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The majority of people learning languages are not doing it because they naturally want to. The vast majority of language learning is by humans orally teaching c
by Dumblydorr 6y ago
The majority of people learning languages are not doing it because they naturally want to. The vast majority of language learning is by humans orally teaching children, who have no say in the matter. If we left it up to desire alone, Latin study would die off very quickly as the majority of those who learn latin are required to, I would've taken more STEM instead of latin if I had the option.
The root reason Latin didn't die is because it's a very historically influential language, whereas Scottish Gaelic is a small, regional dialect of a small, regional language that didnt have an influential empire associated with it. Gaelic is a nice cultural relic but it is not functionally useful to most young Scots.
- bpodgursky 6y agoAn interesting quirk of the US education system is that Latin is the only place most children ever learn formal grammar -- I never learned anything about subjunctives, the accusative case, intransitive verbs or the like in an English class. To be honest, I probably would have been fine without it (like the vast majority of US students who don't learn Latin). But it was certainly an interesting insight into English grammar structure in a way I would have missed otherwise.
- irrational 6y agoI never had the chance to take Latin in school, but I became interested in historical languages later in life (I’ve self-studied middle egyptian, neo-Babylonian, and Greek) and found the following book to be very helpful. Understanding Language: A Guide for Beginning Students of Greek and Latin https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0813218667/ https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0813218667/