If it were up to me, students would be required to learn languages from multiple families. I'd probably treat Germanic and Romance as separate rather than lumping them together as Indo'European.
ObTMTOWTDI The same applies to programming languages; I'd require learning several languages with drastically different paradigms, and several computers with radicalloy different architectures. I would not require either architecture du jour or language du jour. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Joel C. Ewing [jce.ebe...@cox.net] Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2022 10:31 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Latin In the 1960's Latin was still highly recommended in the U.S. for anyone expecting to attend college. If you started in 9th grade, you could even take 4 years of Latin by graduation from high school, although many college-bound students elected only 2 and took either some French or Spanish. So many words in English and in many European languages have their roots in Latin that a knowledge of Latin gave you an edge in building vocabulary in multiple languages. For English-only speakers, it served as an introduction to language concepts that barely exist in English: of noun gender and declension causing the base forms of written and spoken words to change based on context. About the only examples of this in English are the subjective and objective forms of personal pronouns (I/me, he/him, she/her. they/them); and the flagrant misuse and abuse of these forms by public & TV speakers, who ought to know better, shows even this limited use of declension in English is obviously not understood by many. One could argue that a knowledge of the basics of Latin could serve as a bridge to understanding other languages (including English) in the same way that knowing the basics of one procedural programming language serves as a bridge to understanding other programming languages. Joel C. Ewing On 9/18/22 08:17, Bob Bridges wrote: > "Emmanuel", indeed :). > > I never took Latin (and I was astonished when I learned that my youngest > daughter was taking it in high school; I thought it had long disappeared > entirely from the public schools, but apparently not), and my upbringing was > Episcopal not Catholic, so I never experienced the liturgy in Latin. And I'm > not sorry that so many old Christmas carols have been translated to English. > But NO ONE sings "Adeste, fideles" any more! I do miss that. > > --- > Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 > > /* Back in the old days, most families were close-knit. Grown children and > their parents continued to live together, under the same roof, sometimes in > the same small, crowded room, year in and year out, until they died, > frequently by strangulation. -Dave Barry */ > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of > Tom Brennan > Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2022 00:59 > > Uh oh, maybe that's my problem :) I never learned any Latin other than the > little bit I heard in church as a kid, right before they decided to switch to > English. Dominus vobiscum. > > --- On 9/17/2022 9:25 PM, Brian Westerman wrote: >> I had to take Latin as well, and while I never used it directly trying to >> communicate with anyone, it has been a great help over the years. Plus, it >> makes me not sound as dumb as I really am. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
