What foreign language should my student study?
If you assert that Latin is not only highly useful but in fact the best foreign-language choice for the vast majority of English-speaking students, the response will (in most cases) be one of skepticism and even mockery. People may respond that Latin is a “dead language” and so useless to the twenty-first century students. If you then ask people what language the student should study instead, they will probably respond with a variation on one of the following:
1) English is the dominant world language, and so foreign-language-learning (whether modern or ancient) is unnecessary, or
2) Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, or Arabic are spoken by large numbers of people in the world today, so any of them would be a far better choice than a useless “dead language”.
Should I even bother to study a foreign language?
Both of these responses seem reasonable at first. The first response, which (unfortunately) is the dominant attitude of those who control primary and secondary school curriculum and even English-speakers in general, makes sense in a very superficial way. If I already know English, which the rest of the world speaks or is learning to speak anyway, why would I bother to study another language? The second response is typical of a much smaller group of people who are more academically ambitious but still ill-informed. If I do try to learn a foreign language, then shouldn’t it be a language many other people already speak?
Of course, the reality is that foreign-language education is rarely taken very seriously in the English-speaking world and the number of students who actually learn to speak another language is so low that it’s easy to dismiss the many hundreds of hours students spend on foreign-languages study as a complete waste of time. I would argue, though, that the one language that most definitely ISN’T a waste of time is Latin, and if you’re lucky enough to have a competent teacher, then it’s the best language choice you can possibly make. But why? What does Latin offer the student that other languages can’t or are unlikely to offer?
1) English Vocabulary
A better command of English vocabulary is a primary goal of most high-achieving students. These students understand how vital advanced vocabulary knowledge is for their overall academic success in a wide range of subjects (English, writing, history, science, etc.) as well as their success on standardized tests (SAT, ACT, etc.). What they usually don’t understand, though, is that there’s no better and more effective way to achieve this goal than the study of Latin. The roots of English words lie largely in Latin (56% of English words are derived from Latin), and so a strong understanding of Latin vocabulary and the internal logic of Latin words is key to understanding English vocabulary and increasing one’s command of it. (Finkenstaedt 1973; Xiao 2020)
2) Understanding of English Grammar
This will seem counterintuitive to most people, but BECAUSE Latin grammar is so different from English grammar in so many ways, it helps students understand English grammar far BETTER than most modern languages do, whose grammar is much closer to that of English than Latin is. The contrast between the sentence structure of English and Latin forces students to get beyond their intuitive understanding of English to a detailed, conscious understanding. In fact, I would argue that the primary reason for the general decline in English-grammar understanding is the simultaneous decrease in the number of students who study Latin. Latin is an excellent teacher of English grammar because, through this very contrast, it reveals the logic and structure of the English language.
3) Logical Skills
The significant difference in structure between an English and a Latin sentence not only forces the student to understand the grammar of both languages better but also to develop advanced logical skills. When a student translates from Latin to English or English to Latin, that student is transferring the sentence’s meaning from a language with one type of sentence structure to a language with an entirely different one. Because the two languages are so different in this way, the student cannot rely on his/her intuitive understanding of sentence structure. This barrier forces students to get beyond the intuitive and develop a more detailed and conscious understanding of how both structural systems work. The mastery of the process of translation from one language to the other then leads to better overall logical-thinking skills that can be applied to many other subjects and disciplines.
4) SAT/ACT Scores (Both Verbal and Math)
The advantages of Latin study are many and various, but the one argument for choosing Latin over other foreign languages that gets students’ and parents’ attention more than any other is the almost certain significant increase in standardized-test scores. Not only does Latin greatly improve the student’s command of English vocabulary and grammar, which on their own drive up SAT or ACT scores for very obvious reasons, but it also gives the student extensive training in the sort of logical-thinking skills that are essential for success on these tests. As I explained in point #3, learning and then applying the complex process of translation from Latin to English or English to Latin forces the student to develop lateral-thinking skills that most students in this day and age never develop. For better or worse a student’s success on the SAT or ACT depends just as much on that student’s general test-taking skills and efficiency as on actual knowledge of English grammar/vocabulary and math, skills that can be learned and applied successfully only if the student has already developed the logical-thinking abilities that Latin is so good at instilling.
5) Easier to Learn Modern Languages
It will come as something of a surprise to most students and their parents that one of the best ways to guarantee success in a modern language (like Spanish, French, or even Mandarin Chinese) is to study Latin first. A background in Latin streamlines the study of modern languages and makes it FAR more likely that the student will retain what he/she learns and so achieve actual fluency in the language. As I mentioned above, Latin forces the student to develop both a detailed understanding of grammar and advanced lateral-thinking skills, which are essential for success in modern languages. Unfortunately, standard modern-language instruction does its best to avoid teaching grammar, considering this to be too challenging for the contemporary student. Despite the clear benefits of a deeper, more detailed understanding of the grammar of a modern language, standard curriculum does whatever it can to teach the language while not teaching WHAT the language is, focusing on vague intuitive mastery at the expense of TRUE mastery.
6) Western Literature
The final reason to study Latin is one that (unfortunately) most students and parents care very little about, though it may be the best argument of all. For almost 2,000 years(all the way up to the nineteenth century) Latin was the common language of the West and so the language of more literature (whether history or fiction or poetry or science) than any other. A student who studies Latin in a serious way and achieves a high level in the language gains direct access to a raft of important literature. And while it’s clearly possible to read these works in translation, understanding the original language gives the reader insights into the text that he/she wouldn’t otherwise have access to. In addition, study of Latin exposes the student to authors and works that he/she would be unlikely to read otherwise. People who have never been exposed to authors like Caesar, Livy, Virgil, or Bede can’t possibly understand how valuable their perspective is and, in general, how vital it is to understand the perspective of ancient and medieval writers if one is to understand the modern world.
References
- Finkenstaedt, Thomas; Wolff, Dieter (1973). Ordered Profusion: Studies in Dictionaries and the English Lexicon. C. Winter. p. 119. ISBN 3-533-02253-6.
- Xiao, Xiao (2020). “The study of loanwords in English”. Journal of Contemporary Educational Research. 4 (12): 36–43.