Latin: why?

[Bonsoir]

Latin was my most important subject at school. I did years and years of it and have never felt it was anything more than a waste of time.

I know not everyone feels this way and I would be grateful if you could share your opinions as to the useful skills Latin develops in school pupils.

My sons learn latin although I do not think they will carry on to GCSE like the older children. It is very good for people to learn something that is harder than cookery and tourism GCSE or other mickey mouse not have to learn much at all easier GCSEs. In fact two of my older children read ancient history. I suspect they would not have done so had they not done latin at school.

You certainly don't need it but it's useful to have had at least some understanding of it.

pusheed your kids my be able to speak Latin, but in LatinAmerica the locals speak Castellano (spanish) or Portuguess. They don't speak Latin. Latin is a "dead" language, it's not spoken now a days, there isn't a country that has Latin as a language.

I once worked in Italy with a Classics scholar. I loved how she sailed forth into shops and spoke Latin very loudly to bemused Neapolitans. It is worth encouraging some people to learn Latin so that these amusing incidents don't die out.

CeciC yes, you are right BUT it forms the building blocks of MANY languages, including Spanish & Portuguese & therefor it DOES make speaking & understanding any of those languages MUCH MUCH easier

The ONLY language I learnt at school was latin - yet I went on to pick up other languages whilst travelling, VERY easily & I definitely put that down to learning Latin

CeciC I think she was joking...

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

Dd (10) is learning it at school and loving it. We're in Germany & she's at a high school with a languages bias where Latin is compulsory until the 8th class (she's in the 5th class) as a proper grounding for learning other languages. The dc are all doing English as well and will introduce other languages only in the 8th class.

I know absolutely no Latin but from helping her with her vocab its amazed me how many words in English and German are related.

But my favourite Latin word from last nights vocab - plebs!

My favorite word used to be circumpadanus. It means 'around the Po'.

I did Latin up to A level and really enjoyed it. I'm a modern languages teacher. I always used to argue that, apart from being interesting in its own right, it was great for helping pupils to learn grammatical structure and the basis for other languages. However, as other posters have pointed out, what we really need to do is teach English grammar. Properly and systematically. Why on earth do we learn a whole other (dead) language in order to glean information about our own?
That said, because Latin teachers don't have to spend their time teaching their pupils to speak the language, do listening comprehensions etc., a much higher level of understanding about the structure of the language can be achieved than in MFL. Or English, presumably. I would love to spend hours picking apart the finer points of the imperfect subjunctive with my classes, but they wouldn't do so well in their oral exams!
I still think Latin is worth learning for its own sake, but saying that we need it for other subjects merely highlights the gaps in those subjects imho.

I loved Latin because I fancied my -teacher because I was mesmerised by the precision of it. It made learning all the other romance languages a piece of cake and was also really helpful learning a much more difficult language, Russian, which I did for my degree.

As Xenia said better Latin than Citizenship GCSE

Learning Latin, I did feel that I had achieved access to a whole new dimension of time - there was nothing, nothing as boring as double Latin, it seemed to last for whole years. I can still cheer myself up on tough days at work by reminding myself that I never have to study it again. So that's quite useful.

ffs, not like it should be a choice between "Mickey Mouse" GCSEs //OR// Latin. The debate is more about whether Latin should be taught at the expense of other possible non-Mickey Mouse subjects. Including good quality MFL, or better science, physical geography, chemistry, etc.

@Marina DD is in a state school & studying Latin, part of this project.

best latin word? cingere... to gird one's loins (fig.)

(cinxi, cinctum)

I loved it and it has always helped me work out what words mean (if the roots are in the latin, ditto ancient Greek, which i also learnt). also given me a through understanding of grammar - although some might wonder why that's important. It helps with learning another language - and finally - everyone thinks I'm far cleverer than I really am and that I went to a really posh, academic school (was posh but not particularly academic )

I have a joint honours degree in French and Latin. I'm a writer and editor now, and my Latin's definitely stood me in good stead.

"Why on earth do we learn a whole other (dead) language in order to glean information about our own?"

I found it really hard to learn grammar in English class, because I couldn't step back and retrospectively apply rules to a language I'd learned instinctively, IYSWIM. Learning a dead language is so uninstinctive that it means you approach it more objectively, so it helped me get to grips with grammar in a way that even learning modern languages didn't.

I also think learning Latin teaches you to write concisely. You can say sonething in three words in Latin that would take ten words in English. The sheer economy of the language is amazing.

The hard labour of learning endless declensions and conjugations is worth it to be able to read Latin poetry in the original. Translation cannot come close to the majesty of Virgil, the wit of Ovid, or the heartbreaking raw emotion of Catullus.

I enjoyed it a lot, and a bit of classical studies gives you a kind of high brow gloss which is useful both for pure snob value but also to enable you to understand where large chunks of European culture come from - it puts a lot of it in its place, like those bits of a jigsaw puzzle that link prettier bits together.

But I do think its use in teaching English and MFL grammar is wildly overrated - Latin grammar has damn all in common with the trickier bits of English, French or German. I suspect that the children who are sufficently capable of translating a dead language into English are also the ones who can see the patterns in modern languages without too much trouble, so Latin O level is correlated with good MFL grammar without causing it.

I wouldn't discourage a child from studying it, but I don't agree with its fetishisation as a magical brain training tool.

The hard labour of learning endless declensions and conjugations is worth it to be able to read Latin poetry in the original. Translation cannot come close to the majesty of Virgil, the wit of Ovid, or the heartbreaking raw emotion of Catullus.

Possibly learning it to that standard would be welll worth it, but very few people do. About half the girls who started it in my school gave it up after 2 years.

I also agree with Dilys about correlation, as girls were chosen to do Latin on the basis of their ability in French, English and History, so it would not have been remotely surprising if those who did Latin also did well at French. Saying that it helps with learning other Romance languages, presupposes that Latin scholars will go on to do so, but it is by no means a forgone conclusion that they will. Whereas the time spent learning Latin could have been spent learning one of those languages.

It is obviously worth doing if you want to be a historian, theologian or classical scholar but I am a more than a little sceptical of many of the claims made for it.

Thank you everybody . I've really enjoyed reading your opinions!

Haven't had time to read all through this thread yet so I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but if you have a DC who might be interested in studying medecine having learnt Latin is a big advantage when it comes to learning anatomy apparently.

DS has a very cool Latin teacher, so he adores it, I used to like it too when I was at school in the dark ages.

I learned Latin for 5 years and hated it, but it was very useful in learning other languages, such as Polish, as the teacher didn't have to waste time explaining to me about things like the ablative and genitive, as I already knew what they were. And I had also learned a language where nouns decline (as they do in Polish), so was at a headstart there too. I can't say it has helped me terribly with other languages - I speak Romanian, which is supposed to be the closest living language to Latin. I think that's nonsense - Spanish is much closer.

Latin is also useful for crosswords and Scrabble.

On the subject of the similarities of the word for window in various languages, there is also ffenest in Welsh

@Ragged the success of the Norfolk initiative has been talked about a lot in the Minimus Newsletter, and there was a teacher from Holt on my training course.

As well as the brain-training, grammar and language benefits, there is the literature (Vergil, Catullus, Ovid, Horace etc.) which is marvellous in its own right as well as invaluable for understanding the development of English and other European literature, or even just Harry Potter. Greek is even more fun.

I loved it - I enjoyed it so much that I did it at A Level and almost did Classics for a degree. In retrospect, I wished I took Ancient Greek as well as Ancient History instead of Economics but was swayed by my more pragmatic father to choose a more vocational subject for balance. Admittedly, it's not terribly vocational unless you wanted to become a Classics teacher. It's a lot easier than Mandarin!