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Does Learning Latin help English courses?

Ds

Ds

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Hey, so I HATE English, I speak it and it's my main language. Since I'm slow in everything I thought a clause was the fat jolly red man that came down my chimney on Christmas. So I had a test today in "Gerunds" I had no idea what it was so thanks to the "5 Big Errors" I had 5/5 of them in my defeniton for what a Gerund is.
Anyways, after my brain bashing tutoring session in English my tutor told me that "Latin" has helped her learn every bell and whistle in the English language.
So I stopped by the library and checked out a book called "A Latin Grammar".
So I'm going to learn Latin, even tho I'm horrible at English. If this works for me I'll be amazed. (and so far it is somewhat.)
What do you think? Do you believe learning Latin will help me/you later in school?
 
Cool thanks. I'm thinking maybe if I learn the history of the English language it will help me learn more about how to use it.
 
I don't actually know Latin, but I know a ton of Latin and Greek root words and they always come in handy in learning/deciphering new words (especially scientific/medical words, which is probably how they help me the most).

So yes, I do think it will help you. Will the reward [what you learn in English] be worth the work [how much Latin you learn]? I'm not sure. But it will definitely help.
 
From my own experience, Latin was definitely helpful in improving my English grammar. It helped me conceptualize things like possession and different "parts of speech" with it's different cases. I suppose any case language may give you more insight about English...and earlier Englishes also had case endings, so a study of them may help as well. Honestly, Latin is probably more convenient, practical, and probably easier to study before you tackle something like Old English, or try to figure out anything in the Germanic branch. Once again, this is my personal experience. I'm a graduate student in Linguistics, and some of my peers have also agreed with me on discussions of this nature.

Oh, I really love Latin, so I might be biased towards other people learning it, just as a warning, haha (lots of racy poetry and bloody writings out there).


JC --- I agree, Latin and Greek roots are super helpful to know, so by learning the language and it's grammar D's can pick these up as well...its a win-win!
 
I took latin honors for two years in high school, with that being said I felt that it was more the opposite: english helped my latin out more. Once you get the hang of it and start learning a lot, it kinda switches, especially with roots, prefixes, verb endings, grammar, etc, but when you first start you use english to decipher the latin.

Also if you take spanish its really easy to mix up some of the verb endings after awhile. Almost identical.

purple_cloud said:
Oh, I really love Latin, so I might be biased towards other people learning it, just as a warning, haha (lots of racy poetry and bloody writings out there).
Click to expand...

This ^ is dead on. I loved Latin for its dry humor, and messed up writings. You learn a lot more than just the language in the class, a lot of Roman/Greek history (at least I did) which makes it even more awesome.

Us, i, o, um, o!
 
To some degree, learning any foreign language will improve one's understanding of the English language itself. However, I think it's likely that the study of Latin as a foreign language would benefit the English student most. There are three main reasons for this. First, as is well known, Latin has exhibited a major influence on the English language over the past centuries, both through the influx of Norman French and the popularization of Latin vocabulary during the Enlightenment. Of course, this influence has really only affected English vocabulary, rather than English grammar itself.

However, this point actually leads to the second reason why studying a language like Latin is so useful for understanding English better: the study of Latin makes explicit certain grammatical concepts that are only implicit in the English language, and hence are relatively ignored in the teaching of English throughout secondary education. For example, studying a language like Latin helps one understand and identify instances of different moods in English, such as the subjunctive, which are not usually explicitly identified because of English verb structure. Similarly, even though they differ radically, studying Latin syntax makes English syntax much more comprehensible because, again, conventions that go completely unrecognized in our own language will become recognized once they are compared and contrasted with a language so dense as Latin.

Finally, there's very little that can compare to classic Latin literature (except classic Greek literature, of course). Anyone studying English in any depth will appreciate the beauty and complexity of classical Latin writing once he or she can get a hold of translating it!
 
Cool, I've noticed that a lot of the Latin language is similar to the English language. I'm taking it next semester, for now I'm reading my "Latin for dummies" and another Latin Grammer book.
I serously want to learn Latin!
 
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