Benefits of Studying Latin

[Notascooby]

No surprise there. Milton sometimes tends to write Latin with English words.

Seems about right lol. I was reading a thread on another forum where native English speakers were discussing strategies on how to read it and the consensus seemed to be to treat it like a foreign language. Find the subject, object, verb etc. Can't be that bad surely.

 

[Pacifica]

Old authors, and especially poets, tend to give trouble to the average English speaker unused to that older style of writing. To take the most obvious example, I keep reading that people find Shakespeare hard, and modern editions of his works are full of notes explaining every other phrase (95% of which notes I myself have no need of). So it's not just Milton. And, in all cases, Shakespeare included, knowing Latin helps. But Milton is especially Latinate. Shakespeare doesn't feel that way.

 

[Glabrigausapes]

I think these years of studying Latin (and Greek) have helped immeasurably.

Probably so.
Elsewhere on the forum I think I've mentioned my admiration for Alastair Fowler, whose annotated edition of Paradise Lost is definitely worth looking into.

 

[Glabrigausapes]

It's mentioned on M's wiki page that he 'swapped knowledge of such-&-such language for someone's expertise in Hebrew', and I always wondered to what extent he knew the language (that is, Biblical Hebrew). Wasn't it still current in his time, the notion that Hebrew antedated all the world's languages?

 

[kurwamac]

Nor can I do better, in conclusion, than impress upon you the study of Greek literature, which not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument.
-- Thomas Gaisford

Mutatis mutandis, obviously.

 

[kev67]

A knowledge of Latin can help at pub quizzes, although maybe not as much as keeping up to date with popular music and soap operas. For instance, on Thursday the quiz master asked which season animals that aestivate sleep through, and I immediately knew is was summer. Of course, there was a one in three chance of guessing correctly, but we did not need to.

 

[kurwamac]

There are only three seasons where you are? Which one are you missing?

 

[kev67]

There are only three seasons where you are? Which one are you missing?

Well, it's not hibernate.

 

[kev67]

I have found another use for Latin. I was walking around Exeter Cathedral reading the memorials. Most of them were written in English, but several were in Latin, so I could make a stab at those. One was in Ancient Greek. Some of these memorials had quite a lot to say.

 

[slv]

Mathematicians are very careless about their own history. Gian Carlo Rota wrote about this too (p 157). So for example the work of Euler, the greatest Mathematician of all time, is mostly untranslated. Therefore if you want to read eg de seriebus divergentibus you are not going to get around knowning Latin. So it is with all of european mathematics since the scholastics, not to speak of more spurious works such as numerorum mysteria.