Why Was Mastering Latin & Greek So Important to Our Forefathers?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>They spent so much time learning these two languages. </p>

<p>Exactly how did it help them? I realize that that many words in the English language derived from Latin/Greek. But how exactly was/is this helpful?</p>

2

<p><a href=“http://www.hsc.edu/Academics/Academic-Majors/Classics/Why-Classics/Thomas-Jefferson-on-Why-Classics.html”>http://www.hsc.edu/Academics/Academic-Majors/Classics/Why-Classics/Thomas-Jefferson-on-Why-Classics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>“To read the Latin and Greek authors in their original, is a sublime luxury” </p>

3

<p>Many classical works weren’t translated into English until the early 19th c. (google Thomas Taylor), and had to be read in the original languages. In addition, Biblical scholarship was fairly widespread among the elites (Jefferson is a great example), and if you want to read the New Testament in the original, you need to know Greek. </p>

4

<p>It was a way to differentiate “educated” people from the “uneducated.” It’s sort of like how in today’s world, “educated” people must have read some Shakespeare. </p>

5

<p>It was not helpful in the sense that it prepared you for a career. College-as-job-training wasn’t even a thing until the 20th century. The aristocrats who could afford it went to college to improve their minds and become better people. (That was the intent, anyway.)</p>

<p>According to the values of the time, the literature and philosophy that mattered most were written in Latin and Greek, mostly Latin. You studied Latin as a kid and Greek in college. Whether there were translations or not was beside the point. No translation ever conveys the full sense of the original. The formal study of English literature is a late 19th century phenomenon. (People read Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. for personal pleasure.)</p>

<p>Latin was also the international language for scholars until very recently. If you wanted to read/write current research, you had to know Latin. The alternative would have meant that students and scholars would need to know English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, etc. Much easier for everyone to know Latin, just as most Europeans today (and many others) study English in elementary school and are darned near fluent by the time they hit college. So that’s the most practical application of knowing Latin back then – but it was more of an extra benefit of something you already knew.</p>