Online Latin Dictionary

LATdict

Why Bother Learning Latin?

"Why bother? It's a dead language."

This was the number one thing people would say to me when I told them that I took Latin in high school. I find it sad when people actually consider that a sort of witticism. I'd wager that most of us who have studied classical languages of any variety perceive the intelligence behind comments like those to be a lot less than those who do not see how pervasive and influential ancient languages can be. I can easily substantiate the influence of Latin on the English language with this statistic alone:

About 60% of English words are derived from Latin

Now, let me clarify that most of these words came from the French language, which is derived from Latin, which in turn is theoretically derived from Proto-Indo-European. The ultimate origins of these words are always a good source for debate (sometimes even scholarly debate). Nevertheless, the fact remains that Latin has had a massive, incontrovertible impact on the English language

For those English speakers out there who aren't familiar with the history of our own language, here's a run-down of the history of English:

  1. A long (long) time ago, a group of people existed somewhere around the steppes of Russia who all spoke a common language. This was called Proto-Indo-European, which is basically a theoretical language reconstructed by linguists today that most likely resembled what the Indo-Europeans spoke at that time.
  2. As time wore on, these Indo-Europeans migrated in several directions, settling in new areas. The language they once shared in common had now evolved into several splinter languages as a result of long periods of isolation.
  3. One splinter group was the Germanic group of languages (examples of others would be Slavic, Celtic, Greek, and Italic--from which Latin is derived), spoken by--you guessed it--Germanic tribes.
  4. The Celtic people go to live all across Europe, with the Brythonic-speaking Celts settling in an area now known as the British Isles.
  5. While the Celts in Britain have spent a good deal of time having fun in Britain, Julius Caesar is waging war against the Gauls (aka European mainland Celts, Belgians and Aquitanii), and Caesar basically conquers most of what is now modern-day France and Switzerland. Not long after that, Rome invades England the Celts find themselves with some new roommates speaking a very peculiar tongue. Eventually, Christianity becomes the state religion of Rome and thus Latin becomes even more influential in British life.
  6. Fast forward to around the 5th century A.D., where Germanic tribes like the Angles and the Saxons started taking an interest in Britain's prime island real estate. Whether or not the annals of history consider it invasion or land exchange for mercenary combat against the native Picts that resided in northern England, they began to settle various parts of England. Their western German languages began to mix with the Celtic languages, and Anglo-Saxon was born--also known as Old English.
  7. Keep in mind, Old English sounds far more German than it does English. If you want to see for yourself, a popular example is "The Lord's Prayer" ("Our Father") in Anglo-Saxon:
    Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
    Si þin nama gehalgod.
    To becume þin rice,
    gewurþe đin willa, on eorđan swa swa on heofonum.
    Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
    and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfađ urum gyltendum.
    And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. Soþlice.
    If you actually say it out loud with a thick German accent, you can hear some similarity of the words. But you can also still hear a lot of German words in it as well. This is what's considered the linguistic "missing link" in the evolution from one language to another.
  8. In 1066, the Normans invaded England. For those who slept through history (and most likely aren't reading this now), the Normans were simply the French before they became notorious for losing wars. The end result was as such: the new rulers and aristocrats spoke French in their courts, while Anglo-Saxon was spoken by the common people. This lasts until about 1300 A.D. or so when the languages start to coalesce. Yes, this means that the English in the movie Braveheart (which takes place in the 1200s) should all have been speaking French. Early Modern English did not emerge until about 1500 or so, right at the time of the Renaissance. Without dragging this on for another few paragraphs, the end result was artists giving the English language a final injection of Greek and Latin before boxing it up and shipping it out as modern English to the rest of us.

So, really, calling languages like Latin dead is a serious misnomer, as the word "dead" often implies something that is static and no longer active. I'd hate to use a butterfly analogy, but I see Latin as a caterpillar that eventually turned into a butterfly, rather than a caterpillar that just died and nothing ever became of it. The Latin language not only allows people better to understand the English, French, Italian, Romanian, or Spanish languages and Romance languages, but it can also give an oddly similar glimpse into other Indo-European languages, including the languages from which they were born. For example, Latin borrowed heavily from the Greeks, who were far more articulate than the Romans. If there wasn't a word for an abstract idea in the Latin language, the Greeks probably had seven different words for each shade of the abstract idea. So the Romans would borrow it. Thus, if you came across the word in Greek, you'd already already know its meaning through Latin. On a different level, you can compare and contrast various aspects of other Indo-European languages to Latin.

But one of the most helpful things to highlight for English speakers learning Latin is how it can open their eyes to the infrastructure of English itself. How many times have you spent wondering if the word "incompetent" ended in -ant or -ent? There's a reason why some of the -nt words end in -ant and others in -ant, and while it's immediately related to the French spellings of the words, it's ultimately derived from Latin verb conjugations. While minuscule, these nuances are numerous and with enough of them known it really helps give one command over the English language, and the power of effective and/or eloquent communication should never be underestimated. History has proven that time and time again.

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