I see myself as a logophile. I've been part of AWAD, wwftd, and M-W mailing list since I was 16 (Okay, I'm only 19, but still). Also, I used to like to just randomly browse through the dictionary for hours and hours reading random words. It got to the point that I used to write out definitions of words which I liked. But then college and "busy-ness" hit, so I can't do that anymore.
Okay, I'm going off topic.
Do you think someone like me that has a passion for words should take a course in Latin? I'm in college now, and I think I should use it as an opportunity before I graduate.
Have any of you taken Latin? How were your experiences?
Latin is the foundation of about a third of English words (along with Old English and French). (Anyways, Latin comes from French too). With Latin I hope to gain the skill of being able to see a word I have never seen before, break it up to its roots and affixes, and figure out what it means by its Latin root. Sometimes I can already recognize words by those roots. I'm thinking it can open up this whole new door of understanding for me.
Also, Latin might also help me with Spanish, which is another language I speak (although I'm getting kind of rusty), and I've always been frond of French, which are both Latin languages.
(I think I have a few songs in Latin too.)
If you have an affinity, sry typing one handed so if there are spelling errors that is why, go for it. I personally think Latin is an excellent language. Wish I had taken it when I was your age.
Mech--
The two most important courses I ever took were Latin and typing. Both have facilitated my communication abilities over the years and have both brought me much enjoyment in my years of life (almost 3 times yours, but...)
The other course of instruction that was important to me was the family dinner. Both of my parents were journalists, and we lived a life of words and newspapers. At the time we were blessed with four daily newspapers, the Washington Post, Star, Daily News, and the Alexandria Gazette (the latter was the paper my mother worked for.)
Every evening at dinner we'd pass around the papers and talke about what was in them and why it was there. Television news was not allowed and we ate purposely at 6 so we had a good excuse to avoid the crap that was usually foisted off as news.
Interesting in one respect because my father many years before had turned down a job in TV that was then offered to some guy named Walter Cronkite. But the reason for turning it down was that, according to my father, "There's no future in this television thing. Oh, dear, would you remind me to call my broker tomorrow and buy more stock in Acme Buggywhip?"
I didn't take any Latin till I was about 40. My first word-oriented memory is of an episode in an English class in elementary school. We had been reading a story that had a kookaburra in it and the glossary at the end of the story defined it as "a laughing jackass" without pointing out that the phrase was just a sobriquet. No one in the class, including the teacher, except I had picked up on the fact that the kookaburra was a bird. There was a quiz that included asking what the kookaburra was. I got it wrong by virtue of giving a correct answer.
I do remember reading dictionaries when I was a youth.
Go for it, Mech. My view of Latin at age of 11 was soured by the circumstances, but it’s an undoubted asset if you want to further develop your appreciation of languages, being as you imply a major foundation stone in many tongues. I have since picked up a fair bit of Latin just from my study of English etymology; since you enjoy words you will doubtless get a real kick out of the study.
My only caveat, to use a suitable Latin term, would be to make sure you understand that you will be learning a different language. This may seem an obvious enough point, but you might be surprised at how many people confuse themselves and others by trying to force English into the straitjacket of a foreign syntax – “this is how the Latin worked, so it must be the same in the English version derived from it!” Nuh-uh ~ calques, loanwords and other processes contribute to a language’s development in much more complex ways than straightforward adoptions of a word stem might suggest. But I expect you already appreciate this. Have fun.
Yes! Take Latin! I agree with TEd: Latin and typing were two of the most important classes I had in high school (the third was World Literature). Latin will help you understand grammar better and yes, it will help you learn other languages -- even if they're not Latin-derived. It will also help you play Hogwash (over in Wordplay & Fun), as you begin to work out roots and affixes. Go for it!
I think you've already talked yourself into it, Sweetie!
As one who never took any Latin, I can tell you, as a word lover you'll regret it if you don't.
All of the above, especially the hogwash bit.
I don't remember ever not loving words. My lucky self had an English teacher Mom, a fantastically literate Dad and a Chaucer professor for an Uncle who spent most weekends at our home and often brought along favorite students for the weekend.
I wrangled up 5 new subscriptions for my paper route, when I was 12, so that I could get the prize of a new dictionary. (oops - cross thread. 'Too many bops on the noggin with that heavy Latin textbook I guess)
My Latin teacher, in Freshman year HS, used to whack me on the head
as he declined a word that I had made a mistake on. Despite that, I'm glad I took the course, not that I had a choice. My subsequent Latin teachers were less violent.
I took two years of Latin in HS and participated in the Latin club. I came in first in Latin translation and Latin poetry recitation at the state competition. It was a fun thing to do, but the most important thing I got out of the experience was an appreciation of English grammar, which prior to that time I had always thought of as arbitrary and mysterious. At least now it doesn't seem mysterious to me.
Since that time I have forgotten nearly everything I had ever learned, but I still consider it time well spent.
Thanks.
I'm definitely taking it next semester!
Welcome Mechan.
Taking Latin is a good idea. The love of languages and words will always serve you well.
I'm not sure how studying an inflected language like Latin would help you understand the grammar of an analytic language like English any more than the study of any other foreign language would. In particular I would think that studying German would be better if only because it gives you an analog to the English phrasal verb that I don't think most of the older of us were ever exposed to in English grammar classes.
If you don't want to "spend" your efforts in a college class -- which proceeds at the teacher's pace -- learning Latin, there are several not-bad Latin courses available on-line which can be done at the student's pace, which is sometimes better.
I took a semester of Latin in college and am glad I did.
I wish I had seized the opportunity in college to really learn another language like Spanish, French or German or perhaps an Asian language. Instead I just half-heartedly fulfilled my foreign language requirement.
I first tried to learn Latin on my own in third grade. I had got my hands on a turn-of-the-century Latin grammar, and was diligently trying to figure out what cases were and why Latin has five or sometimes six, when I stopped trying. Latter, in high school, I got the Latin teacher (who also taught English and German) to teach me Latin during his break period. The deal was I'd get to keep the Latin textbook, as Latin had been cancelled years before to help pay for more footballs or tackling dummies, and I'd give him 5 minutes to smoke a quick cigarette. A couple of years later I took Latin 2 in the local Community College (also taught by a German teacher), and by the time I got to a four year university, I took Latin prose. We read Cicero's Pro Archia and memorized grammatical terms from Buck and Hale's. Other languages I studied formally while in school: Spanish, French, German, Sanskrit, Hittite, Hindi, Homeric Greek, and Tunica. The former Russian teacher at our high school also gave me a copy of the no longer used Russian textbook, and would try to speak Russian with me. He was teaching social studies at that point, but at one point also flew back to Washington DC to translate between Brezhnev and Nixon. After graduating, I also had the pleasure of teaching Latin 1 to four undergraduates at another local four year college as TA for the Latin and Homeric Greek professor (who also taught German).
I think that Latin is a good language to learn because it is different, grammatically, from English, and exposes you to new ways to carve up the morphological and syntactic pie. When some pedant tells you that word order is a feature of universal grammar, you can laugh at them (to yourself). Also, when somebody tries to hypercorrect the plural of virus, you can snort.
Other than Latin, I'd say a good language to study is Mandarin Chinese. It's got no overlap lexically. It's got the tone thing. And it's got a world-class difficult and different writing system. It seemingly has no morphology; at least no inflection. Lots of people also speak it.
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Also, when somebody tries to hypercorrect the plural of virus, you can snort.
Hehe
I actually understood that.
Um.... I unsuccesfully tried to learn Esperanto by myself a few years back... I remember I also wanted to learn Hawai'ian.
I want to learn so many languages too: Latin, French, Japanese, German, maybe Esperanto, maybe Italian. But I wouldn't be able to. I'd have to be in school forever and dedicate my entire schooling to languages, and I'm alrady half way done. And you only take about four or five classes a semester, I would at least have to take two years of each language. And then there's actually practicing it and maintaing it and not forgeting. I took two years of French in middle school and I don't even remember anything.
I'll bring this up again, although this was mentioned some time ago
The Finnish Broadcasting Company airs news in Latin, and apparently host a
Latin website with news from Finland and abroad. Maybe worth checking out... I'd guess you can listen to the news through the website if you want to.
Rumor has it that this Latin service is now Finished due to death threats from the Geek Orthodontic Church in protest at the cartoons poking fun at The Tooth Fairy. ;]
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The Finnish Broadcasting Company airs news in Latin, and apparently host a Latin website with news from Finland and abroad.
So what is it with Latin in Finland? In my family we have the oddest story concerning this: back when my mother was a kid, sometime in the 1950s, my grandfather, who was a schoolteacher and therefore taught Latin to his students, found a youngish student-type foreigner wandering around the streets in Madrid, completely lost, slightly agitated, and unable to communicate in Spanish, or French, of which my grandpa had a smattering. My grandfather was concerned about this young man's situation and took him home nearby, so that the guy could have some food, some rest, and hopefully they could work out where he was meant to be going.
Over lunch, although no one at the house could speak anything much other than Spanish, they all managed to communicate with signs, and when they showed the man an atlas he pointed out Finland as his country. In the process of trying to find out more about him my grandpa had the lightbulb idea to try some Latin words, and voilá! The Finn could understand it and speak back! Before my maternal family's astounded eyes, my grandpa and this foreigner launched into this weird Latin conversation, which well-declensed or not, allowed them to establish that the man was trying to make his way to Andalucía, to see Córdoba and Granada. The rest of the story is kind of shrouded in the mists of time, but apparently they managed to put him on a train for his destination eventually, my grandpa happily going clackety-clack in Latin all the time.
Random story, I know, but this is how my family learnt that Finns learn a lot of Latin, and that my grandfather could do much more than just teach it!
Other languages I studied formally while in school: Spanish, French, German, Sanskrit, Hittite, Hindi, Homeric Greek, and Tunica.
Wow, zmj.. Can you still converse in all of those languages?
I'm currently trying to learn Spanish. I'm using the Berlitz method with CDs and a really basic book to follow along with the CDs.
It's quite an interesting method. Apart from the opening chapter, that explains how the method works, there is no other language but Spanish in the textbook or spoken on the CD. The sounds around the words give you the indication of what they are saying.
What it forces you to do is learn the words without doing the translation thing that slows down the thinking process - and slows down your speaking since you translate as you go. It also teaches you basic grammar and verb conjugasions, which is good.
So when they say "Pedro canta" and you hear Pedro singing, you know that they are saying Pedro is singing an assimilate it as canta.
The course isn't meant to be a "tourist" phrases course. Some courses are only designed for you to learn to pronounce specific sentences without really getting a grasp on the language, or being able to hold a conversation.
For example, a German cassette I once tried, focused on teaching things like "where can I catch a bus?" "Where is the restaurant?" Unfortunately, if you don't know the parts of the sentence, you can only learn phonetically and you won't be able to understand anybody that answers you with anything more than a point in the right direction.
Mechan. Maybe you could learn the languages you want that way. It is much cheaper than paying for live classes. If you wish to do business in different languages, then you need the live classes, but if it is just to be able to converse, this is a great method.
Can you still converse in all of those languages?
Ah, bel, if only. I was careful to say "studied formally". I can still get by in Spanish and French, an German is my best foreign language. The others I remember mainly grammar, but lack sufficient vocabulary. Tunica, I really don't recall much, though I studied it with Professor Mary Haas who gathered info on it from one of the last native speakers in the '30s and wrote a grammatical description which I must still have somewhere. I've always wanted to write up a little Berlitz-style foreign phrase book for Sanskrit and Hittite. Pardon me, which way to the library of Alexandria? that sort of thing.
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Mechan. Maybe you could learn the languages you want that way. It is much cheaper than paying for live classes. If you wish to do business in different languages, then you need the live classes, but if it is just to be able to converse, this is a great method.
Well, I've always assumed that learning by yourself isn't really successful.
Is it? Has anyone learned on their own and became really good in the language, almost fluent?
Well, I'm only at the start of CD number three so I can't say for sure, but I learned enough to walk into a client's office last week and ask, in Spanish, if my buyer was in because I had an appointment with him at 2:00 p.m.
I knew the receptionist at this office speaks Spanish fluently so I piped right up with it.
As soon as I asked her she flew into a whole slew of Spanish, really quickly, so I asked her (in Spanish again) to slow down because I was only learning.
She said that my accent was perfect so she'd assumed that I spoke fluently.
The tone and accent I got from practicing with the CD.
Doesn't answer your question exactly, but I think the CD learning is a step in the right direction.
Excuse the "definition" post in the middle of this thread folks...
zmj. I misunderstood the term "studied formally". I'd never heard it before, so I assumed that it meant that you had studied the subjects and knew them in their entirety (from A to Z so to speak).
But, from your response, I gather that's not what it means. Can you tell me what it does mean?
I simply meant that I'd studied them with an instructor and in a classroom rather than on my own. I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to mislead you ...
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So what is it with Latin in Finland?
Good question (and story), Marianna -- Finnish is not even an IE language, let alone Latinate!
No worries zmj. You didn't mislead me at all. I simply misunderstood the expression since I'd never heard it before.
So what is it with Latin in Finland? There's a
Finnish professor, Dr Ammondt, who's released a CD of himself covering Elvis songs translated in Latin.
That's a good question, Marianna. I really don't know. Probably one reason could be that, when I was in junior high (in mid-nineties), we were told that we'd have to learn Latin if we ever wanted to apply to medical school. Of course, that turned out to be completely bogus when we reached senior high, but most of my friends took the course anyway - just to understand the difficult words that inevitably come up when studying medical field.
Moreover, we Finns do study a lot of languages: an average Finn starts his/her English studies in the third grade (age 10), Swedish studies (the second official language in Finland) in the seventh grade (age 13), and one more foreign language in the eigth grade (not obligatory as Swedish and one foreign language). My third language was French, but I really do not remember any of it... The choices you make are dependent of the school district: in rural towns, you can't choose anything but English, but in bigger towns (like mine, 200 000 inhabitants), you can choose for example French to be your first foreign language. If you choose something else than English, you can start learning English in the fifth grade (age 11) and the other two languages follow in the same order despite of your first language. Consequently, you can study four different languages at the age of 14, and continue all of them throughout senior high school. One reason for the popularity of Latin in Finland could be that schools want to distinct themselves from other schools by a broader curriculum - some schools offer Russian and Spanish (which are not that popular in Finland), and other offer Latin or Greek...
Marianna, some Finnish words do originate from Latin, and some from English (some of those have roots in Latin), and sometimes it is easier to think of the Latin word to create the Finnish one, or vise versa. Maybe this somewhat answers to your question?
Oh, and zmjezhd, I checked the site you gave, and found it interesting. He also has recorded Blue Suede Shoes in sumerian(!). There's also a Finnish metal band (Amorphis) that has taken all of their lyrics from a the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, and translated them to English. A bit off topic, but thought it could be mentioned here also...
Took 2 years of Latin in high school. Then in medical school picked up more Latin (and some Greek) vocabulary by reading the medical dictonaries. Outcome: better understanding of English and its roots; modest ability to read Spanish and Italian; some ability to speak both; less ability to understand them when spoken.
Yes! take the Latin!
RNB