.)
Well my interest in learning Biblical and Rabbinical Hebrew is because I’m moderately religious (Jewish) and want to do more in depth study within my religion. Therefore I do not need to read religious texts in Latin. The reason I signed up for Latin originally was so that I could read the classics in their original language.
Now, however, I’m not sure that taking Latin for another three years is worth it just to be able to read the Classics. There are many great things written in the three [most influential] European languages, [French, German, Spanish], and considering that 10% of the US population is Spanish speaking I think that it’s a very useful second language. However, maybe next year I wil take Spanish and Latin together.
Having some basic latin gives you a great advantage when learning any other indo-european language (spanish, italian, french, english, icelandic etc).
I don’t think that anyone should have to question the usfulness of latin in everyday life.
I think is wonderful that you are going to take Spanish next year, along with Latin. I am a native Spanish speaker. The only advice though is that try it first and see if you enjoy it. I personally love it!!! So, to answer your question, I am specifically learning Latin as a tribute to my grand-grand father who I deeply loved. He used to talk to me in Latin when I was quite little. Somehow, Latin is like a link which keeps me close to him and I know this might sounds weird, but that is why is so useful to me and, simultaneously, great fun!!!
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