Latin - what are the benefits?

[Anonymous]

Just wondering. I want my kids to take Latin, and my husband, who took Latin in school, thinks it's a waste of time. We are bilingual in two (living) languages, the kids have music lessons... I value Latin classes for their cultural/historical perspective as well as logic and rigor in grammar. Are there any benefits for college applications, though?

[Anonymous]

Do you mean you want them to take it in school?

[Anonymous]

OP here.

We have two options - either at our public middle school, or as a complement to their native language class, in our native language, on the weekend.

[Anonymous]

I am 30 now, so take this with a grain of salt, but there were some college application benefits to it. It's kind of a "soft" factor, like any other academic or other interest, but I talked about it in interviews and the like. The benefits you cite are all real, plus I do think it helped with SAT prep.

All that said, sometimes I wish I had taken a language that is actually spoken and could be used. I probably would have continued it in college. At my HS, Spanish was considered the "slacker" option, but I wish I had taken it.

[Anonymous]

The only advantage is in learning latin roots of English words, so you do better at vocabulary.

As in, I know every word with "bene" in it means something good and every word with "mal" means something bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only advantage is in learning latin roots of English words, so you do better at vocabulary.

As in, I know every word with "bene" in it means something good and every word with "mal" means something bad.

except for malt. malts are good.
And benedryl. Benedryl causes dementia now so that's bad.

[Anonymous]

I speak Spanish and English. Latin wasn't helpful because I already understood the latin cognates between English and Spanish. Is one of the languages your kids speak a romance language? Latin helped me a lot with vocab and GRE type words when I was in high school, but the declensions and conjugations were very difficult.

[Anonymous]

OP, I took Latin in 8th and 9th grade back in the '80s and to this day, I can remember studying root words, meanings of words and sentence structure. I was an English major in college and went on to a career in writing and communications. It was a tremendous help to me along the way, in too many instances to recall here. In fact, I still have my Latin text book and actually referred to it (to settle a bet!) several years ago.

If your DC likes writing, reading, word puzzles and the like, s/he will probably enjoy studying Latin. It may be an extra but there is certainly no downside to it.

[Anonymous]

The more academic Baltimore privates require latin in middle school, is this not the case in DC?

[Anonymous]

I have heard that it is good for college apps for very academic kids. A parent explained to me that kids have to take the SAT 2 or achievement test in a foreign language to apply to some colleges. If you take the Spanish, French, Chinese test you compete against native speakers who will blow anyone else away. In Latin, there are no native speakers. My kids charter middle school requires Latin, but I seriously doubt he'll be competitive for the most competitive colleges in 5 years.

[Anonymous]

Try it. DD 13 loves it, especially culture and mythology. Will enter Latin 2 as he freshman.

[Anonymous]

Took Latin in high school (2 years). Enjoyed it immensely and gave a lot of depth to both English and Spanish, which I spoke growing up, and helped me when I was learning French (more so than Spanish).

In addition, though people won't say this, there's a bit of a snob factor, a bit of cachet, to studying Latin.

[Anonymous]

The skills and thought processes from learning a living language vs learning a dead language are very different.

Both are beneficial. Many dead languages are grammatically different but logical according to their own set of rules. Meaning is found through deconstruction and reconstruction. I do not think it is a coincidence that those I know who majored in dead languages are in financial transaction fields.

[Anonymous]

FWIW my middle school kid who studies Latin got a stratospheric upper level SSAT verbal score with zero practice.

[Anonymous]

My undergraduate degree is in the Classics with a major in Latin. It was the first foreign language I took in high school (foreign language was only offered in HS in my district). Prior to Latin, I had no experience/exposure to foreign languages. As a PP noted, conjugating verbs and declining nouns was very difficult - in the beginning. Once I understood why and what I was doing, it made a lot of sense and really opened my eyes to what was happening in a sentence - not just in Latin but also in English (and eventually every other language I learned). I am fluent/proficient in 6 languages (including English) and Latin is the only one that is not currently spoken. When people ask me what the point of studying a dead language is, I tell them it's not just about a language, it's:

-understanding the derivation of words and the nuances that lead you to choose one over another
-understanding politics, economics and history
-analyzing and understanding how politics, economics, religion, etc influence thought and writings
-understanding relationships between politics, economics, military, culture, etc.
-understanding context

Albeit, you're not getting all this the first year you study Latin. But, it's provides an incredibly well rounded education and, if you have good teachers and stay with it long enough, you will truly become 'literate'. On standardized tests for verbal/written skills, I typically score in the 97-99th percentile. Ironically, my profession isn't related to this in the least. I've got an MBA and work in IT. Yet, I believe that because I studied the Classics, I bring more to an employer than is typical.