How does a college level Latin or Greek course differ from that of a modern language?
I speak English, Spanish, and Italian, and for all of the classes I've taken over these, it has been full language immersion from day 1. I can't imagine the classical languages are like this, especially Latin. So what is a typical class like. Is English spoken or must you speak in the foreign language? What do you do. Any insight into this issue would be appreciated. Also, I'm looking for specifics for Latin vs Greek. Thanks.
Tags: classical languages, english spanish, foreign language, insight, language immersion, specifics, typical class
October 24th, 2009 at 1:39 am
We never spoke in the language. Well, very rarely. Once you mastered the Greek alphabet, there was not much difference from learning Latin as far as the classes went. There was a big emphasis on grammar, and in-class translations of historical authors was the main focus, as opposed to conversational skills.
Modern language courses teach you the basics of conversing – Hello, my name is Jeannie, how are you doing today? I am well, and you? And so on and so forth. Basic words and phrases to get you by when speaking to people in that language. Both Spanish and French started out that way for me, so I am sure that most modern languages do the same.
Not so with Latin or Greek – they start you out with sample sentences (Latin: The farmer loves the land. The poets praise the forest.) to get the basics of the grammar down, as Latin in particular is very grammar-oriented, Greek only a little less so. While grammar books for other languages are certainly available, they are not used in class the way Latin and Greek grammars are. They are required for the course. In Latin, we learned scansion for the poetry. I also had weekly exercises from a composition book. (This is the written equivalent of conversing in a grammatically correct manner.)
October 24th, 2009 at 1:39 am
It’s probably not that different. I took Latin in HS and since we all had knowledge of Spanish, French or Italian, all we had to do was learn the CORRECT pronunciations (as they differ). But that was pretty easy and then after that it was all grammar and vocabulary. Oh yeah, I should mention that grammar in Latin is pretty easy as well. You can change the word order in the sentence, but it will always mean the same thing.