• Print
close

DOTI: Classics or Modern Languages?

With the start of school up and running again, the question of class load always seems to circulate in students’ minds. At one time or another, every student at Belmont Hill is tasked with an extremely difficult decision: to stick with Latin or drop Latin. This question holds great significance as many will come to realize. The next four years will likely be reminiscent of this decision, detailing potential make-or-break academic performances. With so much flexibility in language selection at a school like Belmont Hill, tackling the controversy between classics vs modern language is no easy feat.

 

Max – Classics: While some may argue that Latin and other classical languages have no use in today’s world, that is simply not true. 60% of the English language is derived from Latin and 20% is derived from Greek. While no one speaks Latin or Ancient Greek in the modern world, knowing key vocabulary words in Latin or Greek, especially prepositions, can help expand your vocabulary. This is exceptionally prevalent in STEM fields and other subjects of advanced academia. If you want to go into one of those fields, you will be guaranteed to come across words with Latin and Greek roots; having a background in classics will allow you to adjust quickly to the specific STEM vocabulary. 

Having an advanced vocabulary is not only relevant in STEM fields. Many standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT will ask questions about vocabulary, and because of the Latin and Greek roots, people who have taken classics tend to do better in these sections. Also, in addition to giving you a leg up on standardized tests, classics help with college applications because it is such a niche area of study and stands out on your transcript. 

The Latin track at Belmont Hill also appeals to people who prefer to read over speaking a language. All other modern languages require their students to speak or even write in the language, whereas Latin only requires you to read the language. This means that you do not have to worry about composing essays in Latin or focusing on specific pronunciation that makes no sense paired with how the word is spelled. 

Finally, the main reason to take classics: what you translate is part of history. In a modern language course, you learn how to communicate basic thoughts such as what you had for breakfast that day or asking where the library is. However, in Latin 2, you will already be translating Caesar’s Gallic Wars, an actual recount of a series of historical events that culminated in Rome’s rise to becoming a global power, written by Julius Caesar himself. Nowhere else will you be able to access and translate documents of such historical significance. Even in history courses at Belmont Hill, you do not read about the personal insights of famous historical leaders, instead learn about them from a broader perspective. In Latin 3A, Dr. Davis often hands out ancient untranslated tablet inscriptions that museums or archaeologists have asked for his students to translate. Most of the time, we would be the first to translate that specific tablet, actively taking a part in revealing history. Meanwhile, kids in Spanish are suffering through trying to learn the subjunctive, getting their pronunciation right in French, or memorizing tones in Chinese just so they can properly tell you what their favorite color is.

For those who say Latin is a dead language, that’s like saying why study history—it’s all in the past. 

 

Brady – Modern Languages: As a kid, I hated learning languages. In elementary school and throughout middle school, I took Spanish, a common language among younger students as it provides similar aspects to English in terms of sentence structure and grammatical rules. Recognizing that it was one of the most popular spoken languages in the world, I thought that it would be relevant when I got older. But as my middle school years came to an end, I was tasked with the tough decision of whether to drop Spanish and continue with Latin—or vice versa.

Modern languages are simply more culturally relevant in today’s world. You’re able to learn about a vast array of cultures. If you travel when you’re older (which you probably will), you’ll be able to apply what you learned in a classroom setting to a real-life society rooted in history and tradition. Studying abroad in college is a core experience for many students. 

Learning a language is fairly impractical if there is no spoken aspect or dialogue to it. Latin consists of transcribing old texts with the hope that you’ll find which subjunctive declaration you would use to describe a horse. No one cares. If you take Chinese, for example, you can learn about a simplified and traditional dialect that is read, written, and spoken in places like China and Taiwan. Practicing memorization in terms of speaking and then translating in your head can also help you with study methods for other subjects, such as history or vocabulary. Going to an actual place where you can listen and speak to people will also progress your knowledge and ability in that language much faster than having to write out direct translations. The idea of being fluent in a language is foreign to Latin students in today’s day and age. 

A more obvious point is that modern languages are actually more fun to learn. I’m sorry, but who actually enjoys taking Latin? Sure, it looks good on a college resume. And maybe you can be the first one to raise your hand when someone asks what ‘cum laude’ means. Meanwhile, I’ll be traveling the world with my multilingual speaking skills, talking and learning about people who are still alive. For the record, Latin is a dead language. Because you are not dealing with listening, speaking, or writing text, reading comprehension is essentially the only focus and thus loses a more interactive audience.

Plain and simple, it’s easier. There are studies have shown that some of the most popular modern languages, such as Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Italian, and Russian, are naturally easier to grasp, especially for younger students. This partly relies on simple word-to-word translation. Latin has declensions, subjunctives, and various other word fragments, making the foundation of crafting sentences much harder to engage in. Max kindly points out authors like Virgil and Caesar. As these are important figures in history, the texts that derive from them are deliberately difficult. These highly educated people saw writing as a form of high intellectual art and only wrote for a very small and highly aristocratic audience. Try reading Hobbes’ translation of Thucydides and you will see that while the prose is brilliant, it is difficult even for an English native. 

Couple this with teachers who are invested, super cool, and provide really good food. It is clear to me that I made the right choice in taking a modern language throughout my Belmont Hill career. If you’re a second former on the brink of making this pivotal decision, I know which one I would choose.

Story Page