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Learning Latin - Has It Helped You?
4/3PI*R^3 asks: "CNN is reporting that Latin is experiencing a revival in schools. The reason - Latin is used in the sciences and technology is based on science. Latin is also useful for registering .US domain names :).
How many Slashdot readers have learned Latin and how has it helped you in your life/career? 'non impediti ratione cogitatonis'"
Not having learned Latin, but being a scientist I can answer a different question -- Have I ever, in my scientific career, wished I had learned Latin? Never.
These urban Latin programs may well work, or may just be a gimmick, but if they are effective I'd suspect it's the everyday uselessness that's effective. The idea of learning something for the pleasure and prestige of learning it is probably unfamiliar to many of the kids in the program, as is the pleasure of hearing something in an unrelated class and realizing they have information to bring to bear on it.
But for following science? Even if that logic held up, you'd be better off learning Greek.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I have not learned Latin. But I have picked up a lot of it from my /and/ Manly pursuits at the same time.
theology studies. I was reading the Malius Malificarum earlier this
year and all the foot notes were still in Latin. Any time I was
unsure or questioning the meaning of an important one I would call up
experiment-4578[0] as to the meaning of it. Latin is very helpful in
the areas of theology, medicine, law, and talking to
tall-beautiful-young girls who happen to know it, thus enabling you to
balance Geeky
I have however studied a bit of Ancient Greek[1] and have found even
it to be a very nice language to pick up. But once you learn Greek
you can no longer say "It is all Greek to me". But every skill
acquired means one less thing you can claim ignorance on.
Not that I keep up on these things.
[0] who is fluant in Latin
[1] bible debates are much more fun this way.
Ascii artist &
I'm taking Latin II in high school right now (high school instruction ususally goes up to Latin V). In my biology class, Latin has helped me figure out the meaning of some words because I know (or can guess) the meanings based on the Latin words they are derived from. Also, a lot of times my Latin class teaches me more about English than my English class does, which is just not right. ;-) Anyway, I really enjoy taking Latin, and it is actually fairly easy to learn because there aren't so many fscking exceptions to the rules like in English! (I do particularly despise the third declension though...)
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
viri.
virus is a third declension noun (for the millionth fucking time.) Vir- is the root, thus...
singular
nom: -us/-er
gen: -i
dat: -o
acc: -um
abl: -o
plural
nom: -i
gen: -orum
dat: -is
acc: -os
abl: -is
And yes, virii does make you look stupid.
Just like viruses does. Or do you work on datumbases, dickhead?
I took Latin for three years in HS, and I got straight A's, but unfortunately I don't remember any of it any more. I did, however, gain a much better understanding of human languages as a whole. In fact, many of my friends are impressed at my linguistic abilities, which I attribute mostly to my study of Latin. Unlike European languages, which have various grammatical structures merged into a few words, everything is "spelled out" in Latin. It's impossible to understand English grammar completely using just English.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I'm a student finishing up a double major in Classics and Computer Science (None of the classes I've taken counted for both, in case you're wondering) But I'm always surprised at people's reaction when I tell them I study Latin.
Generally people are impressed but I always feel like they seem me the way computer science people think of someone who still uses their Apple II because they think it's inherently better.
Granted, Latin is hard. Also, it's not like other languages where you can go somewhere far away but still know how to ask where the bathroom is. But the advantages of Latin are totally different.
I think they are similar to the kind of things you would learn from studying logic for example. Learning Latin doesn't have direct practical benefits but it has so many secondary benefits.
First of all, I think vocabulary is one of the biggest. I've always had a large vocabulary but since studying Latin it seems an order of magnitude larger. I think this is because I have some greater degree of fluency, that is I have more confidence that I understand words more fully so I'm not afraid to use unfamiliar ones.
Secondly, Latin teaches grammar. This is probably the most noticable (and annoying) benefit. Our education system is failing to teach kids proper grammar. If you disagree pay attention to the next person you talk to and listen for adverb/adjective confusion. If you don't know those words, I rest my case. Every day, several times a day, I have to resist the urge to strangle someone because they make mistakes that are so blatant to me. This did not happen before I studied Latin.
Finally, I'd say that simply because of it's complexity learning Latin is helpfull to students. A great deal of discipline is required to memorize the paradigmatic forms. I can definately see how learning forms would help mathmatical reasoning, etc.
Anyway to sum up I think you need to look at how learning Latin (or Greek for that matter) affects the way a person thinks in order to see the benefits. If you look for direct benefits to knowing the actual language you won't find many other than reading inscriptions once in a while (which is acutally pretty fun, and it makes you look really smart)
A:Latin helped me write a Perl program!
I used my knowledge of Latin to help me write the Name of a Number Perl / CGI program. Now I know how to determine the English name of any integer of any size. While some dictionaries list names of numbers as large as 10^33 (one decillion) or even 10^63 (one vigintillion), it took a study of Latin before I was able to determine the name of numbers such as:
You never know when you may need to give the English name of a large integer. It was almost 20 years after I discovered what was then (in 1979) the largest known prime 2^23209-1 before I knew how to pronounce the English name of its decimal representation. If I had studied Latin in more detail when I was in grade school then I would have been ready to answer the frequently asked question: "How do you pronounce it?"
1/2 :-)
chongo (was here)
If you are looking for a language that will teach you structural thinking, try Greek over Latin. The Greek case system allows for the different parts of the sentence to be strung with greater randomness and yet have more specific meaning than Latin. To me, this is very similar to structural programming. Latin, on the other hand, is only a bit better than classical Hebrew where one can know what all the parts can do on their own and *still* not know what the whole means! I go with Alexander the Great: If it cannot be expressed in Greek, it cannot be expressed!
just like code.
The reason latin helps me in my career - I took 6 years of Latin at a Dutch secondary school - is because it forces you to be extremely precise in the way you think. Modern languages allow a certain amount of ambiguity - English notoriously so - in the way you express yourself. Latin - like code - requires you to specify exactly what you mean.
The cool thing was that - after a few years - latin became second nature. It was no longer necessary to laboriously parse each word to make sense of the sentence, instead, the meaning started to become clear from the whole construct. I have found this to be the case with code as well - after a while, you no longer worry about the syntax of a given language, but rather move up a level to looking at the architecture as a whole.
Would I recommend Latin to anyone who has the option ? Only if you persevere. The first couple of years were tedious and frustrating; there's a lot of memorizing of stuff that appears to be complex for its own sake, and you have to work very hard to get even small results.
After you have the basics though, it becomes very rewarding - all western european languages become easier, the clarity of thought Latin brings with it pays handsome dividends, and we got to translate texts that were basically pornographic. There's nothing better than being 16 years old and having to translate porn for your homework. Oh, well, maybe there is....
The link with science and law is more about the absolute clarity of thought required than about the fact there's a bunch of words those disciplines borrowed or inherited from a dead language...
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
cutulis? it's "catullus". jesus
learning latin is beneficial if you **want** to learn latin; you will learn much more that you never would have considered, had you not taken it in the first place. it's kind of like learning c++, would you use it in everyday life outside of coding? no...but wouldn't it teach you immensely in the realm of logical thought processes and problem-solving, and open you up to the world of computers? i would think yes.