-Rosa-
I recently read a blog post about greek and latin being in our school system and how it seems not to benefit us in the long run: link here. Now I must say I don't agree at all..having been taught both greek and latin at school and being of greek decent myself I've always been told that learning these dead languages have their benefits. I always thought that was a cliche teachers told students to guilt them into studing USELESS MATERIAL... However, I don't think anyone can deny the fact that learning Greek and Latin makes it much easier to learn many modern European languages, exactly because these were so heavily influenced by these classical , often named "dead" languages. And I can confidently state that latin helped quite a lot in learning french and it has also helped me in understanding my OWN languague. In fact, learning Greek and Latin is a great way to improve vocabulary skills and they also help us guess at the meanings of words that we don’t know (both in English and in other languages). While I doubt that most of us would know the meaning of the English word “somniloquy”, if we know that in Latin, “somnus” means sleep and “loqui” means “to speak”, we can correctly guess that “somniloquy” means “talking in your sleep”. Now how is that not beneficial? In addition, i know for a fact thhat knowledge of classical languages allows us to understand the real meanings of texts which are the foundation to Western philosophy, literature, religion, theatre, and law and our western culutre in general. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle laid the foundations for all of western philosophy. Lastly, I would say that actually studing these ancient greek and latin texts exposes us to a new way of thinking, often ground breaking... So these are my thoughts on this subject...sorry for going a bit off the topic about what our blog is suppose to be but I'd really like to read your thoughts on this matter!
I recently read a blog post about greek and latin being in our school system and how it seems not to benefit us in the long run: link here. Now I must say I don't agree at all..having been taught both greek and latin at school and being of greek decent myself I've always been told that learning these dead languages have their benefits. I always thought that was a cliche teachers told students to guilt them into studing USELESS MATERIAL... However, I don't think anyone can deny the fact that learning Greek and Latin makes it much easier to learn many modern European languages, exactly because these were so heavily influenced by these classical , often named "dead" languages. And I can confidently state that latin helped quite a lot in learning french and it has also helped me in understanding my OWN languague. In fact, learning Greek and Latin is a great way to improve vocabulary skills and they also help us guess at the meanings of words that we don’t know (both in English and in other languages). While I doubt that most of us would know the meaning of the English word “somniloquy”, if we know that in Latin, “somnus” means sleep and “loqui” means “to speak”, we can correctly guess that “somniloquy” means “talking in your sleep”. Now how is that not beneficial? In addition, i know for a fact thhat knowledge of classical languages allows us to understand the real meanings of texts which are the foundation to Western philosophy, literature, religion, theatre, and law and our western culutre in general. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle laid the foundations for all of western philosophy. Lastly, I would say that actually studing these ancient greek and latin texts exposes us to a new way of thinking, often ground breaking... So these are my thoughts on this subject...sorry for going a bit off the topic about what our blog is suppose to be but I'd really like to read your thoughts on this matter!
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| A CUTE PANDA PIC TO LIGHTEN THE ATMOSPHERE: SO CUTEEEE *SQUEAL* |
