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'"

Comments

Primus postus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Basi meum posterior!!

Helps me

[Henry V .009]

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Not nearly worth the effort otherwise.

I took Latin

[anthony_dipierro]

How many Slashdot readers have learned Latin and how has it helped you in your life/career?

After taking Latin I've started snickering at people who use the objective case for predicate nominatives. Other than that, I don't think it's helped me at all, other than allowing me to get a degree without doing oral recitations in my language class.

Re:I took Latin

[LWolenczak]

*falls out of his chair laughing his ass off*

Re:I took Latin

[extrasolar]

"...I've started snickering at people who use the objective case for predicate nominatives."

"...those bumbling idiots who use a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent!"

Anyone willing to offer a clue to the grammatically-impaired?

Re:I took Latin

[spongman]

I believe that the first is referring to overzealous usage of the word 'whom'. For example, "He gave the object to whomever he chose." is incorrect because 'whom' is the object case of that interrogative pronoun but is being used here as a predicate nominative (a repetition of the subject) of the verb 'to give'.

The second refers to the common practice of replacing singular pronouns (he/she) and singular posessive pronouns (his/her) with their plural equivalents (them/their) in a context where gender is unknown. The example given should read "Everyone open his or her book!" since the word 'everyone' is a singular anticedant.

Re:I took Latin

[eimaj]

Call me a bumbling idiot, but I like using "they" as a non-gendered singular pronoun, as well as using "their" when referring to a non-gendered singular "them". It's intuitively clear, and more concise than "he or she". If such a construct isn't an accepted part of the English language, it should be. In fact, at one time it was...


http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.htm l


http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/s-pinker.htm l


http://www.english.vt.edu/~grammar/GrammarForWri te rs/forum/ForumTheir.html

I don't think so

[Otter]

The reason - Latin is used in the sciences and technology is based on science.

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.

Re:I don't think so

[dgmartin98]

I'd have to agree. I did bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering. Other than the occasional abbreviation in latin, I hardly ever see anything in latin, or hear of anything in latin.

Sure, some things might have their derivations in latin, but you have two choices:

1. learn an occasional new word, that just happens to have its derivations in latin.

2. learn an entirely new language (latin), and expanding your vocabulary of that language to 100s if not 1000s of words, so that you don't occasionally have to do #1, above.

I picked #1.

But hey, I learned a related language that's even more important:
Iay ancay peaksay igpay atinlay!

Dave

It taught me one important thing...

[Cubeman]

Semper ubi sub ubi!

Translation: Allways wear your under wear

[LWolenczak]

That one reminds me of my high school latin class....

Re:Translation: Allways wear your under wear

[adamjaskie]

Actually, the literal transliteration is "Always where under where" iirc.

Other perks

[Faux_Pseudo]

I have not learned Latin. But I have picked up a lot of it from my
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 /and/ Manly pursuits at the same time.

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.

Re:Other perks

[kmellis]

I studied Attic and Homeric Greek for a couple of years in college, and Koine came along for the ride. In fact, I struggled with Attic and Homeric, felt like an idiot compared to many of my classmates, but discovered that I actually had learned something when I found I could easily read New Testament stuff (well, Revelations was a problem).

A lot of the stuff that's available out there for learning Koine Greek specifically is not that reliable or rigorous. My sister is an evangelical minister and missionary; and although her education has improved over what it once was, at one point early on she was being taught some seriously skewed Greek. She tried to assure me that "logos" meant primarily "word of God".

(Incidentally, I experimented with some Unicode typefaces and page-encoding, and made The Gospel of Matthew available from my personal web page . The page includes a note with links to some Greek typefaces and tools.)

I would love to have some Latin. At my school (and probably elsewhere), one often hears (to this day, I'm sure) a quote from, I believe, Gertrude Stein:

"Greek and Latin are wonderful languages to have learned."

I've lost most of my Greek, but it made me think a lot more carefuly about language, which was mostly the point. That and having a stronger grasp of some of the writers we read.

I have to chuckle at the question of the vocational utility of an aquaintence with Latin. Hell, a large portion of the stuff that one learns in contemporary American universities that supposedly is of vocational utility, isn't. Just getting the degree is the most important thing on a superficial level. On the deeper level, working hard learning how to learn will serve a student well for the rest of his or her life. Learning a classical language, among many other subjects, is a good, challenging endeavor.

q.v. -- sig [sic]

[rodentia]

It's not just a sig, it's a lifestyle choice.

Everyone should at least learn

[PD]

The plural of virus is viruses. Virii just makes you look as smart as a bowl of chickenpoxen

Re:Everyone should at least learn

[bellings]

chickenpoxen

It's chickenpoxii, you dumbass.

Re:Everyone should at least learn

[jkramar]

Try something more like chickenpoces, or, if pox is in the neuter, which I don't think it is, then chickenpoca or pocia. However, poces sounds non-neuter. Pretty much any noun ending in -x is in the third declension. To produce chickenpoxii, you would need pox to be in the second declension. Besides, poxii sounds wrong; few plurals end in ii, although you might be tempted by the cities of Pompeii and Veii and their filii and their disgusting, improvised, incorrectly conjugated virii to think otherwise.

Re:Everyone should at least learn

[bellings]

Uhhh... yeah. What's the plural of "flu", then? While you're at it, would you mind telling me the plural of "water", "gold", and "dust" ?

Re:Everyone should at least learn

[bellings]

Sigh... I think you've kind of missed the point. The joke is that

there is no plural for chickenpox

You see, it's funny. Ha ha.

There is no plural for chickenpox, flu, gold or dust in the english language, in exactly the same way that there is no plural for "virus" in latin. You see, It's complete nonsense to talk about such a thing as a "correct" latin pluralization for "virus", in the same way as it's nonsense to talk about the "correct" english pluralization for "water".

It's funny. Laugh. That's why we're talking about it slashdot -- the home of the nonsense conversation.

Utterly useless.

[Futurepower(R)]

I took Latin for 4 years in high school. It has proven utterly useless.

Re:useful? no.

[spencerogden]

Does everyone translate the aeneid? All I can remember is one line "Quos Ego...!" And I probably still got that wrong.

Pitiful geeks.. latin rules.

[iamsure]

I took latin in High School, and it easily boosted my SAT's by a good hundred points.

While I have a strong vocabulary, it never hurts to improve it, and learning latin made learning new words much easier!

It has helped in more ways than I can possibly express.

Definitely worthwhile.

The old rhyme

[Anonymous Coward]

Latin is a language
as dead as it can be
It killed the ancient Romans
And now it's killing me.

Re:The old rhyme

[spongman]

wow, that brings back some old memories... of my latin classes... ugh.

SAT Bonus

[diesel_jackass]

I got my regents (for those of you in NYS) in Latin after taking it for 2 years, and it helped me tremendously on the SATs.

...but...

If you're looking for the perfect language, learn Esperanto. Its hella 1337.

Re:SAT Bonus

[diesel_jackass]

haha!
exactly!
except Esperanto can be learned much more rapidly because it is so goddamn logical.

Helps with Languages, Not with Science

[alacqua]

I don't see Latin as a big deal in science. Sure its there, but knowledge of Latin doesn't really help you - its more like trivia. Same with Latin in law and many other fields, I'm sure.

Where Latin has helped me is Languages. I think it helped me immensely with Languages. Particularly with romance languages but even others. I really had to learn grammar and structure with Latin and I gained a facility with pronunciation of new languages.

I would suggest, however, that an introduction to Latin - maybe one year - is enough. After that it is diminishing returns for a (mostly) dead language. Move on to a modern spoken language after an intro to Latin (unless you really love it).

Good for them

[polyphemus-blinder]

Latin, besides being damn cool, IS important. The simply ability to trace words back to their origins (even though English isn't a romance language) makes you understand your own language much better.

Since chat room speak is on the rise in more formal settings, I think a focus on the core of our language will help stem such idiocy. Not to mention the portability of its vocabulary and concepts such as declensions and noun gender into other languages.

I learned portugues while in Brazil....

[Pengo]

Now I can't speak for Latin, as I don't know it, but I learned more about my own language (English) learning a foreign language than studying it through high school and college. Professionally or scientifically learning a new language does nothing more than help you learn how to learn, at least in my own field of software.

I believe having learned another language, I have a better grasp on getting ideas across and even communicate technical issues. Also, I know how it feels to not be understood and probably even more so the frustration of not understanding. What someone else is saying.

It's a pretty humbling experience being 22 years old and talking at a 3-year-old level with adults.

Re:I learned portugues while in Brazil....

[Tumbleweed]

> It's a pretty humbling experience being 22 years old and talking at a 3-year-old level with adults.

"Why are you wanting me to be talking like a bot?" :)

Re:I learned portugues while in Brazil....

[whovian]

YES! I agree wholeheartedly. It took me learning a foreign language to understand my mother tongue (English). One thing I find interesting is how mainstream English, as compared to scientific writing, contains many misplaced modifying phrases. The meanings of those sentences sound okay spoken because we mentally move everything around. In writing, on the other hand, those same sentences sound really awkward aloud with the phrases rearranged to remove ambiguity.

Standardized testing

[Mr.Ned]

I've had two years of Latin. It has helped me an incredible amount on the verbal parts to standardized testing, mostly the PSAT and the SAT. For those readers not up to speed on the US college game, scores from those tests are almost as important as grades in school in getting into lots of universities.

Would I do it again? Yes. Even though I transferred to Spanish after my requisite two years, it was most certainly not useless or boring - quite the contrary. The literature (if you read primary sources) is incredibly fascinating.

How many Romans?... Oh Oh, Romani

[Tevye]

I studied Latin for four years of high school, and am disappointed that my college doesn't offer anything in the area. Nonetheless, my understanding of English grammar grew phenomenally. I'm not convinced that this might not have been due to the fact that modern English classes don't teach grammar anymore.

Latin not only gave me a clearer sense of how language and grammar in general, but a method of thinking not present in modern English. The whole concept of cases and conjugation can be relatively new to today's students.

The reading [and writing] of Latin requires a systematic mental process much akin to writing code, I've found. Much like Latin, code can often have blocks in which the order of bits don't matter much, but there are good and reasonable conventions which prevail. Latin is like this, and so is good code. I'm still a student, so I can't be sure of work experience, but Latin has increased my general academic ability greatly, and code and logic tremendously.

Of course, there are other benfits. Like that scene in Life of Brian (which we actually convinced our teacher to show in class) makes much more sense to a Latin student. Though, domum doesn't take a locative, it has a locative. *sigh* They did do pretty well though.

-Tevye

Re:How many Romans?... Oh Oh, Romani

[Permission Denied]

Latin not only gave me a clearer sense of how language and grammar in general, but a method of thinking not present in modern English.

Agree must I will. Your thinking changes learning languages by, and is this a thing good. My improved communication nouns I declining by.

Re:How many Romans?... Oh Oh, Romani

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, IIRC, the verb was placed last in the sentence, unless for a specific reason - adding emphasis, making poetry scan correctly :-).

My communication by declining nouns I improved / By declining nouns my communication I improved. It isn't that far from English. Just because they could, grammatically, change word order without altering the semantics, don't think that they did it all the time. Habit meant that word order was generally fairly standard, and altered only for stylistic effect, as in English - see my examples above. English, ancient Greek and Latin are good examples of the flexibility of grammatic rules being used to give a richer scope of expression. Your examples would sound as odd in Latin as they do in English, and would make people (persons :-) ) wonder what you were trying to say.

Latin II

[thebabelfish]

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...)

Igpay Atinlay?

[adamjaskie]

It is quite under-used these days...

Took 2 years in junior high

[Papineau]

I took 2 years of Latin at the beginning of junior high (7-8 grade). Since my first language is French, my relation to Latin is a bit stronger than for English speaking people, because French is closer to Latin than English (even if it's not that far away either). I can say it helped me to learn Spanish, too. And if i ever was to learn Italian.

As for the method of learning, my school used the Cambridge method rather than the "rosa rosa rosam, rosae rosae rosa, rosae rosae rosas, rosarum rosis rosis" method. Vocabulary and history (that of Pompei more specifically) were tied together in small 20 pages fascicles, so it wasn't as dry as some people told me from their experience. I enjoyed it, plus we convinced the teacher to organize a trip to Pompei in our second year.

programming in latin

[Felipe Hoffa]

Or you can go straigth to programing in Latin, thanks to the efforts of Damian Conway and his module for perl Lingua::Romana::Perligata.

The interesting stuff about programming in latin is that the order of the words doesn't matter any more. In english or most other languages ``The boy gave the dog the food'' has a different meaning than ``The food gave the boy the dog'', but in latin (and in perligata) a similar exchange would have no effect on the meaning of the statement.

Fh

Ps: The dog&food example was stolen from the Perligata web page, just go check it.

Two phrases of Latin I will always remember.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

"Cupio ejaculare in tuum orem."
and
"Magnum phallum habeo."

Tim

When in doubt, ask a Centurion for help!

[Tumbleweed]

Edited from: The Life of Brian script

Centurion: What's this then? Romanes eunt domus. People called Romanes they go
the house?
Brian: It, it says 'Romans go home'.
Centurion: No it doesn't. What's latin for 'Roman'? Come on...
Brian: aaah.
Centurion: Come on.
Brian: Ah! Romanus?
Centurion: Goes like?
Brian: Annus?
Centurion: Vocative plural of 'annus' is?
Brian: Anni?
Centurion: Romani. [He crosses out the 'es' and writes in 'i'.]
Eunt? What is eunt?
Brian: Go.
Centurion: Conjugate the verb 'to go'.
Brian: Uh. Ire - Uh... eo, is, it, imus, itis, eunt.
Centurion: So eunt is?
Brian: Ah, Uh, Third person plural of present indicative. They go.
Centurion: But Romans go home is an order, so you must use the?
--------[The centurian lifts Brian: by the sideburns... nasty, eh?]
Brian: The imperative.
Centurion: Which is?
Brian: Ahm. Oh, oh, um... I, I.
Centurion: How many Romans?
Brian: Ah. Plural, plural... ite, ite.
Centurion: Ite. [He again corrects the writing on the wall.]
Domus? Nomonative? 'Go home'? This is motion towards, isn't it, boy?
Brian: Dative, sir.
--------[The Centurian takes out his weapon, and holds it to Brian's throat.]
Ahh. No, not dative, not the dative, sir. Oh, Ah. Uh.
The accusative accusative. Ah, Domum, sir. Ab domum! Ah! Oooh! Ah!
Centurion: Except that 'domus' takes the?
Brian: The locative, sir.
Centurion: Which is?
Brian: Domum. Aaah! ah.
--------[Again, the writing is ammended.]
Centurion: Domum... um... Understand?
Brian: Yes, sir.
Centurion: Now write it out a hundred times.
Brian: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caeser, sir.
Centurion: Hail Caeser. And if it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls
off.
Brian: Ooh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caeser and everything, sir.
Oh. Mmm!

Latin is the assembly language of human languages

[LordNimon]

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.

Semper ubi sub ubi

[captainktainer]

For me, Latin has been a Godsend. My friends familiar with Spanish or French try to pass coded messages to each other or speak over my head in their languages of choice, thinking I won't understand it- I took the "dead language." However, I have discovered I can understand about 40% of the average Spanish or French periodical without knowing anything about the language, and about 80% of the conversational forms of those languages. While it is true Latin will not help the average geek in most fields, it can be a lifesaver in the biological sciences, and helps with chemistry as well. For that matter, in the more advanced math courses knowing Latin can help with memorization of key terms. Yes, you have to work at vocabulary to benefit from Latin studies. But do not forget that approximately 60% of English comes from Latin, with even higher rates in specialized fields. Do you really want to deny yourself a resource that, with use, will form the core of a broad knowledge base applicable in any number of places in life? I chose to pursue Latin, and I believe I have profited. Your mileage may vary.

Re:Semper ubi sub ubi

[jbarr]

A friend of mine in college who majored in "Classical Studies" told me that "Semper ubi sub ubi" while literal, is gramatically incorrect. He told me that according to Latin grammar rules, it requires a verb, so it should be "Semper ubi est sub ubi."

Amazing the stuff I remember from college!

Laughing.

[Futurepower(R)]

LOL

Latina scientem dat

[Descartes]

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)

Re:Latina scientem dat

[xtremex]

Manadarin! I have always been a Language Afficianado, and have loved languages since I was around 8. I was tutored in Chinese by the woman across the street. SHe bought the rice paper, and I was taught calligraphy, and the Mandarin tones.For 5 years this was a daily exercise. However, when I speak with Chinese people, all the tones are thrown out the window. So, therefore I have no idea what they are saying! The woman's kids (around my age) hated me, because they didn;t know a LICK of Chinese. They couldn't care less. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Mandarin is pretty much useless since 90% of Chinese in NY speak Cantonese, which is as close to Mandarin as Finnish is to English..oh well.

Career? CARREER?????

[stefanlasiewski]

How many Slashdot readers have learned Latin and how has it helped you in your life/career?

Career?!!? CARREER? You were trying to use a dead language in your CARREER?

Gee whiz, man!!! You were supposed to take that Latin Knowledge and become a Latin LoverJUST LIKE ME!!! The chicks get all giggly when I speak in dead toungues...

Some people don't get it...

Hooked on Latin worked for me!

[vaxer]

In high school, I was terrified of getting yelled at for saying something the wrong way, or accidentally ordering a plate of flaming testicles instead of a slice of pizza.

There were no snooty Romans alive to correct me on my pronunciation -- and in fact my teacher told me that there were two ways to pronounce things, Roman-style and medieval-style.

Then, in college, I tested out of Spanish because I knew enough Latin that I only needed a little bit of Spanish cramming to answer the placement exam questions. (That, and a Mu Alpha Theta career, and lots of standardized tests. If public schools have taught me anything, it's how to fill in a bubble sheet for a multiple-guess test.)

So I didn't end up speaking any languages other than English fluently, which sucks, but I did get my linguistics degree (think of it as a blessed +2 scroll of learn language named "I know Kung Fu") and went on to grad school for my librarian union card.

Hmm. Considering the fan noise coming from my computer, maybe I should have studied American Sign Language.

It certainly has helped... in unexpected ways

[Mark Hood]

Firstly, it greatly improved my vocabulary, since the meaning of many unknown English words can be guessed if you can spot the 'root' of the word.

It also helped with foreign languages (French, Spanish and other 'Romance' languages, obviously) and while I was working in Germany, and I didn't know the German word for something and the guy I was speaking to didn't know the English, we used the latin word!

Plus it can make you seem highly educated :)

I recommend Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus as a humourous primer to the language :)

Mark

latin helped me write a Perl program

[chongo]

Q: Learning Latin - Has it helped you?
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:

• 10^882 (one ducenttrenonagintillion)
• 10^1782 (one quingenttrenonagintillion)
• 10^9702 (one tremilliaducenttretrigintillion)
• 10^123456 (one unquadraginmilliacentunquinquagintillion)

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 :-)

Utor, fruor, fungor, potior and vescor...

[dpbsmith]

... take the ablative.

Arma virumque cano
Trojae qui primis ab oris
Littora, uh, uh saevae memorem Junonis ab orem
Multa quoque et bello passus dum conderet urbam
Uh, inferetque deos latio genus unde latinam
Um, um,
Albanique patres atque alte moenea Roma...

Or something like that.

And there you have it. Everything I got out of four years of Latin. Everything.

Latin is a way of thinking...

[PinglePongle]

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...

my experience

[ecloud]

I had a very strict old grammar teacher in 5th - 7th grades (at a private school) who taught English and Latin. It's somewhat interesting to see the relationships between the two languages; and if you learn the highly structured grammar of Latin, you will understand the parts of speech very well, whereas in English with its lack of structure (conjugations and delensions, agreement of person and gender and number etc.) they are not so painfully obvious. But alas she stressed grammar much more than vocabulary, and not having used Latin since, I forgot most of the words.

When I began to learn Russian however, the grammar concepts were so familiar already. (Russian has a much more pure Latin heritage than English, and very similar grammar rules). So in a sense it was useful, accidentally.

Latin and Greek in English

[marcus]

I had a class at Rice U that basically taught all three at the same time. The class was specifically oriented to teach the Latin and Greek components of English. So...we had vocabulary and grammar from three languages at once. It was actually a very entertaining class and the prof had us spewing our own composites in no time.

Re:Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary.

[xtremex]

I agree, but using that logic, the word ambulance makes no sense. Ambulare means to walk. Therefore an ambulance could mean "Something for walking" or "A walking vehicle"

Automated Translation of Latin (mildly OT)

[Embedded Geek]

O.K. First, I know that this completely goes against the strengths of learning Latin that the article cites - better reasoning skills, stronger grasp of many modern languages, etc. Nevertheless, here goes...

Every now and then (mostly in writing science fiction), I need a term translated into Latin. Google and Babblefish, offer many languages, but no Latin. Searching elsewhere, I have found many online Latin dictionaries, but since a lot of Latin's difficulty is in the formation of words for tense, possesives,etc. (see the much cited Life of Brian sketch) this is worthless to me.

So, does anyone know of any online Latin translating engines akin to Babblefish or Google? Any information would be appreciated.

Re:That's what studying a language does

[alacqua]

...but studying any language will make studying languages easier.

Agreed, but I think Latin is particularly good because (a) it seems to have more structure than both English and the romance languages I (marginally) know, forcing me to really learn grammar and abstract some concepts and (b) it is immediately applicable to said romance languages, a not so small subset of the languages to which I am exposed.

I don't know German but I have the impression it is also full of structure and grammar that I didn't get in English (e.g. declensions), so maybe it's just that I haven't had enough exposure.

Disclaimer: I took only one year of Latin and that was 20 years ago.

Latin Has Helped Immeasurably

[RobotRunAmok]

Three years of Latin in High School. Wished I had taken more in college, plus some Greek. Consider it of such a benefit that I've begun home-schooling my four-year old daughter in it.

Re:Most people underestimate the effort required

[njdj]

Does living there count...

Living in a country where the language is spoken is many times more effective than just studying books and recordings - I think your experience confirms that. So obviously it shortens the time needed.