Latin Revival

USA Today reports on a welcome move back to learning Latin. “…after nearly a half-century lull, studying the language of ancient Rome is cool again. College enrollment in Latin is the highest it has been since the Modern Language Association started keeping track in 1958.”

Why is this a good thing? Dorothy Sayers in her classic essay The Lost Tools of Learning wrote: “…the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical documents.”

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1:09 pm on March 24, 2004