Why Latin?
Dear Parents,
It is my great pleasure to be your children’s teacher this year. It will be challenging, but also great fun. To teach anything well, it takes the patience of a glacier, the tirelessness of a dynamo, and the organization of a supercomputer; and since we are human—and none of those other things—we help each other. You know best how to motivate your child, and I look forward to working with you to achieve the greatest success possible.
Let me tell you about my own experience with Latin, and then about its relation to English. This will be my fourth year teaching Latin and my fifth teaching. A common question I get is, Why Latin? The short answer is, Because of English. But to understand better, you may need a little context surrounding the origins of English itself. I'll try to brief, but at the risk of becoming obscure, this letter may develop a bit of a gland problem.
Before English was a language, the Romans had conquered what they called Britannia. Latin predated English there, in fact—but England wasn’t the crown jewel of the Empire. It was a cold and wet garrison post, notable mainly for Bath and a bunch of restless soldiers. The Romans built a wall to keep out the pesky Scotsmen who dwelt on the north of the island (AKA the Picts), but the Picts were persistent and at length the Romans grew tired of dealing with them directly. The Romans consequently paid for the passage of whole settlements of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons to sail from Denmark and Germany to England with the promise of land in exchange for military service—“cannon fodder,” as we might style them today—but in those days, the Roman's called them foederati. These foederati brought their Old German-speaking tongues with them. To a certain degree, Old German had already been infused with some Latin, and withal both languages are cognates ("born together") in the sense of their Indo-European origins.
Such was beginning of English in the fifth century AD.
Not much time passed before the Roman Empire contracted, leaving the posterity of these German mercenaries in charge of the island and of a race of Romano-Celts, who spoke a debased version of Latin. For six-hundred years, these people spoke Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), the language of Beowulf, some riddles, and “The Battle of Maldon”—enough extant sources to fill a book half the length of a Harry Potter novel, perhaps—but certainly not enough to be called a rich literary tradition—unless poems about fighting and drinking are what you call a rich literary tradition. Alfred the Great was the Anglo-Saxons’ most famous king and he valued reading and learning more than any other king from this period of English history.
When French-speaking Vikings conquered England in 1066, the new English nobility spoke Old French, and would do so for the next two hundred years or so, while Anglo-Saxon languished among the peasantry. Anglo-Saxon lost many of its words, because generally peasants A. couldn't read or write and B. didn't have time to even if they knew how. What survived was primarily the basic words needed for getting peasant work done (indeed, the most frequently used words in the English language are Germanic in origin). When Anglo-Saxon was restored as the polite speech of England, it had to borrow a great deal of vocabulary from French, and often bypassed the Francophone filter, copping words wholesale from Latin. At this point, Anglo-Saxon had become Middle English, the language of Chaucer, the Pearl Poet, and John Wycliffe. Today, then, about 70% of English is Latinate (or Greek) in origin—and not just obscure words, such as prestidigitation, but everyday words, such as peculiar and precarious.
It is because of this great poverty of Anglo-Saxon that it helps to know Latin. Latin buttresses students' understanding of not just vocabulary but also grammar. Learning the jobs of each inflected ending of a word forces students to think critically about English grammar, which is based in German. The underlying concepts remain the same between German and Latin; German uses word order, however, to indicate syntax, whereas Latin uses changes in word spelling. I find the interplay between these two concepts the most difficult for students to grasp, but ultimately the most beneficial for their use of English.
To conclude, many are familiar with the pragmatic benefits of Latin study. The Finnish education system, much praised by BASIS, molds students into some of the best at math and science. Unlike some of the top performing nations in STEM fields, Finnish students also excel in language arts on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). In Finland, then, it is no surprise that Latin is key to students’ linguistic development, and that to ignore it there is, at best, evidence of a provincial mind. In the US, high stakes tests such as the SAT, ACT, and GRE are all loaded with Latinate vocabulary, and Latin has been shown to improve these test scores, which in turn saves money on college. Putting sentences together with clarity and proper syntax also opens doors just about anywhere you go. Like it or lump it, proper English is the language of opportunity, and the better grasp one has on it, the better the opportunities that become available. I believe that all of my students are capable of learning this language, and I look forward to us having a splendid year. For all things Latin and classics, I will remain
Y’r Ob't S’v't,
Ryan Leng
P.S. A word on classics is in order. We will primarily be learning about ancient Egypt, Sumer, Greece, and Rome, which is Mediterranean-centric. Many other civilizations had developed by this period in East and South Asia, Africa, and the Americas. To be sure, their full and imaginative lives are worthy of study, and your children will learn about them in subsequent grades. We choose to focus on these four civilizations primarily because of their influence on Western culture, and not because they were inherently better than other civilizations.
For further information on Latin and its relation to English, see the Introduction to Wheelock's Latin, our text.
It is my great pleasure to be your children’s teacher this year. It will be challenging, but also great fun. To teach anything well, it takes the patience of a glacier, the tirelessness of a dynamo, and the organization of a supercomputer; and since we are human—and none of those other things—we help each other. You know best how to motivate your child, and I look forward to working with you to achieve the greatest success possible.
Let me tell you about my own experience with Latin, and then about its relation to English. This will be my fourth year teaching Latin and my fifth teaching. A common question I get is, Why Latin? The short answer is, Because of English. But to understand better, you may need a little context surrounding the origins of English itself. I'll try to brief, but at the risk of becoming obscure, this letter may develop a bit of a gland problem.
Before English was a language, the Romans had conquered what they called Britannia. Latin predated English there, in fact—but England wasn’t the crown jewel of the Empire. It was a cold and wet garrison post, notable mainly for Bath and a bunch of restless soldiers. The Romans built a wall to keep out the pesky Scotsmen who dwelt on the north of the island (AKA the Picts), but the Picts were persistent and at length the Romans grew tired of dealing with them directly. The Romans consequently paid for the passage of whole settlements of Angles, Jutes, and Saxons to sail from Denmark and Germany to England with the promise of land in exchange for military service—“cannon fodder,” as we might style them today—but in those days, the Roman's called them foederati. These foederati brought their Old German-speaking tongues with them. To a certain degree, Old German had already been infused with some Latin, and withal both languages are cognates ("born together") in the sense of their Indo-European origins.
Such was beginning of English in the fifth century AD.
Not much time passed before the Roman Empire contracted, leaving the posterity of these German mercenaries in charge of the island and of a race of Romano-Celts, who spoke a debased version of Latin. For six-hundred years, these people spoke Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), the language of Beowulf, some riddles, and “The Battle of Maldon”—enough extant sources to fill a book half the length of a Harry Potter novel, perhaps—but certainly not enough to be called a rich literary tradition—unless poems about fighting and drinking are what you call a rich literary tradition. Alfred the Great was the Anglo-Saxons’ most famous king and he valued reading and learning more than any other king from this period of English history.
When French-speaking Vikings conquered England in 1066, the new English nobility spoke Old French, and would do so for the next two hundred years or so, while Anglo-Saxon languished among the peasantry. Anglo-Saxon lost many of its words, because generally peasants A. couldn't read or write and B. didn't have time to even if they knew how. What survived was primarily the basic words needed for getting peasant work done (indeed, the most frequently used words in the English language are Germanic in origin). When Anglo-Saxon was restored as the polite speech of England, it had to borrow a great deal of vocabulary from French, and often bypassed the Francophone filter, copping words wholesale from Latin. At this point, Anglo-Saxon had become Middle English, the language of Chaucer, the Pearl Poet, and John Wycliffe. Today, then, about 70% of English is Latinate (or Greek) in origin—and not just obscure words, such as prestidigitation, but everyday words, such as peculiar and precarious.
It is because of this great poverty of Anglo-Saxon that it helps to know Latin. Latin buttresses students' understanding of not just vocabulary but also grammar. Learning the jobs of each inflected ending of a word forces students to think critically about English grammar, which is based in German. The underlying concepts remain the same between German and Latin; German uses word order, however, to indicate syntax, whereas Latin uses changes in word spelling. I find the interplay between these two concepts the most difficult for students to grasp, but ultimately the most beneficial for their use of English.
To conclude, many are familiar with the pragmatic benefits of Latin study. The Finnish education system, much praised by BASIS, molds students into some of the best at math and science. Unlike some of the top performing nations in STEM fields, Finnish students also excel in language arts on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). In Finland, then, it is no surprise that Latin is key to students’ linguistic development, and that to ignore it there is, at best, evidence of a provincial mind. In the US, high stakes tests such as the SAT, ACT, and GRE are all loaded with Latinate vocabulary, and Latin has been shown to improve these test scores, which in turn saves money on college. Putting sentences together with clarity and proper syntax also opens doors just about anywhere you go. Like it or lump it, proper English is the language of opportunity, and the better grasp one has on it, the better the opportunities that become available. I believe that all of my students are capable of learning this language, and I look forward to us having a splendid year. For all things Latin and classics, I will remain
Y’r Ob't S’v't,
Ryan Leng
P.S. A word on classics is in order. We will primarily be learning about ancient Egypt, Sumer, Greece, and Rome, which is Mediterranean-centric. Many other civilizations had developed by this period in East and South Asia, Africa, and the Americas. To be sure, their full and imaginative lives are worthy of study, and your children will learn about them in subsequent grades. We choose to focus on these four civilizations primarily because of their influence on Western culture, and not because they were inherently better than other civilizations.
For further information on Latin and its relation to English, see the Introduction to Wheelock's Latin, our text.