My Thoughts on Latin, for whatever they're worth

[ImaNataUMama]

The biggest benefit I got out of studying Latin is a stronger foundation for the roots of our own language.

I can decipher many more words than I 'know' because I learned the roots.

Look at it a little like this:

words are made up of letters - 26 letters in our alphabet to make up _all_ those hundreds of thousands of words in our own English language.

Roots are slightly bigger 'blocks' of 'pre-ordered' clumps of those letters. By building a good foundation in these larger blocks, and their simple meanings, we have even greater tools to break down really big complicated words in a way simple letter comprehension does not complete the picture.


That, and it is a huge asset when dealing with health care, since scripts and diagnosis are all done with Latin. It's just a really good extra when communicating effectively with the health care 'team' (doctors, nurses, etc.).


That does not equate the "be all, end all" in my book, either.

With my own children, we started off playing Rummy Roots. Lots of Rummy Roots. Then we added More Rummy Roots. They are two card games which have multiple venues of play to enable fun learning of the Greek, Latin and Hebrew roots to our language (predominantly Latin).

You go from simple go-fish style play and build up to actually building compound words rummy-style. There's a "cheat sheet" while you are getting started pairing the root with the English equivilant.


Then we worked on English from the Roots Up, which we really enjoyed. It was relaxed, easy going, and interesting.

We have, and have used LC, and a couple of old Latin text books my mentor and friend gifted to us (came from my old school), but we haven't cracked the whip and done oodles of formal full-on Latin grammar.


Because of our family dynamic, and various circumstance, we haven't been able to do a lot of 'organized' team sorts of stuff, so I did let them each pick their own second language they wanted to study. I suppose that would technically be third language, as we have deaf in the family and I teach the children basic ASL as a matter of daily living.

One chose German, then expanded into Spanish and French, and is now considering Russian.

Another chose French, dabbles in Spanish, and is taking more formal signing.

Another chose Chinese, and coded languages, even developed an entire language which, as a hobby, he expands continually. [It's really something to see in progress.]

One is playing with the idea of learning Yiddish - which ought to be interesting. I've never seen anything to help learn it other than community classes at the ethnic center.


Point being, if you know what your presonal goal, or purpose, is in learning something, I think it can greatly aid you in choosing what fulfills that purpose, and to what degree you -need- to pursue it, and at what point you can let go of it comfortably and let them decide if they want to continue or find something else, etc.


None of us is a cookie cutter of another, no matter how we may look alike, or sound alike in our families. We don't have to use the same 'map' and end up at exactly the same finish line.

[Maverick_Mom]

While I too found that learning Latin made me much more aware of the roots of our language, I found that learning Spanish had the same effect -- as would learning any language that derives from Latin. In fact, you could say that by learning a Latin-derived language, you *are* learning Latin in a way. Not the structure, certainly, but the progenitors of words in many modern-day languages. I remember figuring this out when I was taking Spanish and pointing it out to my teacher, and she explained the whole concept of "cognates" to me, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Still do. (I once wanted to study linguistics.)

I really appreciate the growing number of roots-based vocabulary programs that use our language's Greek and/or Latin origins to help build vocabulary. It would be interesting to see a similar program that focused on the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic/Scandinavian origins of many of our words. I once had an English teacher who was of not-too-distant German descent; on the very first day of class, we all learned that he was on a one-man crusade: to elevate the Germanic languages to their rightful place in the history of English. It was less about scholarship than about tooting the horn of his own heritage.