To say that ancient Greek, Latin, and ancient Chinese for that matter are not very popular languages to learn in Singapore is an understatement. I studied both Latin and Greek in pre-university school in the Netherlands, and did my “A-levels” in Ancient Greek.
Why in the world would someone want to learn a “dead” language? There are a few good reasons, and a couple of bad ones:
Good reason: Pure interest If you know how to read ancient Latin, Greek and/or Chinese, you can go back to the early times of written history and read stories that were written down thousands of years ago. Of course you can read the translations, but with translation, there is always an element of the original that gets lost. Imagine being able to read the words that Plato wrote, exactly the same words, in the same order, is truly a timeless and priceless experience. The Bible’s New Testament, too, was written in Greek.
Good reason: Learning a disciplined intellectual approach I have to be honest about this one: classical languages are difficult, and I was never particularly good at them. The complexity of sentences and grammatical structures can be mind numbing. Today, we try to write for readability, but most ancient texts are far from conversational. A sentence can span many lines and span several sub sentences. This makes that there is no other option but to ‘attack’ each sentence in a structured way: first determine the main verb and subject, then the (often multiple) objects, indirect objects and other parts of the sentence, and finally put the whole together into a meaningful translation. Going through this exercise, over and over again, has given me a great structure for problem solving, far beyond linguistics. Reading Greek has taught me the discipline to take things step by step and don’t rush to conclusions. When faced with the problem, I will take a little while to understand the whole problem and see what my options are before acting. Learning a classical language has brought me the confidence to believe that even when a problem seems too complicated to solve at the outset, taking a step-by-step approach will bring me through.
Bad/Good reason: Career An often cited reason to learn Latin is that it is still used in certain professions, such as law and medicine. I think the benefit of knowing classics for these professions is vastly exaggerated: while it is true that in law practice, certain vocabulary stems from Latin, you would very soon get the hang of those particular idioms. It really isn’t necessary to learn the language as a whole for that.
That said, knowing a classical language will certainly set you apart, especially in Singapore, where very few do. Certain employers, notably McKinsey, highly value diversity, and if you know your classics you will be able to bring that diversity into about any team. Too many people already have an MBA, so really, what is the added value of their knowledge? For millennia, people have faced similar problems, and with a background in classical languages you can bring a different perspective. Besides, you will have learnt a disciplined approach to problem solving, as outlined above.
Bad reason: Snob appeal It takes far too much time and effort to learn Latin or Greek to be concerned with something like snob appeal. Really, it’s just not an efficient use of your time!
There are other reasons, too (in no particular order):
INDIFFERENT REASON: You have no choice if your school requires you to take dead languages as school subjects. This was the case in the private boarding schools in the UK until around 10 or 15 years ago. For the “junior” forms at my old school, it was English and any two modern European languages. The “senior” forms took English, two modern European languages, Latin and Classical Greek.
INDIFFERENT/BAD REASON: That brings us to peer pressure. At my old school, juniors develop an inferiority complex because seniors could converse in Latin or Greek. So juniors took Latin or Greek (or both) on an unofficial basis in order to have “equal standing” with the seniors.
GOOD REASON: Continuing the example of my old school, seniors and juniors who have decided early on go into the biomedical field are encouraged to take Latin. And for good reason. The Linnaean binomial taxonomy that gives plants and animals their scientific and normal names requires a quite a high level of fluency in Latin. The older generation of biologists were fairly fluent Latin users, which is no longer the case today.
GOOD REASON: Once you have acquired some understanding of Latin and/or Greek, then some of the more hateful Victorian-era English words no longer faze you. Many of our more highfalutin’, pretentious, grandiose English words were coined during Victorian times, whose educated classes were fond of dissing the less well educated. If you have Latin or Greek under your belt but personally prefer to express things more plainly, that is a great benefit to yourself and everyone else. You read some pretentious and polemical rubbish, but can ‘translate’ it into crisper, more easily understandable phraseology to get at the speaker’s or writer’s meaning. Of course, using big words to to diss back at the dissers is acceptable and highly entertaining.
(Sorry, I have to stop here because the cat is starting to maul at the keyboard…)
Indifferent reason: still exists in the Netherlands. There are secondary schools called “gymnasium”, which require you to take at least one classical language.
LOL I really liked the “snob appeal” (bad) reason.
Nice post!
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