Lingusitics Does studying Latin help in learning other languages?

[Auto-Didact]

I don't think anybody in linguistics is only concerned with the opinions of "elders". There are plenty of innovations in linguistics all the time and lots of new developments. They just aren't using dynamical systems to study things. I think going from "they're not interested in paper A" to "they're pseudo-controlled by a council of elders" is a bit of a leap.

I'm not singling out dynamical systems type research but all mathematics type research, apart from standard statistics. I'm also not personally attacking linguists, but just speaking out my bias against all non-exact academics who tend to reflexively shy away from research which moves away from their fields orthodoxy by becoming a form of applied mathematics; usually the critique to such new mathematical models is 'This is way over our heads... what is a differential equation? We would need a statistician to analyze this but we don't have the budget for that.'

I happen to have a lot of experience with this in many different social science fields and beyond (economics, psychology, medicine, politicology, etc) and as far as I can tell linguistics is no exception. But to be fair, I don't know enough professional linguists to make a representative sample; I am only acquainted with a handful of linguists, three of which I know personally, namely one of my best friends who is a computer scientist with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, and two older retired linguists, who were respectively originally also trained as a philosopher next to linguist, and a physician next to linguist.

tl;dr those in favour of orthodox practice tend to be in favour of minimalism which is directly pragmatic and against anything more.

I wasn't attacking "universalism" or "generalism" I was saying in the 19th Century silly properties were ascribed to Latin.

An argument in favour of specialism - i.e. encouraging the existence of seperating people into camps of non-overlapping specialists - is almost de facto an argument against universalism, but I get what you are trying to say.

I maintain that those silly properties ascribed to Latin by 19th century speakers are attempts at explanation by giving examples - examples which happen to be imperfect for a distinctive lack of explanatory capabilities of those explaining that which they are trying to explain - of the properties of some concept that they were trying to convey which is essentially about the same general applicable skill that I am talking about namely a method of analogy, with category theory being a particular technical specification of this more general concept.

The attempts at explanations being unsuccessful means that the concept being described is still generally unrecognized and therefore of course still vague. However, whether recognized or unrecognized, the concept seems to be an essential property of language that is itself directly mathematical and therefore transforms the discussion of language into a discussion about mathematics, with language simply being an application of some branch of mathematics in the same way that cartography is an application of geometry.

but if the contrary, then try better to explain how. "Does studying Latin help in learning other Languges?"
Yes/No/Maybe

I already answered this in post #27

 

[DarMM]

I'm also not personally attacking linguists, but just speaking out my bias against all non-exact academics who tend to reflexively shy away from research which moves away from their fields orthodoxy

I don't think linguists shy away from mathematics, there was plenty of activity in using mathematics in the field in the 80s-00s. It just didn't really pay off all that much or help all that much with most questions.

An argument in favour of specialism

I never argued for specialism. I'm just saying that Latin isn't special in the way people in the 19th century often thought. I'm not concerned with or talking about universalism or specialism.

Latin is not of any particular use in learning other languages. It's great if you want to learn more about Rome and Roman civilization.

 

[Auto-Didact]

I don't think linguists shy away from mathematics, there was plenty of activity in using mathematics in the field in the 80s-00s. It just didn't really pay off all that much or help all that much with most questions.

I agree, linguists are another breed who defy the simple hard/soft science dichotomy. As for the models, I think it is still work in process; from a cognitive science perspective, the biolinguistics and psycholinguistics are personally irresistible due to the direct possibility of comparison with experimental EEG, fMRI, connectome/etc data.

I never argued for specialism.

I interpreted the latter part of #51 differently i.e. literally which gives it a pro-specialist connotation; that is my fault.

Latin is not of any particular use in learning other languages. It's great if you want to learn more about Rome and Roman civilization.

I agree that Latin is not particularly useful for learning other languages outside recognizing vocabulary - at least it wasn't for me - and sometimes even more of an impediment since in my case the phonetics of some words get mixed up between similar languages.

Having said that, I maintain that the ability to translate to/from Latin brings with it other skills, which translation between most other common European modern languages distinctly lack. Of all the eight natural languages I have learned, Latin is the only one which gave rise to these skills in my experience, nor do these other languages envoke these intuition of patterns as strongly as Latin does.

These skills are generally applicable in reasoning in addition to directly enabling one to read about Rome, almost exactly analogous to how an understanding of matrices far exceeds applicability outside being able to solve problems in undergraduate linear algebra class; for these reasons I can find no other word to describe all of this except for being "mathematical".

 

[PhanthomJay]

There is no doubt in my opinion that Classical Latin helps with EVERYTHING! One or 2 years of it should be mandatory in high schools. It’s a mind trainer. Beautiful language!
Et tu, Brute? Tunc cadunt, Caesar!

 

[sadhappymusic]

I took Latin and really enjoyed it, it had a lovely logical flow to it. I had taken Spanish and French before this. I don't feel like Latin has helped me have a better grip on learning something like Italian for instance. I don't really feel it has made me better at French or Spanish. (I heard that apparently the language Latin is closest to is Romanian.) As other people have said Latin can help you with scientific or legal or medical terminology. What I partly really enjoyed it for is that it can help you decipher the meanings of English words.
E.g. Tenere (to hold in Latin) - that's the root of the English word tenacious (the quality of holding on and not letting go).
Or circumscribe (circum is around, scribere is to write), and circumscribe means to limit draw the boundary lines around something.

 

[symbolipoint]

sadhappymusic
How was the Latin taught? Purely study, or as living language? It helped you but you could have felt better if it were taught as a living language. My guess is that it was taught as just a form of formal study, but as you found, this did help you.

 

[sadhappymusic]

Yes it was taught formally/purely study, we didn't really speak it as a living language. I don't feel that it disadvantaged me in any way to learn it as a written language. If anything for me personally I think it was easier than French or Spanish or a living language because it seems that I am more of a visual learner and I pick up things that are written better than things that are spoken and my use of Latin for the most part does not require me to decipher what someone is verbally saying. I don't at all have a problem understanding the concept of a foreign language to speak, that I need to hear it spoken to know that it's a foreign language. (When I was 12 and was beginning to learn Spanish and French for the first time, I remember the teachers were going to great pains to make us do little skits and plays in Spanish and French I guess to try to give the kids the picture that it was a language and people spoke it and communicated with it.) I don't think that it is necessary to speak it verbally for people to understand the concept that it is like a language though or the idea of translating into it or out of it. It's already very alive to me on the page. (Also a lot of people seem to have no trouble understanding Math as a sort of language and translating into/out of it.)

(For example apparently there is a fun class at Princeton where they speak Latin to each other and it's as a living language. Is this what you were envisioning when you mentioned it being taught as a living language ? I'd love to take a class like that or if my class had been like that that would have been more socially engaging and good/fun. I was thinking my grade would have been worse if it was partly based on having to understand the spoken language like that though, or it might have been a little harder for me to learn that way! It could be a fun way to keep up the Latin you already know though. Or for someone who is a strong/better auditory learner or someone who struggles with the idea of a new language (like a 12 year old kid) and who you are trying to impress the concept upon I suppose that might make Latin tolerable or come alive. Come to think of it this might be a way to make Math/Physics less theoretical and more concrete/for better science communication, have a class where you speak Math at each other as a language.)

I know this is a little longwinded, I wasn't sure on your question exactly, but I hope that that answers it.

 

[etotheipi]

Caecilius est in horto

That's all I remember

 

[jedishrfu]

For me it’s:

Veni Vidi Reliqui! (I came, I saw, I left!)

A favorite quote from our beloved Latin teacher who taught us about Latin lore and horse racing lore.

 

[sadhappymusic]

Yes I can't remember much either, this was like 10 years ago and even after the first three week break over Christmas the other students were really upset that they were forgetting it all. (And then even more so over the summer.) Latin feels so easy to forget.