Can someone tell me why it is better to learn Latin before spanish?
Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at
3:49 pm
By learning Latin first, will it become easier to learn French, Italian, Spanish, and other languages? If i missed some, could you inform me on what they are?
BTW, i'm going into law and i think it's mandatory to learn Latin because of all the Latin-based terms.
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Tagged with: languages • learning latin
Filed under: Latin Language
Yes, by learning Latin first it will help you with Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and many more. When i took spanish in high school my teacher told us this. That latin is the root of many languages.
You answered your own question, and well at that. I’d only add that it provides a formal overview of the whole architecture of cases and tenses in addition to root words. It’s cool because you can intuit a LOT in those Romance languages you mentioned, not to mention medical terms.
It really won’t make a difference to learn Latin before learning Romance languages. Besides, English contains a lot of Latin-based words, the roots of which are the same in some Spanish words.
The other Romance languages are Portuguese and Romanian. There are also regional Romance languages (e.g., Romansch, Catalan, etc.)
Most of the words in the romace languages come from latin so it would be much easier if you learned it frist.
When you need to use latin in law, religion etc it is better to learn that first as there are huge differences. If you are wanting to conversate write read and engage in everyday exvhanges spanish will be used wider and should be learned first
Latin is at the root of English, Spanish, French, Portugeuse, Italian. It has even influenced Welsh and some Adriatic languages. Latin is a rather simple language but has a huge vocubulary which has spilled over into English. Latin is the standard language for terminology in botany, zoology, law. I read somewhere than in a vocabulary of 2500 words used in everyday English conversation almost 2000 come directly or indirectly from Latin.
Yes, Latin will help immensely in those languages and also Portuguese. It is also very useful for understanding grammar generally and for enriching your English vocabulary. To be honest, I know a lot of very competent lawyers who have never studied Latin, but I still think that it is a very valuable asset for anyone going into law. I have certainly always found it so.
It seems yr ideas are already very clear and I guess multiple and doubtfoul answers would just contribute confusing you.
As I far as I know Latin is a must for whoever wants go into law while other languages are merely optionals (and anyhow they are surely of much easier learning if you’ll study them after the Latin).
From the Italian Wikipedia I read that the different languages originated from Latin have changed as follows:
Italian – evoluted by 12% –
Spanish " 20%
Romanian " 23,5%
Portugues " 31%
French " 44%
Hence Italian is the most similar to the original Latin while the French language is the most changed.