Are Latin and Ancient Greek useless?

Question

I am going into my Sophomore year of highschool and I took Latin 1 H. I ended up loving it, not finding it extremely challenging, and getting my best final grade in Latin, an A+. I am planning on taking Latin all 4 years of school, and I plan on taking Ancient Greek for the next 3 years as well, in hopes that it will be a challenge. (From what I hear, the other, more standard languages offered at my school are not as difficult as Latin, and I don't want to just take the easy way out, thank you very much) Do you think that taking these languages is a waste of time?

Answer 1

A waste of time? If you were purely utilitarian, you'd have taken a course in plumbing, not Latin. Of what use is poetry? or Painting? Arguably, none whatsoever.
Latin and Greek have some of the greatest literature written in the history of civilisation. To be able to connect to that, and to the fountainhead of Western Civilisation, in a visceral way, makes learning Latin, and Greek well worthwhile.
Of course, as you already know, having a good knowledge of Latin means you can pretty much make of sense of any Romance language newspaper, and it is a short hop to learning another Romance language.
Have a look at the latinum podcast - you could use it over the summer to speed up your Latin, and start to teach yourself to speak (yes, speak) latin.
http://latinum.mypodcast.com

Answer 2

It depends on what you want to do after high school. If you plan to specialize in classical Greek and Roman literature or history these studies are a must. These courses may also be useful to you if become an English teacher since so much of the language is rooted in these two ancient languages. Much English grammar is also rooted in Latin grammar. Of course, if you plan to pursue any biblical studies the background in Greek will be helpful. Even if your high school teaches Homeric Greek, this is not really that different than the Koine Greek of the New Testament.

Answer 3

I took four years of Latin in high school...and wouldn't hesitate to encourage anyone w/ an interest in doing the same. As the first poster pointed out, a good deal of the English language is directly (or indirectly) derived from Latin...so it proved very beneficial in college and many times since.

With that said...if it's possible I would recommend taking at least a few semesters of whatever other "live" languages your school offers. The world has changed a lot since I graduated :) and you'd be well served to have at least a small vocabulary in Spanish/french/German/Japanese/Portuguese...

Bona fortuna!!

Answer 4

You can't use them in regular speech to communicate with people, like you can with English or Spanish or French, since it is a "dead" langugage. If you love ancient works, you may be able to read them in their original state. The only place where I can think Latin would really come in handy is when taking the SATs, since many English words come have French (a Romance (from Rome, using Latin) language) or Latin routes. The same goes for mediacl terms. I can't think of where you can use ancient Greek.

Answer 5

Absolutely not!

You have a great attitude about learning as a challenge. Master these languages early and you will accomplish much more than understand English and medical terms. Your general intelligence will increase, including your aptitude for math (don't ask me why).

If, on a whim, you decide to learn some other language in the future, you will find it to be a relative breeze. Slavic languages like Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian use mostly Greek letters. Even unrelated Asian languages or Navajo will be easier to learn because your linguistic awareness will have become so keen.

Answer 6

Many of our words in English have roots in Latin and ancient Greek. Learning those languages could help you understand English better

Answer 7

A background in Latin can help in subjects like law and maybe medicine. Stick with what you enjoy and will do well in and everyone has different opinions on what is the easy way out, so don't even worry about that. All languages do get tougher year by year.

Answer 8

It helps if you're planning on going into medicine. And Latin is especially useful if you plan on taking a language such as Spanish, Italian, or French later on. They are based on Latin.

Answer 9

If you want to be a doctor or something to do with science Latin isn't useless but yeah Greek probably is.

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Answer 10

I agree with metrodorus.
The vastly improved grounding it will give you on the bases of Western Civilisation can never be wasted. Plus the literature is superb.
And don't forget, you can always teach Classics. I always noticed what really nice people they were.