Niece taking College Latin---need feedback?

Question

My eldest niece took Spanish in HS and now decided to take Latin in her first year of college. (They dropped this choice in my HS 35 years ago; about the only thing I know is that Latin seems to have some sort of WEIRD obsession with the gender of tables. How DO you determine a table's gender, anyway? Never figured that out in German....)

As a surprise gift from her godmother, do I send her a copy of _Latin for Dummies_, a *very large* bottle of extra-strength headache pills, a big "crying pillow", or a couple bottles of high-proof booze, because she may NEED a good stiff drink now and then?

Suggestions, comments?

NO earthly idea why she wanted Latin; the Masses are now in English, and her RN mother and pharmacist father sure don't use more than a few abbreviations in THEIR work, so it's hardly like a useful tool....

Answer 1

I'm going to respectfully disagree with both of you and say that Latin is an excellent language to learn. It's true that it's not as directly useful as a modern language, but I believe it should be a staple of Western culture education and the only reason it's not offered as much as it used to be is that it's hard. If she's motivated to study it, more power to her!

Here are the benefits I reap as an intermediate Latin scholar:
- a BIG leg up on learning Romance languages (took me only 1.5 years to become fluent in Spanish, and I can somewhat read French and Italian though I've never studied them)
- the ability to figure out English (and Spanish) vocabulary I've never seen before
- a familarity with the terms used in law and medicine, which leads to being less intimidated by lawyers and doctors
- a deep understanding of grammar (Latin has the most complicated grammar of any commonly taught language except Ancient Greek), which has served me well in all my languages
- an exposure to really great works of literature which are much less powerful in translation

I think a good gift would be a nice Latin-English dictionary (Cassell's makes a decent one, or you could splurge on the Oxford even though it's overkill for a beginning student) or a grammar, which every student should have (Allen & Greenough is a good one).

BTW, I don't know anything weird about Latin and the gender of tables. It's "mensa", feminine, and the gender of objects differs among languages (Spanish "la mesa", feminine, but German "der Tisch", masculine)

Answer 2

I speak spanish as a first language, and I speak latin too, latin is Very useful for english speakers too, because what you call "long words" WHICH ARE THE "EDUCATED" WORDS come from latin in its staggering majority, and are difficult for english speakes to retain due to its apparent complexity and because it doesn't make sense. English is a more monosyllabical language, short words. If you speak latin these long words become as water clear as any other, improving your vocabulary, diction and capacity of expression and communication.

Takwe for instance the word: interlocution. For a regular english speaker this words makes no sense, and you have to be educated as to what it refers before you know what it is, and then reatin it in your memory, but if you speak latin you will inmediately know that it means a talk between two parties, conversation, why?
Inter: between
locutus iri: To talk.
and so on.
The reason why latin has genders is the same as in spanish, it's completely arbitrary and abstract. foe english speaker it's difffciult to grasp because english doesn't use them, but spanish coming from latin does. The tables you see are actually tables for declinations, not genders per se. Latin has three genders: Femmenine, Masculine and Neuter.

LAtin has 6 cases in which the noun can declinate depending on the role of the noun in the sentence.
There why.

Answer 3

I think every child should be taught Latin at school.
It would provide a sound basic grammar for all European languages, and a basic vocabulary for all the Romanesque languages as well.
Learning Latin is the best stepping stone to learn other languages, especially for English speakers whose own language has so few morphemes and grammar.
As for a present, a good dictionary and/or grammar would be ideal.

Answer 4

As a multilingual language teacher, the first thing you should do is to convince her to get out of Latin. The only reason to take Latin is perhaps for medicine or if one plans to acquire a number of romance languages. Spanish is the most useful non-English language. Next would be German, in my opinion. Of course if one could learn a Mideastern language, a dialect of Arabic, then s/he would be in great demand; in Iraq! I haven't used my French or Portuguese in so long I don't remember how to speak them, though I can read some and understand some. I think there are more countries that have Spanish as its official language than any other language, including English. (She needs to repair the car's motor and not just change a flat tire.)