Posted on 01/15/2021 10:18:46 AM PST by karpov
In her fine opinion piece for the Martin Center, Megan Zogby bemoans the “Quixotic” requirement that North Carolina college and university students take between two and four courses in a language such as Spanish, French, or German. This requirement, Zogby asserts, “appears to have no meaningful effect on the language proficiency of college graduates.” What is more, the coursework “adds to [students’] tuition bill, but doesn’t teach them a new skill for their careers.”
Anyone who has struggled through Spanish 102, only to find it difficult to impossible to ask for directions to the restroom in a Latin American restaurant, can empathize with Zogby’s points. Why, she concludes, might colleges and universities not “admit the time has come for a change?”
I agree. Higher education institutions should roll back the requirements that students study a modern foreign language. In fact, they should roll their requirements all the way back to an original language of university instruction: Latin.
“But Latin is a dead language,” you may be thinking. “Nobody even speaks it anymore. Why should anyone have to pay to study a dead language for one or even two years?”
Again, I agree, in part. If I were the “decider,” I would require more than two years of Latin, beginning far sooner than postsecondary education. College may be too late for any but the most gifted or dedicated to acquire spoken or written fluency in a language.
Spoken fluency is hardly the point with a dead language, however, and college is definitely not too late for a student to gain the many other benefits that come from even beginning to study Latin.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
How about we make sure students can speak and read English fluently? As re. Latin - as with all language study our current pedagogy is wrong where we have students studying grammar and vocabulary without context. We learn language as children via context and repetition not by studying grammar. That comes from learning language in context.
Our kids write well because they spent time translating from another language, French, German, Greek, and Latin. But Latin is most useful for translation exercises. It teaches you the structure of the English sentence like nothing else.
Translation also makes you think twice about your word choice and makes you learn distinctions in English. That contributes to fluency.
Reading is passive. Writing is active. Translation exercises promote active fluency. But, yeah, if you can’t read, first learn to read.
English without Latin would be nearly as barbaric as northern Europe was before the Mediterraneans brought Latin - and Jesus... not in that order of importance.
bump
Medical terminology has evolved in great measure from the Latin and Greek languages. During the Renaissance period, the science of anatomy was begun. Many early anatomists were faculty members in Italian schools of medicine. These early anatomists assigned Latin names to structures that they discovered.
I agree in principle, but not in practice. If the American public is lacking the synapses that lead to learning what an indirect object is in English, then it will find that concept even harder in Latin. If the folks have no clue what an adverb is, or a participle, they will stare at you glassy-eyed if you bring up the corresponding features in Latin.
The dumbing down cannot be reversed by teaching Latin to the general public. Someone needs to write about why you can stop anyone on the streets of Amsterdam or Stockholm and ask for directions in English, and get a coherent answer in English. You can even have some success in Paris, Cologne and Rome! (Schools which do not take no for an answer. Learn it or don’t pass.)
My son is in 10th grade and in a classical program with the 3 areas Rhetoric Grammar and Logic. Latin is required he is now in 5th form
They go 2 days a week in full blazer tie slacks the other 3 days parents use online lesson plan to follow and ensure assignments are complete
I am very very lucky as his high School is held at a Baptist Church 5 mins from my house
“Anyone who has struggled through Spanish 102, only to find it difficult to impossible to ask for directions to the restroom in a Latin American restaurant”
forgive my spelling
Dande esta los banos?
Mas Cervesa.
All the Spanish I need to know.
Wait till I write my Mandarin.
JungWa
Personally I think conversation level is all you need or want for most languages outside your native tounge.
Actually, translation does more than just that.
There are plenty of people who speak two or more languages fluently (I'm talkin' near-native-speaker fluency here), yet flounder when challenged to translate, e.g., a legal text from one language to another.
Having grown up and gotten a degree in the U.S., then spending the remaining 2/3 of my life in a foreign country, working as a court-appointed interpreter and technical translator, has given me an appreciation of that fact.
But, of course, you are speaking here of mere "translation exercises."
Regards,
To the contrary. Because English draws from French and German, it doesn't naturally lend itself to analysis with grammatical concepts. So Latin is the better avenue.
But more important than that. When you study English for grammar's sake, you don't learn English. You learn grammatical vocabulary. Whereas if you're translating from Latin to English, you simply learn the the grammatical vocabulary along the way, as a tool.
Actually, the reverse is true: In the course of learning Latin or any other inflected language, it will become abundantly clear what an indirect or direct object is. This knowledge can then be transferred / applied to the speaker's native language, which might be an analytical language like English.
Regards,
Ich erhebe Einspruch!
German is an inflected language. Not as much as Latin, but it is still possible to determine the function of many of the words in a sentence based upon their differing spellings.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Euer ergebenster Diener
Pig Latin?
“How about we make sure students can speak and read English fluently?”
Very true. I’d say let the students decide whether they want to take Latin as an elective.
What’s wrong with people learning how to converse in Latin? Not everyone, but it sounds cool.
But German will be difficult. Latin is easier. To push the envelope, pick German over Latin.
However, most kids learning German today, are busy learning about ins Kino gehen. That's because introductory language teaching in the USA today is largely social conditioning for UNICEF, WHO, or Greenpeace.
Food for thought: our Founding Fathers never had a formal course in English Grammar. Rather, they learned their English grammar through exercises in Latin translation. Their English turned out pretty good.
Except that we really don’t use Latin Grammar. Anyone who has studied German or Russian understands that as both languages use Latin Grammar with all the cases - accusative, dative, generative etc. Ours is simplified as were French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian etc.
When I was a kid we were taught english grammar, diagramming sentences and all. But I never really understood english grammar until I learned Spanish grammar.
So your point is a good one, that learning Latin (or any other language well) will improve your english.
But for me, the reason to learn any language is to use it. Learn Latin, for example, to read Cicero in the original. Learn Spanish or German or whatever to open doors intellectually, not just to be able to travel though that is important.
I disagree with some who think its sufficient to be able to order a beer and ask for the restroom. There is a world of thought and knowledge that for me should be the purpose of learning a language.
I was reading recently Ben Franklin’s memoirs... he was self taught in Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin... just so he could read their books. Of course, later in life he wound up living in France, so learning to speak the language would have been that much easier as he could already read the language.
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