| How many people reading this article have tried to | | | | such as: gerundive, preterit perfeto, will help you |
| learn a foreign language and have just given up or | | | | understand your own language and its grammar |
| only half succeeded. The answer lies in the Latin | | | | but it will not help you close a deal in Paris or |
| Legacy, Latin was the first language widely taught | | | | book a hotel in Madrid. If you want to learn a |
| in Anglo Saxon schools and all teaching methods | | | | language you have to learn it as you learnt English. |
| since have just stemmed from it. Why was Latin | | | | If you cannot remember how I will remind you, |
| chosen as opposed to other languages such as | | | | you listened to your siblings or parents and you |
| French or German after all Latin is a dead | | | | copied them perhaps one word at a time at first. |
| language and by definition you could never have a | | | | Then someone probably your mother corrected |
| chance to practice it. | | | | you until you pronounced the word properly, then |
| The interest was purely academic, in Latin we | | | | you copied other kids who would criticize or |
| could find some kind of cosmos in the chaos of | | | | ostracize you until you spoke like them. To the |
| English grammar. We could find many words that | | | | peer pressure you add the demands of school, |
| were adopted into the English language and it | | | | you will remember how you learnt poems or |
| gave us a chance to study another culture which | | | | songs long before writing them or analyzing the |
| many believed held the key to some modern day | | | | grammatical structure. The first seven years of |
| problems. This is the background to modern day | | | | your life were devoted to pronunciation and you |
| language teaching, in the first Latin lesson we | | | | were fairly oblivious to grammar until the age of |
| learnt how to conjugate a verb and we met our | | | | eleven. So why do educational institutions insist on |
| first esoteric expressions such as: ablative, | | | | sticking to a educational method that was |
| nominative, dative. | | | | developed to a study of a dead language for |
| Today fifty years on in your French or Spanish | | | | students who never lost site of their parish |
| lessons you are confronted with the same | | | | steeple. Today with modern transport a persons |
| grammar approach and lesson structure with | | | | job or family holidays can take him to many |
| scant regard for pronunciation. The new terms | | | | different countries in one year. |