Is there a point to studying Latin?

[emeraldrafael]

There are soem reasons, but not many to qualify its jsutificiation unless you're doing certain things. Its one of those things that in the end, you dont need, cause someone will have it, and you just have to put up with them gloating and holding it over your head if you want something done.

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

If you know Latin you can easily pick up French, Spanish and Italian, they're all very similar languages.

 

[Agayek]

But seriously, someone said something about Catullus 16 in here: look it up, then tell someone you'll irrumabis their mother and then pedicabis their dog if they say anything about it.

I'm very confused right now.

I'm gonna go run away from the big mean-sounding words.

 

[MisterM2402]

So hopefully I'm not beating a dead horse by posting in this thread in the first place, but please - take Latin. This is a bit biased coming from a Classics BA, but hear me out.

The functionality of Latin is, admittedly, rather low. It is useful for etymologies and general syntax and grammar and all that, but - as has been said before - it is far better to just learn Italian than studying ancient Italian/French/Spanish/Portuguese/Romanian to learn Italian. Certainly, Latin and (especially) Greek paradigms will make most other Indo-European conjugation/declension memorizing like a walk in the park, but - again - it's not a good idea to get the shit kicked out of you massively just so subsequent shit-kickings won't be so bad.

And, for fun, let's do this anyway -

Latin-derived: posting, Latin, Classics, B(achelor), A(rts), functionality, admittedly, useful, general, Italian, studying, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Certainly, especially, conjugation, declension, memorizing, idea, massively, subsequent.

Greek-derived: biased, etymologies, syntax, grammar, paradigms.

The truth is, it's a cultural thing. Learning Classical Arabic is not at the top of my list, and learning Latin is probably not at the top of a Middle-Eastern Muslim's list. But it's kind of frightening how much (of Western culture) comes from Greco-Roman culture - our laws, our government, our history, our architecture, our religious symbolism, and undoubtedly our literature. Learning Latin brings with it learning about Rome and Greece, and an understanding of how the world came about - and why the Spring Revolutions should be watched carefully, and why we're called the Seventh Rome.

Anywho, Latin's clawing its way bit by bit back into the US (I think), and I'm pretty sure the UK still has a strong showing, comparatively at least. So if you're interesting in where you came from as an instance of "the Westerner", please at least take a look at it.

But don't go into academia. Adding this many commentaries to the Aeneid is making love under a goddamn spotlight. Study it, then do something else. Anything else. Physics is cool. Try that.

I like this post the best so far And you signed up just to say it as well Thank you.

 

[Necator15]

It's an interesting language. I took it for a couple years in high school, and the way the class was presented made it a hybrid language class and ancient Roman history class. I have to say, learning the language made me much better at speaking and understanding English (It's my native tongue, but still). It's amazing how many words stem from a Latin basis.

I only really took the class originally because my school only offered Spanish, French, Latin, and German. I didn't really find Spanish or French all that interesting (I had to take half a year of each in middle school), and I didn't care about German. I wanted to take Italian, but I figured Latin would be close enough. I was wrong, but now I've got a pretty good basis to start learning Italian or any other Romance language if I want to.

Also, as has been said 1000 times previously, it's good for most sciences, as well as law and medicine.

 

[iamultraman]

The thing about Latin is that it's not simply a study of the language, it's a study of the Roman culture in general, which is not surprising as most language courses involve some sort of integration into the culture in which the language is spoken. However, if you're going to learn of any civilization, taking into account all of them, Roman society is undoubtedly the most crucial to learn if you want to live an educated life. Undoubtedly; if I could underline it I would. All of western tradition comes from them. All of western thinking--philosophy, rhetoric, even our humor and scientific methodology--comes from the way the Romans think. I can affirm that every book I have read employed symbolism that stems from the Greco-Roman myth. More subtlely, a lot of plays I have read comes a little from the old Roman plays. The thing is, they were the first--well, not the first, but the most significant--weavers of words, and loving language begins with loving words. I got such a love from Latin. Of course you can learn Greek instead, but I like to think that the Romans took what the Greeks had and modernized it for the future generations of Europe.

So this is my advice, which I myself will take: take Latin in high school, and take the romance languages in college (French, Italian, Spanish), because to even have an appreciation for those subjects, you have to start from where they began.

 

[evenest]

I took three semesters of Latin in college and found that it helped me with my English, especially with my writing. It is a neat language, and even if you don't go around spouting phrases, it will stretch the grey matter

 

[gideonkain]

Ever since 1952 when Cornelius Pantzrocket first though of having one language for all citizens of the world people have argued that they shouldn't have to learn a new language "you can learn my language" they always say. Latin was invented because the only way for us all to have the same language was to make up a new one so EVERYONE had to learn a new language and thus couldn't argue their way out of it. It didn't take however because of a little historical event you may have heard of called World War One which made everyone on Earth, especially those on the internet into racists who don't want to talk to eachother.

Um, I think your talking about Esperanto(sp?) not Latin, a several thousand year old language.

 

[Quaxar]

Can you summon dark elder gods by chanting in any of those languages : Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Arabic? No? Didn't think so.

Now chanting in Latin...

Now that has to be the stupidest comment I've read in this thread.

Abdul al'Hazred, the writer of the Necronomicon, was Arabic so clearly knowing Arabic would help you a lot with summoning forbidden creatures. Or at least you'll get to read the book in it's native language, nothing lost in translation that might save your life if you should screw up the ceremony.

 

[signingupforgames]

Bragging about knowing how to speak Latin.
Other than that i have no idea.

 

[aashell13]

You can use the ATM's in the Vatican...

also what everyone else said about understanding the basis of most western european languages, legal jargon, etc etc.

 

[gravitii]

I'm not going to re-list the main 3 reasons everyone in the forum has said so far, and they are very true. I would site an alternative reason that is it's a nerd-culture thing. One can learn it to have a linguistic elitism over others if they're jerks, or one can simply learn one as a fun thing, and can even be used as a code language if few other people at the school care about latin, of course this applies to just about any language that has few students. I'm thinking of learning it in college (my highschool doesn't offer it yet) for that reason, along with the application of learning other languages and it's historical/theological significance.

p.s. They've arguably succeeded in creating a universal language, it's really simplified and only used for trade in certain parts of Asia and Africa where practically every village has it's own language, but it's being adopted more and more as a universal lingua franca. It's called esparanza (spelling probably wrong) but look it up, I've heard one can learn it in about a week.

 

[IndianaJonny]

Latin is the base for a lot of languages. Learn latin and it will be much easier to learn said languages.

At least, that's the explanation given to me by friends I have who take Latin.

And do you friends learn those other languages ?

Seriously, i don't think it's useful. It might be a small foot in the door of Latin languages but nothing more. And if you want to learn ... Spanish, don't learn Latin first, start with Spanish it's going to be a lot easier! And Spanish will be a much grater help to learn French and Italian.
I think Spanish is the easiest latin language.(And it might be the most useful one.)

Funny you should say that as friends of mine have, on occasion, found themselves abroad and conversing in Latin because it's the only common ground they have since both parties were forced to learn it!

You'll never spell Necessary wrong ever again.

One 'collar', two 'sleeves', chum!

 

[mikespoff]

'Cos it sounds cool?

Spoiler: ''Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.''

''Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.''
Translation: ''Anything said in Latin seems profound.'' [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AltumVidetur]

Dammit, you got there first!

OT, Latin is great. I studied it in high school and really enjoyed it; it has logic and structure that is both appealing and useful for teaching rigorous thinking. It's not a language that you learn so that you can speak with others; it's a language that you learn as part of a rounded education.

It's like learning calculus even if you're never going to directly apply it in your professional life - calculus teaches you to understand change with time and different rates of change, which are incredibly useful skills to have in your mental toolbox (even if you forget how to express them mathematically).

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

If you are in a Dan Brown novel you can use it to impress the hero/heroine.

best reason ever, no?

 

[thelonewolf266]

Unless you want to be a Latin Teacher no.

 

[0_Insomnis_0]

Obviously you are an English speaker, so yes. Yes there is.

 

[tautologico]

Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian (to name a few) are directly based on Latin. Learning Latin has proven to greatly increase the ease and speed of learning all of these languages.

Also, someone has to write the lyrics of those Ominous Latin Choirs we hear so often.

Because it makes learning Romance languages much easier. And also it sounds bamf.

I did a GCSE in Latin, and I can't say it helped me much in French (taken to A level)

I studied some Latin (not much, but enough to have an idea of the language). My native language is Portuguese and I speak French, Spanish and Italian with varying levels of ability.

This thing about knowing Latin helping to learn romance languages is mostly bullshit. It does not help much beyond the basic roots and one or two things about syntax (verb tenses, a few things). Maybe if you know Latin really really well it does help to understand why some piece of syntax in the current romance languages is the way it is, but I doubt it. The romance languages have evolved for millenia after branching off from Latin, there is a lot of stuff there that is due to independent language evolution. The romance languages themselves are similar because of common roots and because they evolved in geographic proximity. Even so, French for instance is quite different from Portuguese, and Romanian has a lot of words with slavic roots.

So I don't think studying Latin is very useful today, in most cases. Not even to learn the romance languages. It may be useful if you want to study classic literature or the history of the Roman Empire or something like this. If someone want to study because they think it is cool, no problem with that. But it's not terribly useful, no.

 

[FortheLegion]

It seriously helped when I had to take the SAT test. My comprehension sore was through the roof!

 

[Jessta]

Cuz it is most obviously the first step in learning MAGIC!

I have no idea other than that its the foundation of a bunch of other languages and when your trying to build a house, you start on the foundations THEN the floor.