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Why Latin?

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“Hardly any lawful price would seem to me too high for what I have gained by being made to learn Latin and Greek.” -C.S. Lewis

One of the distinctives of a classical education is – typically – an emphasis on learning at least one of the classical languages: Latin or Greek. While there are arguments in favor of each, Latin is uniquely connected with our cultural heritage as Americans, Christians, and English speakers, and all Stonehaven students learn Latin from at least 3rd-8th grade, with the option to continue throughout high school. Why spend so much time learning a “dead” language?

“To read Latin and Greek in their original, is a sublime luxury. I thank on my knees him who directed my early education for having put into my possession this rich source of delight; and I would not exchange it for anything which I could then have acquired, and have not since acquired.” -Thomas Jefferson

To begin with, there are many reasons to study Latin, and they will resonate differently with different people. Likewise there are benefits that will accrue to the Latin student who goes only through 8th grade and others that will accrue to the student who advances to reading the authentic texts (beginning around 11th grade).

Why Latin?

Latin fosters attention to detail, verbal precision, and critical thinking

This is a cliche because it is true. Unlike most modern European languages, which convey meaning largely through word order (subject-verb-predicate), Latin is a highly inflected language, conveying grammatical content through the forms of the words themselves. For example, here are 4 ways of saying “The teacher gives a book to the student”:

Magister dat librum discipulo.
Librum discipulo magister dat.
Discipulo librum magister dat.
Dat discipulo magister librum.

The syntax conveys nothing. All of the grammatical content is in the words themselves. And the meaning of the first sentence could be completely reversed by changing the endings of two of the words:

Magistro dat librum discipulus.

Teacher still comes first, but this sentence means “The student gives a book to the teacher.”

This very basic example illustrates the necessity of paying attention to minute details in Latin in addition to the memory work required to recognize the case endings and know their functions. With time and practice, these distinctions can become intuitive, but in the early stages they require a kind of focus and precision that is in shorter supply in today’s world of smartphones and streaming content.

Latin gives one an excellent foundation for language learning in general

Latin will not only make it easier to learn the Romance languages which are its direct descendants (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian), it can greatly enhance one’s mastery of English. More than half of English words derive from Latin in one way or another (and a far higher percentage of multi-syllable words), so understanding Latin roots can help with English vocabulary and spelling. It is probably no coincidence that some of the most effective writers and orators in the English language also studied Latin: Milton, Auden, Lewis, Tolkein, Gladstone, and Churchill, to name just a few. Additionally, one cannot learn Latin without developing a set of grammatical categories that can serve one well in learning any language – including languages like Biblical Greek with its similar case system.

Latin helps to understand our cultural heritage and to enter into “the great conversation”

Reading literature in ancient languages allows us to step out of our own time and our categories for a moment so we can consider things from a historical perspective. During the classical era, Latin became the language of a civilization, and even when the Roman Empire had collapsed, Latin was the language of the church and the universities (when Isaac Newton published his Principia in 1687 it was in Latin). From Nicola Gardini1:

“Written Latin gradually became the voice of the past, and this voice struck up a dialogue with posterity. And there’s no truer or more moving representation of this conversational power, I believe, than Machiavelli’s letter to his friend Vettori. Machiavelli, having been expelled from the world of politics, describes the consolation he finds in reading the ancients. But reading, in this letter, becomes an exchange, a dialogue, and it takes on the appearance of a real, physical encounter. Here, the books stand in for the authors, alive and well despite their temporal remove, and his study becomes the magical space of an initiation ritual. In his words:

‘[. . .] once properly attired, I step into the ancient courts of ancient men, where, a beloved guest, I nourish myself on that food that is mine alone and for which I was born; where I speak to them without inhibition and ask them the reasons behind their actions; and in their humanity they reply; and for four hours I feel not a drop of boredom, think nothing of my cares, am fearless of poverty, unrattled by death; I transfer all of myself into them.’ (Letter to Francesco Vettori, December 10, 1513)

[…] However unique Machiavelli’s ‘conversation’ appears to be, we all do something similar when we approach a classical text: we participate in the growth of tradition. Our very act of reading is not simply a private practice, but posits itself within the overarching temporality of cultural transmission, which takes centuries. By reading, we are not just living today: we are living in history, transcending our biographies and entering a much broader chronology.”

Latin is beautiful

We want to cultivate in our students a love of the true, good, and beautiful, and Latin literature contains “some of the choices fruits of human genius” Ovid’s sublime poetry, Cicero’s speeches to the Roman senate, Martial’s witty couplets, Virgil’s immortal epic, Augustine’s Confessions, and so many more… We can get some flavor of the greatness of these works by reading translations, but as Edward Copleston points out, “whatever is addressed to the understanding strictly, may perhaps pass unimpaired. But all that constitutes the grace, the beauty, the charm, the dignity of composition, all that tends to awaken the fancy, or to affect the heart, like the finer and more volatile parts of substances, is lost during the experiment.”2 Part of the experience of reading Vergil’s Aeneid is the drumbeat of that dactylic hexameter, seeing the incredible craftsmanship in some alliteration or other literary device or turn of phrase that only exists in the original. As long as the liberal arts are worth pursuing, as long as beauty is a good worth enjoying, Latin literature will be worth reading.

Further Reading
Why Latin? By Alicia Jekel
Sources

1 Long Live Latin by Nicola Gardin

2 A reply to the calumnies of the Edinburgh review against Oxford by Edward Copleston (published as On Classical Education in the Classical Journal for September and December, 1812)

“

There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds."

Carlos Ruiz Zafon