Will Latin help me learn Asian languages?

Question

I'm currently taking my second year of Latin and I've notice a improvement in understanding grammar. While I know that Latin would help me in the study of the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) I was wanted to know if the grammar from Latin would help with learning languages of Asia such as Japanese, Mandarin, or Korean.

Thanks.

I'm currently taking my second year of Latin and I've notice a improvement in understanding grammar. While I know that Latin would help me in the study of the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) I was wanted to know if the grammar from Latin would help with learning languages of Asia such as Japanese, Mandarin, or Korean.

Thanks.

Edit1: -_- I'm aware that Asian languages are not derived from Latin I merely want to know if there are similiarities in grammar.

Answer 1

Nope, not at all.

Answer 2

No. Sorry, it won't really help at all since the grammar is set up in a completely different way.

Latin will help you with all of the Romance languages (and English, and science) but it doesn't do much good for Asian languages. They tend to use a more extensive system of honorifics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific

Chinese is a tonal language so many people have a very hard time learning to read chinese since it is an analytic language. The reader depends very much on word order, since they do not change words to show number or gender. (And the syntax isn't the same.)

I do find Japanese to be much easier than Chinese, for whatever reason. And learning one Asian language will help you learn another Asian language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_language

Answer 3

No, it won't. While most of your European languages are tied to Latin because of the Roman conquests, the Romans never traveled to Asia (China, India Tibet, Korea or Japan). Therefor they had no influence on the languages of Asia. The languages are based on different linguistic systems and have very little in common. Asian languages (Korean, Mandarin, Sechuan and Japanese) are sometimes referred to as "Barking Languages" because of the roughness with which they are spoken.
If you check a linguistic chart, most large dictionarys have one, many of them don't even include Asia or North and South America. If you find a complete chart, you will see that Asian languages separated from European languages almost at the beginning, if it shows any connection at all.
BTW, German is a Tuetonic language and not tied in to the Romantic languages at all, although the Romans DID have an influence on German. The German word for parrot is almost identical to the Spanish word for parrot for instance (Papagay / Papagayo). there are other influences as well. English is a derivative of German.

Answer 4

Modern Asian languages are much older than most modern Indo-European languages. French, Spanish and the other Romance languages all find their origins in Latin. English, German, and the other Germanic languages find their origins in Proto-germanic. Baltic-Slavic is the original form of the current Baltic languages and Slavic tongues which include Russian and others. Note that all the proto-forms of these languages date from roughly 100-200 C.E., or even more recent.

Not so with the Asian languages. We have extant examples of Chinese which date from three thousand years B.C.E. (half a millennium before the Giza pyramids were built). Classical Japanese texts date from the very beginning of the Japanese writing system around 700 C.E. And the language itself is considerably older.

Moreover, while Chinese and its sisters are clearly descended from something generally called Proto-Sinic, Japanese and Korean are Altaic, tracing their roots back to a hypothetical ancestor called Ur-Altaic. In other words, Asian languages stem from a completely different part of the language family tree than do European languages. And, as a note, Japanese has virtually no linguistic connections with Chinese except for the use of Chinese characters and the adoption of some ancient Chinese idioms and adages. Knowing Japanese will help you learn Chinese about as much as knowing English will help you learn Arabic.

So in answer to your question...no, Latin will not help you learn Asain language. You have probably noticed your improvement in understanding grammer because Latin gives us a greater understanding of English, in two ways. First, in its grammatical structure: Latin words are inflected. English syntax is more complicated than that, as word function is determined by word order in an English sentence. Learning Latin grammar first helps prepare students for English syntax.. Therefore, learning Latin grammar can help tremendously in learning English grammar. Secondly, Latin helps in the understanding of English in its vocabulary, as over 50% of English words have Latin origins.
Good luck to you!

Answer 5

No, not very much. I took Latin, also, and am trying to learn Japanese now. I haven't noticed many similarities at all.

Of course, since you've gained practice at learning languages in general, it's a bit easier to learn a second language simply because of your language study skills/habits.

Answer 6

There aren't are direct connections between Latin and Asian languages. Latin comes from the Indo-European Language family, while Asian languages come from the Austroasiatic parent language.
That being said, there is a skill to learning language that you're learning from Latin. You're learning how to understand another language, and that should help somewhat in you attempt to learn any other language.

Answer 7

You already answered your own question. Asian languages are not derived from Latin roots, so no learning Latin will not help you understand Asian words. If anything you have to find the language family from which these languages come from.

I warn you that though they are all Asian, they may come from different language families. And dialects very so much that I think that it may be your best bet to just challenge the languages directly.

Good luck.

Answer 8

lol no none of those languages have anything to do with latin the reason u understand english better is because its based on latin they r basicly the same thing but asain languages are totally different their sounds are nothing like those of latin and u would have to learn from scratch

Answer 9

No, Latin is the base of romance languages. and Asian languages are definitely not.

Answer 10

Latin is a Germanic language (I think), while the Asian languages are part of another language family. So probably not. Latin will definitely not hep you with the writing systems of the Asian languages.

Answer 11

Latin will not help you at all to understand Asian Languages. They just don't have any connection whatsoever.