What Latin Means to You

[dienasty]

I am doing a project for my Latin 1 class and we have to find people that took latin and what it has meant to them and how it has affected their life at all. Please post your stories positive or negative.

[DoctorD]

Hope this isn't too late. My wife, an Art History major, took Latin P/F in college. It was a newfangled computer learning course and she was required to spend a minimum number of hours a week on the computer logged in to the Latin teaching program. I probably learned more than her just preparing her before tests.

Now my son is entering HS and needed a language. My wife convinced him to take latin because she thought it was the easiest language to learn. We shall see...

[X X I]

Latin for me was a shitload of time and effort wasted on two courses in highschool. It doesn't do ******** for the SATs.

[AFCA]

I am doing a project for my Latin 1 class and we have to find people that took latin and what it has meant to them and how it has affected their life at all. Please post your stories positive or negative.

It hasn't enriched my life in any way. It was basically a total waste of my precious teen-time. That's why, after a year or so, I told myself 'enough is enough... time to carpe diem'.

That and the fact that on a scale of 1 to 10 I managed to score a 2 on the final test.

[elainemichelle]

Latin for me was a shitload of time and effort wasted on two courses in highschool. It doesn't do ******** for the SATs.
One semester of the basics in 8th grade. It ended up helping with French (not that I can speak it after four yrs of the damn class...) and it makes words easier to define in English. Probably the only thing from middle school that stuck with me.

[Kevin in Louisiana]

I started Latin in 8th grade, got hooked, started taking Greek as well, and am now a sophomore in college majoring in Classics and working on my 7th year of Latin and 6th year of Greek. So I guess it's made an influence on me.

I'm not really particularly interested in the history or cultural aspects of the classical civilizations as much as I am in the languages themselves. For me translating something is a puzzle, a mental challenge. I love when I can fit everything together just right.

I would say Latin definitely helps with knowing English words (and knowing the right English words definitely helps your Latin). And being careful with Latin sentences has probably helped the way I look at English sentences.

[Belgian guy]

Took it for one year in high school (more because my parents forced me to take it, my sister took latin all through high school and it apparently helped her in understanding the grammer of a bunch of other languages including German). The first three months I got straight A's, after New years only B's and C's and in our final exam I barely passed. So I was able to convince my parents to drop the Latin. One fun thing of taking latin in Belgium is that you automatically get one hour of ancient Greek as well, kind of a package deal. And I really enjoyed the Greek a lot more than the Latin.

[Benedict XVI]

Latin is fun. I like Latin. I learned portuguese quickly and easily because I knew Latin. I got monster SAT scores because of Latin. I got interested in ancient languages and culture because of my introduction to Latin. I also have a much larger vocabulary and can make up words that sound cool whether they are real English words or not.

Latin rules.

[RandyNA74]

Im sure Latin enriches a person's culture etc. as discussed above, but I as a native Italian speaker hated it with a passion, and the vast majority of Italians would agree. Something about not being able to reverse evolution...it works in linguistics too. Native Italian speakers have a difficult time with it because it makes no sense to us to use all these funky cases such as the ablative case. If we can perfectly express any concept we want today, why the hell did they need all these other cases etc. back in those days?!!! :rolleyes:
I speak Spanish, French, and some Portuguese as well. No problem. But Latin???!!! :eek:
I wouldnt mind studying it today. Perhaps with maturity etc. would come the patience to actually crack the language. But at the age at which most people study languages....not so much.

[MikeLastort2]

I took Latin in 9th and 10th grade, and I think it made it easier for me to learn Italian and French as an adult. It also helped to improve my English vocabulary, and is probably one of the reasons I'm interested in etymology.

[metroflip73]

I took 2 years, 7th and 8th grade. Wasn't easy, but I will say this. My spelling was horrible before I took Latin, but it improved greatly afterwords. I didn't do too well in Latin class, but like others have said, it made French easier in grammar school, and Spanish easy in HS and college. Even learned some Italian along the way.

[comme]

I studies Latin at School up to GCSE, personally I enjoy it as you actually get to study serious texts and never have to ask the way to train stations or other useful rubbish.

It helps quite alot in learning Greek as well.

[Robert25]

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!

I love Latin. I used to study it on my own and became a little proficent, however like my german I stopped studying and gradually forgot a lot.

Basically I liked it very much as a langauge. one of the most elegant of all time. Plus f you can read latin you have a treasure trove of books opened to you. Sure you can translate Livy, Virgil, and the numerous other writers and their works into another language, but translation always takes something away from the original.

[dienasty]

Thats cool, thanks everyone for your contributions, I recieved an A on the project.

[billyireland]

Now my son is entering HS and needed a language. My wife convinced him to take latin because she thought it was the easiest language to learn. We shall see...your son is going to disown you just after throwing you in the worst nursing home he can find in about 25-30 years, fyi. ;) 18 tenses or so = insanity! I had to do it for 1st year (8th grade) and although I geniunely tried, I wound up with results of in and around 20% each time. What made it worse was my teacher was an old fart in his last year and kept insisting I was putting in no effort, and lost the plot at me for equating his claims to mockign a dyslexic person for not being able to excel in English. Two years later it turned out I was dyspraxic, and am now exempt from Irish (compulsory language here, unless you were not born in Ireland) and French (but I chose to do that as a *7th subject for certain colleges. That said, it did help my English out a fair deal, a subject I am now an A+ student in (compared to abotu a C student in most other classes - again dyspraxia related).

The 7th subject reference was because in Ireland, instead of SAT's you do the Leavign Certificate, in which you can have 6+ subjects, doing a state exam at the end of your last year on the entire syllabus, each out of 100 points for honours (higher), 60 points for pass (lower). Your top 6 subjects make up your points total. Most students do 6 or 7 subjects.