• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Humanitas Family

Humanitas Family

Homeschooling Ontario

  • Homepage
    • The Making of Un-Machine Minds
    • About
    • Contact Us
  • Articles
    • Look at the Forest not the Trees: Abysmal Literacy Curriculum Failure
    • Homeschooling: Know your Rights
    • Amo, Amas, Amat….A Case for Latin
    • Why are homeschoolers academically immune to pandemic lockdowns?
    • Comparing Grade 9 English Courses: How are students being prepared for post-secondary study?
    • WANTED: Teachers Who Face Termination Because of Their Vaccination Choice
    • Finding Strength in Numbers: The Benefits of Homeschool Co-ops
    • Homeschooling: Answer to an Uncertain Time
    • Generation Mask: Wagering Our Children’s Future?
    • 2+2 ≠4 New Ontario Curriculum States That Math Can Be Subjective
    • Life After Homeschool – 15 Years Later
    • What to do if parents disagree on homeschooling
    • Pandemic Learning Gap
  • How to get started
    • Sample Homeschool Curriculum Plan
    • Simple & Sane Schooling
    • Online Schools
    • Conferences
  • Resources
    • Pandemic Homeschooling Toolbox for Non-Homeschooling Parents
    • Pandemic Resource Ideas
    • Find a Teacher
    • Online Schools
    • CO-OP
    • Memorization in the Age of Google
    • To Learn You Must Play
    • Free Resources
  • Curriculum
    • Sample Homeschool Curriculum Plan
    • Teaching Math
    • Curriculum providers
    • Classic Vocabulary Study
  • Books/Audio
    • Why Bother with Classics?
    • Books: New Release
    • Books to Guide and Inspire
    • Tech
    • Reading Lists
    • Radio
  • Freedom Short Story Contest
    • Freedom Short Stories – Age Category 9-12
    • Freedom Short Stories – Age Category 13-16
  • Sketches by Mateo

Amo, Amas, Amat….A Case for Latin

February 1, 2022 by Ruth Leave a Comment

Latin is dead! Why bother with an ‘irrelevant Eurocentric ancient language’? Science and Tech are the future, why dwell on the past? These are common accusations brought against the study of Latin, but are they justified? There is a solid case to be made for the continued relevance and usefulness of Latin:

Dead?

Until about 200 to 300 years ago Latin was the lingua franca of European nations; it was a surpranational language from which modern European languages have drawn the majority of their loanwords. Latin has spawned 25 Romance languages from French, Spanish, and Italian to the more obscure Romansch language of Switzerland. More than half of commonly used English words and over 90% of multisyllabic ‘big’ words derive from Latin. Learning even just 100 of the most common Latin stems in the English language gives you access to at least 5000 words. It’s like a ‘fast-track power-path’ to strong vocabulary as Michael Clay Thompson observes. Latin lives as the foundational, rock-solid structure to English language. It provides the most effective way to master English grammar and develop a profound understanding of vocabulary.

Irrelevant?

Biology, chemistry, astronomy, psychology, sociology, economics, logic, law, theology, politics – the root words for the specialized vocabulary of all the modern sciences is derived from Latin and Greek (which adds a case for learning Greek as well). Even the word computer comes from Latin ‘computo’ to count or to sum up.

“I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this not because Latin is traditional and medieval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least 50 percent.”

Dorothy Sayers

Why dwell on it?

Just as ‘You are what you eat’, your mind becomes what you study. Subjects do not just provide information, they are formative. In other words, your mind takes on the quality of the subject that it dwells on. The study of literature for example produces insight, perception, and compassion for the human condition; math produces accuracy and logic. A mind that dwells on Latin produces logic, order, discipline, attention to detail, structure, precision, and patience. Latin is a serious mental workout. It is the equivalent of body building, wrestling, marathon running, and synchronized swimming folded into a language.

Latin does for language what math does for science. It requires the mental discipline and structure that humanities desperately need. The two most challenging subjects in school are foreign languages and math. They are cumulative: everything must be remembered, nothing can be forgotten. Most other subjects are topical, on the surface, and require only shallow learning. If a student bombs a test on the civil war, they can pick up their game and ace the next test on the industrial revolution. Knowledge in this case is not cumulative, but topical. Bringing subjective experience and personal feelings to the study of English is now often all that is required. Not so with Latin or math. These subjects require complete and successive mastery and thus stand apart as requiring deep understanding and developing higher order thinking. Latin is the ‘math’ that the humanities desperately need.

If you are of the practical type, you may also be interested to learn that the mean SAT score of students of Latin is 672 compared to 577 for students of Spanish and 503 for students without any foreign language. The average GPA of students of Latin is 2.89 versus 2.38 for students without a foreign language.

Latin Phrases to Live By - the bird on fire

“I would make everyone learn English; then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor—and Greek as a treat.”

Winston Churchill

And what’s more….

As one Latin aficionado observed: “Latin is a puzzle, a time capsule, and a secret code all in one” and it is also the only foreign language class where you get to talk like a supervillain: Omnes in culpa es, et cras ultimum pretium solves (You are all to blame and tomorrow you shall pay the ultimate price).

Still not convinced?

Top 10 Reasons for Studying Latin

Latin Resources to get you started:

My favorites are:

Latina Christiana, Prima Latina,and Form Latin series

So you really want to learn Latin

Cambridge Latin Course or order directly from Cambridge School Classics Project

There are a plethora of ways to get started:

  • The BigBook of Lively Latin
  • Ecce Romani
  • Getting Started with Latin, with French, or with Spanish
  • The Great Latin Adventure
  • Henle Latin courses
  • Kraken Latin for the Logic Years
  • Latin (BJU Press)
  • Latin for Children
  • Latin in the Christian Trivium
  • Latin Primer Series, fourth editions
  • The Latin Road to English Grammar
  • Latin Verbs: To Infinitives and Beyond!
  • Latin’s Not so Tough!
  • Minimus: Starting Out in Latin and Minimus Secundus: Moving on in Latin
  • Olim, Once Upon a Time, In Latin
  • Olim Once Upon a Time…In Latin: Derivatives
  • Our Roman Roots: A Catholic Student’s Guide to Latin Grammar and Western Civilization
  • Paideia Latina
  • Song School Latin (version 1.2)
  • Visual Latin
  • Wheelock’s Latin

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to School of the Unconformed

A Newsletter on Education, Family, and the Upheaval

In the News

The Making of Un-Machine Minds

- Family, education, and non-conformity - Fatherhood is a form of insanity, a state in which love … [Read More...] about The Making of Un-Machine Minds

Death to Academic Language – Long live ‘hey, what’s up?’

A California teacher made it onto the woke watch list with this TikTok post. Don’t feel the need to … [Read More...] about Death to Academic Language – Long live ‘hey, what’s up?’

An Introduction to Classic Books – for Adults!

The Well-Educated Mind provides a solid introduction to the classics, with book recommendations and guidance through the reading process.

Exogenesis: A Dystopian Novel of a Benedict Option Future

We are anticipating the publication of Exogenesis in 2023. If you want to be among the first to read the novel, send us an email at humanitasfamily@protonmail.com
with “Exogenesis” anywhere in the subject line, and we’ll let you know once it’s published. Read more about the novel.

Humanitas Family on Radio

HF talks with Richard Syrett about Home Education every Tuesday at 4:50 pm on 960 AM Radio in the GTA!

Footer

Our goal

To build up and support what it means to be human through knowledge, relationship, and faith.

Recent Posts

  • Death to Academic Language – Long live ‘hey, what’s up?’
  • TikTok Brain Cure with Three Ingredients
  • TikTok – Time is running out for saving our children’s brains
  • Family Traditions: Why baking cookies, snowy walks, and read-alouds matter
  • Rethinking School – Susan Wise Bauer – Part I

Search

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in