h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

hi there

I'm sitting right in front of my latin-homework, as suddenly the thought enters my brain that latin is completely useless, because it isn't a spoken language any more.

can anybody tell me what's the sense of learning latin?

Some possible reasons:

1. It is an intellectual exercise which will make your brain better able to cope with strange grammar. Learning German, Spanish etc. will seem easy after Latin.

2. The Latin words you pick up are used as the basis for many words in English, so you will be better able to cope with words in English you haven't seen before.

3. You will be able to read Latin poetry in its original language, in which it sounds the best.

I don't think any of them are very good reasons, myself.

I don't need to read latin poetry, neither to learn German.

But you might want to at some stage.

It comes in very handy if you want to do anything sceince related and it is great for understanding English too

I actually find it of more value to study English grammar than Latin grammar. While many words in English have Latin roots, the grammar is very different, English not being a strongly-inflected language.

It's only going to be really useful if you're planning to take up a career in the history of Rome or Mediaeval Christianity or somesuch.

I did Latin at school, and never made any use of it all.

Noggin

I, strangely enough, thought Latin was kind of fun People say again and again that knowing Latin will enhance your understanding of how many languages function. I never found that to be true - but then I may just have always known how languages function before entering the Latin class room.

Y - Erro Ergo Sum

I think the point about learning English grammar via Latin is that it's the only way to do so in our current school system, as schools don't actually teach *English* grammar.

And it does give you an understanding of word roots etc.

I never found Latin grammar any help in understanding other languages, but I did study Irish grammar, French grammar and German grammar, as well as a little bit of English grammar, so I already knew quite a bit of how languages hand together.

Most schoolchildren these days are not so fortunate, Gnomon. Learning a foreign language is usually the only way that you can gain an understanding of English grammar in a modern school.

I thought the whole point of learning Latin was snobbery? It still has a certain exclusive educational air attached to it.

When I did latin, I wanted to be a lawyer, so it seemed a vaguely natural subject to take. As a result, I did find that I understood english grammer an awful lot better, and this then transposed easily into understanding French.

And I did learn 'The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse' by Horace. That's gotta be worth it alone!

Latin did help me / does help me learning English vocabulary, because of the word roots (e.g. occupare -> occupied)

But I had to study the Latin words too...

However, it's right that it helps you understanding the grammar (in my case German grammar)

It gives you an underlying knowledge of all the European languages

>>all the European languages

I'd say just the ones descended from Latin: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French and Romanian.

There seems to be some thread leakage from the "Let's Spout Izzardisms" thread going on here.

but English and German have got many words derived from Latin, too.

English does but I don't think that German does.