Is Latin class worth taking?

[ProVobis]

Latin is a very tough language, you’ll be surprised, even after years of studying it you will not be proficient. Studying Spanish had more practical applications in the US. Italian is more practical too.

The reality is that even Cardinals don’t all understand Latin well, by their own admission.

Any language can be tough, depending on how it’s written. Look at English. We actually hire lawyers because we can’t read much of it as it affects us. Ever watch C-Span? It’s hard to tell what the heck they are voting on. I can retranslate the Mass into English which would make it impossible for most to understand it. Oh wait…

 

[ProVobis]

Studying Spanish had more practical applications in the US. Italian is more practical too.

Was reading that until the 16th century, Spanish (albeit with a lot of Arabic added) and Italian were basically Latin without the grammar. Since then they have changed and will continue to change as most modern languages do.

 

[PazzoGrande]

Any language can be tough, depending on how it’s written. Look at English. We actually hire lawyers because we can’t read much of it as it affects us.

Spanish and Italian are easy. Their grammatical system aren’t very different from English.

Latin is a completely different story however because it’s grammatical system is very different. For the regular nouns alone, there are 80 different possible endings.

And regarding Mass and theological texts, there are English translations around anyway.

To the OP, look up the declension of Latin nouns. You’ll be surprised to see how the system just for that is. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Better question is, how many people responding to this thread actually have theology degrees and studied Latin? I suspect most respondents didn’t do it on an academic level. But for those of you who have, how practical or difficult has it been for you?

Again, from my personal experience, it’s not very practical and it’s exceedingly difficult. And, many of those I know with important ecclesiastical posts didn’t even really study it.

Studying it in your own in your free time is nice, but you don’t want it as a course, believe me. If you’ll be studying it on your own, pick up A Primer on Ecclesiastical Latin by Collins, and Latin Grammar and Second Latin by Scanlan.

 

[ProVobis]

Latin is a completely different story however because it’s grammatical system is very different. For the regular nouns alone, there are 80 different possible endings.

And the number of verb endings are probably that many too. But that’s because it’s an inflected language. Polish is such as well.

Look, if you’re not into grammar, Latin is not the language for you. If you’re willing to put a little effort into it, though, it should pay dividends when you start learning another language, including expanding your English vocabulary.

And regarding Mass and theological texts, there are English translations around anyway.

As one CA priest has said, translation is more art than science. Look at all the English Bibles that are out there, and Bible Latin isn’t all that difficult. And as far as theological texts go, I would think many of them have not been translated into English or any other language. You probably just haven’t heard of them. And perhaps they need to go back and retranslate some of them to conform to 2014 English and understanding, like they did with the Mass. Mary is still worshipped, according to Vatican translations. It seems as if more Latin scholars are needed, some preferably who understand the repercussions of what they have translated.

 

[Kamaduck]

Okay, so my school offers Latin. Right now, I’m in Spanish 1, and for my Sophmore year I was planning on taking Honors Spanish 2 and Latin 1.

Would it be worth it to take Latin if, in college, I plan on getting a degree in theology?

It is Classical Latin, but is any Latin better than none? I know there is a slight difference in Ecclesiastical Latin and Classical, but I just wanted to know your opinion.

Thanks!

I’m a fourth year Latin student right now. I don’t expect to get any practical applications out of it, but it’s been really fun, I’ve learned a ton about history and the classics, and I can understand some of what we say in mass. I think it’s awesome.

That said, I still consider myself pretty terrible at it. I’m kind of envious of the German and Spanish students- at least they can actually carry on conversations in their foreign languages! The Latin students try it sometimes, but for the most part, we’re only -]good/-] decent at reading and writing. It takes most of us too long to think of the right word forms.

I suppose I have spent four years learning something that isn’t going to help me much at all, but at least I had fun doing it.

 

[tee_eff_em]

Latin is a completely different story however because it’s grammatical system is very different. For the regular nouns alone, there are 80 different possible endings.

Oh there are not…

tee

 

[PazzoGrande]

Oh there are not…

tee

Have you actually studied Latin grammar yourself? Because I have.

First, you figure out which of the five declensions the noun should be, which is exceedingly difficult to master. Then apply gender, if necessary. Then you figure out which part of speech: nominative, ablative, dative, genitive or accusative.

Here is a chart of them all:

docstoc.com/docs/56978266/I-Nouns-The-Five-Declensions-II

And again, that’s just for the regular nouns. That chart actually lists 90.

Funny, I’m getting lectured to about it and eyes rolled at by people whom I probably have more experience at this than.

Really, again I gotta ask, **how many of the respondents to this thread actually seriously studied Latin? **I don’t just mean memorizing prayers, I mean understanding its basic grammar, and seeing if it had any practical applications outside of the classroom? Insofar as I can tell, only a few such as Kamaduck actually did, and even he or she admits it wasn’t practical. Most others seem to be giving advice on something they really don’t know about, only repeating what they had been told about the supposed usefulness of Latin but not having any actual experience at it themselves.

To the OP, choose whose advice you follow carefully: the ones who talk theoretically or the ones who really did it and tell you it’s not likely to be practical.

Like I said, it won’t do much for you for real unless of you go for a Canon Law or Sacred Theology degree after you finish your Bachelor’s. And priests I know who attained high rank, even my Bishop, didn’t study Latin except for some rituals.

I reiterate my advice, it’s good to learn it on your own, but I really wouldn’t recommend it as part of your college curriculum. I still study it on my own for fun, but in school it’s far more practical to take something that will help you converse with people like Spanish. Or even Italian if you plan to have some kind of work in the Church that has to deal with Rome a lot.

If that doesn’t convince you, talk to the priests you know, even the ones in higher positions, and ask if they studied Latin in the classroom. Some will say yes. Most will say no and probably will add that it didn’t make much of a difference in their work.

 

[ProVobis]

If that doesn’t convince you, talk to the priests you know, even the ones in higher positions, and ask if they studied Latin in the classroom. Some will say yes. Most will say no and probably will add that it didn’t make much of a difference in their work.

I wouldn’t make such presumptions.

Can. 249 The program of priestly formation is to provide that students not only are carefully taught their native language but also understand Latin well and have a suitable understanding of those foreign languages which seem necessary or useful for their formation or for the exercise of pastoral ministry.

Also read St Pope John XXIII’s Veterum Sapientia, which I understand is still in force.

Really, again I gotta ask, **how many of the respondents to this thread actually seriously studied Latin? **I don’t just mean memorizing prayers, I mean understanding its basic grammar, and seeing if it had any practical applications outside of the classroom?

You don’t need to read Cicero or Virgil to understand 600 some distinct words in the Latin Mass. But there are people who do like challenges and appreciate the literary value of a lot of Latin works and documents.

 

[EMFrost]

I took Classical Latin I, II, and III in high school too and loved it. Granted however I had an awesome teacher, who was a Valedictorian at Harvard from way back and really knew how to teach. We could handle all five declensions, gender, and everything under his guidance. My little brother on the other hand is having to learn through Rosetta Stone and it’s miserable. Furthermore the words they use I sincerely question if they are really Latin considering he knows the “Latin word” for things like car and sandwich.

Classical Latin is very similar to the Church Latin. I actually asked my teacher to help me learn Church Latin and he explained that the biggest difference I will encounter is the minor difference in pronunciation. The meaning is still all there.

I love Latin because it helps me understand the Church teachings better than before. My brother got me the Latin Vulgate and I use it to read scripture and the clarity Latin provides is amazing.

For instance I didn’t understand why in the English Jesus says “Do this in memory of me” Considering much of my family has become non-denominational they loved to use this to deny the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.
So I cracked open the Vulgate and I found that in the Latin Jesus uses a deeper word that we do not have in English which means “to partake in the sacrifice”.
That’s a lot clearer.

Latin does have a helpful purpose, however, I do recommend you check the manner it will be taught before you sign up.

Regardless it’s your decision. Hope it goes well!

 

[PazzoGrande]

I’m a fourth year Latin student right now. I don’t expect to get any practical applications out of it, but it’s been really fun, I’ve learned a ton about history and the classics, and I can understand some of what we say in mass. I think it’s awesome.

That said, I still consider myself pretty terrible at it. I’m kind of envious of the German and Spanish students- at least they can actually carry on conversations in their foreign languages! The Latin students try it sometimes, but for the most part, we’re only -]good/-] decent at reading and writing. It takes most of us too long to think of the right word forms.

I suppose I have spent four years learning something that isn’t going to help me much at all, but at least I had fun doing it.

Another person attesting to how tough the language is.

Kamaduck studied it for four years in school and admits he or she is terrible at it.

I studied it for ten years and I’m probably even worse.

Father Reginald Foster is probably the world’a foremost Latinist, and he was quoted that less than 100 people in the world today are fluent at it.

bbc.com/news/magazine-21412604

I mean, it’s actually required that you are able to function in Latin if you get a Canon Law or Sacred Theology degree, and there must be thousands of people who would have needed to be able to do that. Yet still less than a hundred is even fluent, according to Foster. It’s that hard.

So to the OP, again discern carefully whose advice you follow. Those here who assume it’s as tough as any other language frankly don’t seem to have any real experience studying it. It truly is tough – and you have two Latin students right here (Kamaduck and me) who actually studied it for years and can attest to its difficulty and impracticality.

Fun? Yes. But practical and readily learnable? No.

 

[ProVobis]

Father Reginald Foster is probably the world’a foremost Latinist, and he was quoted that less than 100 people in the world today are fluent at it.

And they’re all on Jeopardy collecting prize money.

But seriously, that’s good in a way. That means the vast majority won’t mess it up like they do with English and other modern languages. Syriac and Sanskrit probably fall into the same category

 

[PazzoGrande]

I wouldn’t make such presumptions.

Also read St Pope John XXIII’s Veterum Sapientia, which I understand is still in force.

You don’t need to read Cicero or Virgil to understand 600 some distinct words in the Latin Mass.

Right, you don’t need to study Latin to get by in Mass. That was not my point. My point was, the OP asked for advice if studying Latin is useful. Almost everybody said yes, even though I doubt almost all of those who said yes even did themselves study it and therefore probably shouldn’t be giving the OP collegiate career advice and condemning him to learn a fantastically tough language that won’t be much use anyway.

So yes, you do not need to study Latin to get by in Mass – you backed up my point about it not being very practical to study, actual grammatical study and not just memorization of prayers.

But about Canon 249, I direct you to this post from Brother JR, another person who studied these things for real

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7087884&postcount=21

And Post 3 in the same thread says what I said: most priests didn’t study Latin except for the ones who went onto the advanced degrees (namely Sacred Theology and Canon Law)

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=5083477&postcount=3

Therefore I wasn’t being excessively presumptuous.

 

[PazzoGrande]

And they’re all on Jeopardy collecting prize money.

But seriously, that’s good in a way. That means the vast majority won’t mess it up like they do with English and other modern languages. Syriac and Sanskrit probably fall into the same category

But that’s my point about the impracticality. Spanish or Italian would do you much better, or French if the OP wants to work as a Church diplomat. Even Mandarin might have more use because we might have the chance to evangelize in China in the near future.

If not even 100 people in the world can speak Latin fluently, really, how practical can it be outside of the academic setting? Esperanto would even probably be more useful. Vatican Radio even transmits some programmes in Esperanto. I can’t think of any exclusively in Latin except for their Laudetur Jesus Christus greeting.

 

[ProVobis]

Right, you don’t need to study Latin to get by in Mass. That was not my point. My point was, the OP asked for advice if studying Latin is useful. Almost everybody said yes, even though I doubt almost all of those who said yes even did themselves study it and therefore probably shouldn’t be giving the OP collegiate career advice and condemning him to learn a fantastically tough language that won’t be much use anyway.

Oh, stop it. Everyone told me it was of no value after they changed the Mass to vernacular and I discontinued studying it for many years. I really wish I hadn’t listened to them. Learning a language is a life-long commitment, not just 5 or 10 years.

 

[NeedsMercy]

I would definitely take it. I had 2 years of Latin in high school–40 years ago–and it still helps me with English, and the Romance languages. You will find that it will help you with your Spanish a lot! I studied French in hs too, and there was crossover between the that and the Latin. I took Italian in college and that was a breeze! Even today, if I don’t know an English word, I automatically look for a Latin root. Now, Latin is **not **easy, but you will find that learning it will be worth it.

 

[PazzoGrande]

Oh, stop it. Everyone told me it was of no value after they changed the Mass to vernacular and I discontinued studying it for many years. I really wish I hadn’t listened to them. Learning a language is a life-long commitment, not just 5 or 10 years.

I’m not sure how that’s supposed to relate to the quote from me you out above that.

Yeah, nothing’s stopping you from doing it on your own, and I did advise the OP that doing it on your own for fun is great. I like being able to follow Papal liturgies myself. I even told him or her which books to get. I did not disagree with that.

I’m saying, we shouldn’t be giving the OP advice on something so serious like a very tough elective class with limited practical real-world applications unless if we actually have experience at it and can speak from authentic experience, which I doubt most of us would be able to do.

There are other users here like NeedsMercy who disagrees with me and advises the OP to take the class, and even though we disagree on our advice, I think there is value in his or her opinion, again because it comes from actual experience, which again most respondents here apparently did not have. For people to contribute to a conversation is nice, but to give advice without real-world knowledge and experience is very unwise for all parties involved, particularly when it will affect the OP’s academic career. Taking advice from people who aren’t experienced is probably not a good idea.

 

[EMFrost]

Hey OP please let me know if I’m wrong, my apologies if I am,

but PazzoGrande, I don’t think you realize, but I’m pretty sure this kid is asking about high school Latin not college Latin. He does want to study theology in college, but he’s not there yet. Taking a little Latin pre-professional studies wouldn’t be the most unpleasant or impractical thing.

Furthermore that means that you and Kamaduck’s aren’t the only ones whose answers are applicable.

Hope this helps.

 

[Kamaduck]

Hey OP please let me know if I’m wrong, my apologies if I am,

but PazzoGrande, I don’t think you realize, but I’m pretty sure this kid is asking about high school Latin not college Latin. He does want to study theology in college, but he’s not there yet. Taking a little Latin pre-professional studies wouldn’t be the most unpleasant or impractical thing.

Furthermore that means that you and Kamaduck’s aren’t the only ones whose answers are applicable.

Hope this helps.

I’m pretty sure you’re right. I’ve taken four years of high school Latin, and the class itself wasn’t that hard to get an A in. I suspect that’s both because less is expected of us compared to the other language students- I think most of them are objectively more fluent than all of us- and because almost everyone who decided to take Latin was already an honors student doing it for fun. For the most part, getting an A only requires translating things from Latin to English (easier than English to Latin, by a long shot) and memorizing all of the vocabulary, which isn’t bad at all. We do write things in Latin sometimes, of course, but it’s much less of our grade than Latin-to-English translation. So while a student will be less fluent than if they had taken Spanish or German, they won’t have to do much speaking, and they’ll do comparatively less writing in Latin than the other classes do in Spanish or German.

The hardest part was poetry. We translated parts of the Aeneid, and that was fun. There were pieces of words left out all the time in order to keep the meter consistent. We read all of it in English and discussed it. That’s another thing- a lot of Latin class is history, not just the language, so the OP should factor that into his decision, too. Honestly, the history was more important to me than the language itself.

Poetry aside, while the language is harder, my class is arguably easier than the other two. If it’s possible for the OP to speak to the Latin teacher ahead of time and learn how the class is structured, he could do that in order to figure out how intense it is.

The only real practical applications of Latin itself that I can see are studying Church documents and earlier translations of scripture. You’ll be able to understand mass better, but while cool, I don’t know how useful that is. However, it’s worth noting that as a first hear high school student, the OP still needs to think about the SAT in the next few years (if he’s American), and Latin students score higher on the SAT because they know Latin roots, which in turn leads to higher English scores. While not a real-life application per se, it could still be useful to him in getting into a good college.

PazzoGrande:

Kamaduck studied it for four years in school and admits he or she is terrible at it.

Yep. I’m not *terrible-*terrible, but I have a hard time having even a basic conversation with the few members of our class that want to try. I still got awards on the National Latin Exam all four years. I’m decent compared to other Latin students, but not compared to fourth-year Spanish or German students.

While fun, I agree with you that Latin is not particularly practical for most people. A theology student is one of the few people who might be really helped by it, outside of the joy of learning itself and the chance to read the classics. It has next to no use as far as evangelization goes. If the OP really wants to interact with people in his language, he would be better off sticking with Spanish or trying an Asian language (which would be super fun, wow, I wish my school offered Asian languages).

I think the only foreign language more fun than Latin would be Japanese. I would totally pick that up if it were offered in college, practical or not. There are works of fiction that I’d like to read or listen to in that language, which is exactly the same reason I originally had for studying Latin.

(Oh! And I’m a she. )

EDIT: Oh, wow, I forgot that the OP wanted to take Honors Spanish and Latin in the same year. Wow. You have my respect, OP. That’s intense. So it’s not a question between Latin and Spanish, but between Latin and another field of study. If you love languages that much, then of course it’d be good for you to take high school classes that you will enjoy. If you think another language will be a chore, there’s no need- but if you think it will be fun, go for it. I think a lot of people would be impressed that you studied two languages in high school, and you’ll have both a useful living language, and an awesome dead language with which to read cool documents and old stories about people turning into trees and/or dolphins/flowers/echoes/spiders/birds/etc.

 

[Kelfa28]

I took a few years worth of Latin in high school and I enjoyed it very much. I wish I took it all four years but my guidance counselor heavily pushed for me to continue taking Spanish, which I hated.
I ended up signing up for spanish and latin and then dropping spanish within a day of starting it.

I think having a basic foundation of both Latin and Greek really helps students with different kinds of classes.
My husband and I are able to answer more questions on tests. I’ve studied Latin and he has studied Greek. If we don’t know the answer to the question we can at least look at the context of the question and figure out the root of the words and answer questions that way.

I was able to get a 100 and a 90 on my finals in philosophy and sociology without much studying because I could answer questions based on what I knew about the terms provided.
Studying Latin helped me understand Anatomy and Physiology better.

I wouldn’t advise anyone to pursue a master’s degree in Latin or even choose it as the language of choice in their college classes (I’d recommend German, Arabic, Russian or one of the asian languages instead) but it wouldn’t hurt to have a basic foundation for foreign language, theology or even chemistry or biology.

 

[ProVobis]

For the most part, getting an A only requires translating things from Latin to English (easier than English to Latin, by a long shot) and memorizing all of the vocabulary, which isn’t bad at all. We do write things in Latin sometimes, of course, but it’s much less of our grade than Latin-to-English translation.

I hear a lot of people, some educators, saying that spending all the time on translations is a very poor way to teach and it makes it harder to retain the information. Basically we learn Latin through English; if we learned Latin as a native language, we’d be able to use Latin as a standard in nuances and thinking process. My native language is Polish and the language itself is inflective. I’m able to put the direct object or the verb first as the thought requires. English speakers have a problem with that as subject-verb-object is generally taught first. They need to unravel a simple sentence like “Dominus vobiscum” to “Lord you with” to then “The Lord with you” to “The Lord be with you” to make any sense in their minds. And then that becames complicated when they’re told it should be “The Lord is with you.” (That’s what the Polish says.) Someone who would learn Latin as a native language would know what “Dominus vobiscum” means without translating into English first. American scientists seem to have a big problem with the metric system (meters, grams, etc.) in a similar way. They have to use arithmetic (or now calculators) to convert in their minds to English units (miles, ounces, etc.) so they can understand it better. The rest of the world actually thinks in metrics. There are similar concepts in theology, law, etc.

I guess what I’m saying is that the earlier in life Latin is taught, the better. And it would have more use for us later.

.