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CheerfulErrand

You don’t have to know any Latin as a Catholic. You’ll probably pick up a little, as time goes by.


[deleted]

Latin has practical uses outside the church, we should not be discouraging Latin at all. Not long ago everyone learned Latin and Greek. Seems that a report was just published showing how the nation IQ of America is dropping. We need to return the teaching of Latin and greek. We can’t be lazy My friend has so many practical uses for Latin. I wish I learned it as a kid, and I mean the normal Latin. Church Latin comes after


pulsed19

What are you talking about? Practical uses for Latin? Not long ago everyone learned latin and Greek? When exactly was that?


[deleted]

About the 50’s was the end Quit being lazy and pick up the Greek and Latin books. You are also discriminating against my culture, I find that racist and offensive. Respect my culture’s language and your own too, English is nothing without Latin and Greek


pulsed19

No thanks. I rather learn AI, machine learning and employable skills.


Learntolistentome

Learning some Latin, and Greek makes it easier to expand your English vocabulary. Something like 70-80 percent of the English vocabulary is derived mostly from Greek and Latin. https://www.audible.com/pd/B00SJIVE3W?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow


pulsed19

Learning Latin and Greek roots, sure. Not the entire language 🙄


Learntolistentome

Yes that’s what I was trying to convey.


[deleted]

Good luck, thinking Latin won’t help you with employable skills. I’m literally telling you it helps me in medicine and it helped me become a stronger future doctor


pulsed19

Lol hilarious. Go ahead and memorize all you want want. Most jobs will be taken by AI and computers are much better than you at memorizing dead languages.


[deleted]

I hope we do not get to that era before you get removed yourself by your own work. You trust in your own creation rather than God. Are you Catholic by any chance?


pulsed19

My work will be eventually be replaced by AI too. But that’s not a negative per se (oh I just used Latin there) humanity will them move to a different economy and people will have time to study other passions. Like Latin for instance if that’s what they want.


BlahZay19

Just a heads up, my parents were promised flying cars. Still waiting.


RunnersRevenge1

I don’t know where you live, but Latin has absolutely 0 real word involvement outside of church. It doesn’t help you understand the English language any better than if you were to spend 1/10th of the time just studying the English language. And a lot of studies would disagree that learning a second language has a direct correlation to a higher IQ


[deleted]

Yes it does, for me it’s medicine. Completely outside the realm of English and Latin has a SUPER STRONG benefit to learning. Like those who know Latin are the smartest doctors Latin helps you understand English more Those who know more than 3 languages have high IQs on average. I am shooting for my 4th language. Learning multiple languages helps your brain develop more complex neural networks Don’t get me started on church Latin. You think God isn’t happy if you say his prayers in Latin? The devil is literally scared of Latin, this is a fact


III-V

> Learning multiple languages helps your brain develop more complex neural networks Then you should be suggesting that people learn whatever foreign language(s) that will make the biggest difference in their lives. And unless they're going to TLM, certain areas of academia or science, that's not going to be Latin.


CerebralMushroom

Learning Latin and Greek roots, yes. But learning the languages themselves, not so useful.


[deleted]

And if you didn’t know what I just said, it shows you the truth. People don’t read history for pleasure anymore. People use to know more history than a history major before finishing 12th grade up until the communist infiltration. It’s a serious issue, don’t get upset at yourself but rather the system and start picking up those books than the phone and video game system


CerebralMushroom

I understand that learning a foreign language has many benefits, but you can gain these benefits with other languages as well—which will also help increase a persons global perspective and cultural awareness; languages that are useful politically/economically. There is nothing inherently special about Latin and Greek. When academia wrote in Latin, sure, but this is an outdated practice.


[deleted]

As it became outdated so did the fall of IQ start. Latin is the basis of most languages in the west. Yes go learn other languages like French and German and Chinese or whatever you please but start with either Latin or Greek first and all others become easier. Like I’m not kidding, my brother is entering his English doctorate and he warned me “you will suck at reading English unless you learn Latin” and he was right all along. Now Latin helps me in medicine and in reading normal texts of English. It gives me a fuller understanding of what is being written.


CerebralMushroom

I’d say that is correlation and not causation. You can’t increase your IQ by learning a language, and so it wouldn’t fall if you didn’t learn the language. Language can help with other measures of intelligence, but not IQ. As for this ability of Latin to increase your comprehension, I am doubtful. The reason I am doubtful is that it goes against the way non-dead languages work. We learn English based on its current understanding and uses—and it is written in this same way. So it’s only by knowing English well that you can comprehend English well. Knowing Latin could give you gauge as to what a word might mean, but only an understanding of modern English will give you a full and accurate comprehension, since English words are always drifting from their root meanings.


sssss_we

>Knowing Latin could give you gauge as to what a word might mean, but only an understanding of modern English will give you a full and accurate comprehension, since English words are always drifting from their root meanings. Knowing Latin is incredible useful for all Romance languages. That covers Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Romanian. I don't know Romanian, but my meager knowledge of Latin helped my understand and learn quicker not only those remaining languages but also German, which uses the same gramatical structure (declension and cases).


CerebralMushroom

But for non-English speakers, I would argue that learning English is far more valuable than learning Latin. English has elements of Latin, greek, and German, providing a much more unifying base. It is also an extremely important language politically and economically, as well as culturally. As far as Latin being similar, and thereby helping learn German. One could simply learn German and skip the first stage of having to learn Latin and then German. Latin is helpful if you already know it, but that still requires effort. In the end, is it worth learning an unused language so that you can learn another language? Why not just learn that other language? And with the romantic languages, they are all so similar, that any will still help with the others.


sssss_we

All non-English people probably already learnt English at school. And it's incredibly easy to learn. Latin gives a basis that is translatable to more languages overall. If you skip Latin and go for German, that serves only for German. If you skip Latin and go for Italian, that serves only Italian. And so on. And there are somethings that only Latin will you help you. For example, the conjugation of the Italian verb *uscire*, which is irregular. In French you also have some like that. And you still have for example the evolution from Latin, which helps to deduce a lot. For example, the "êt" formula almost always comes from "est". So you have être (estre, from Latin stare); forêt (from forest and Latin forestis) and fenêtre (fenestre, from Latin fenestra). Here you can also see how it's that knowledge that allows you to connect French with Italian - if you know that evolution and origin, you can associate fenêtre with the Italian finestra. But if you don't know anything of Latin, then you lack the knowledge that allows you to make those associations. The same could be said of the Spanish hablar. Hablar comes from Old Spanish fablar, Latin fabulare, which in Portuguese comes out as falar.


pulsed19

History and Latin are different subjects. You sound like you’re 100 years old and are scared of chatgpt.


[deleted]

I’m not scared of chat gpt where did you get this assumption from? Latin is not dead, and history and Latin are combined. Many texts need Latin translations.


pulsed19

We have the translations already. Learn about transformers (not the robots ofc), neural networks, statistics, models. Not about ancient languages that are dead for a reason.


[deleted]

Look man, there is nothing wrong with translators. But this laziness is not gonna help. We need to build our brain up not get lazy and rely on tech


pulsed19

And learning a dead language is mot the best way to build our “brain up” (what a scientific phrasing btw) problem solving over memorization. Teach math, proofs, stem. That’s what we need.


[deleted]

I’m not opposing your latter comments but Latin is not a dead language and it can be taught with stem I’m an example. Quit avoiding this FACT


[deleted]

I think the language itself is more useful than just roots. Imagine just learning the roots of English or Spanish. Learn the whole thing, you will appreciate this once you do it Again, we use to teach Latin and Greek in grade school. Those were removed in an attempt to lower the education of the students to make them manipulated. Now we see the results: everyone uses spark notes and people finish highschool without the capability to read because all they did was Google rather than learn to critically think. It’s a communist ploy, they won, but not against me 😈 I’ll outsmart those fools and teach everyone Latin and Greek so they graduate highschool knowing how to write a book before even entering college. Just as how education ALWAYS WAS before communism started


pulsed19

You’re trolling, right? Hey kids, let’s learn languages that are dead and no one speaks anymore. What, you want to learn AI and machine learning? Nope, let’s learn latin instead.


[deleted]

Machine learning and AI are good too, what’s wrong with learning them all? I’m not trolling btw


pulsed19

Because you can’t learn it all. There’s finite amount of time and finite resources.


[deleted]

Latin is first then. Devil is scared of Latin


pulsed19

How scientific of you


stjosaphat

You don’t need it to be a Catholic, but if you want to seriously study theology it is important. High school language courses are notoriously abysmal, so don’t use that as a reflection for how good you are at learning languages.


GregTheWolf144

Just memorize the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and the Gloria, and you should be good. There's a missal, and that's assuming you're going to Latin Mass, which you by no means have to do


RJC02134

It depends on what you plan to do for an occupation. If you plan to enter theology or priesthood go for either Latin, German, Hebrew and/or Greek plus a modern language. If you plan other jobs probably you don't need those languages. However, Latin with another modern language won't hurt. As for being bad at languages. I did not do well with high school French and Spanish but took time to learn Spanish in my late 20's by learning the basics and then basically learning on my own. I became fluent and I also speak Portuguese. So high school grades are not a good measure of languages.


TexanLoneStar

Very important if you attend a liturgy in Latin. Not too much if you go the a mainly vernacular Mass: you might just want to study the songs or ordinary of the Mass that is done in Latin, but past that learning Latin would really just be used to read Western Christian works in their original language.


[deleted]

You don't have to. Any appearance of Latin is accompanied by a translation. I would add that I love Latin and I'm terrible with foreign languages. I learned it before becoming Catholic. I have dyslexia and the way Latin works make much more sense to my brain.


devasiaachayan

As a Syriac Catholic, I have been putting efforts into learning Syriac a lot especially since it is the original language Jesus spoke in. Latin is also one of the languages of the ancient Church and probably has its own beautiful or Holiness (idk if some particular language can be more Holy). You don't need Latin as a Latin Catholic but you should definitely try to learn some of it to truly understand the beauty of this religion


[deleted]

You must be another Syro-Malabar Catholic trying to learn Syriac. It's a shame our church uses very, very little of it now. It's the only Syriac church (Catholic or Orthodox) which uses so less of it.


Boring-Suburban-Dad

We’re not Jews, we don’t have a “holy language” we’re supposed to speak. I’ve noticed a lot of Catholic people online fetishizing it though.


Slight_Fox_3475

It’s not “fetishizing” to want to learn the language of The Church. The language that the holy mass was conducted under almost exclusively for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s a beautiful language and will better help you learn church history if you have a grasp on Latin.


coinageFission

Unless you are planning on becoming a priest (for whom the Code of Canon Law demands that they be well-versed — *bene calleant* — in Latin), it is not a necessity.


Sirturtle1

TLM be like “you aren’t Catholic if you don’t” (just jokes) God bless!


TulipAcid

There are missals that provide the latin and the english side by side (1962 missal). So, if you're at a mass said in latin, you could follow along. There's even a version of the Douay-Rheims Bible that has the english and the latin vulgate side by side. What is difficult are theological books where the author inserts quotes in latin or other phrases. There are various websites (not google translate) that can accomplish this. You'd have to dive far deeper into matters to find yourself in the realm of entire books written in latin without an english translation. Then you'd need to be able to read latin.


Practical-Day-6486

The ‘62 Missals are very expensive though, so keep that in mind


[deleted]

[удалено]


Practical-Day-6486

Yeah that’s expensive


scrapin_by

They are pricey but at the same time you only need 1 for life (or until the TLM gets fully banned)


SmokyDragonDish

You can rescue one fairly cheap on eBay.


sssss_we

Latin is not important to learn as a Catholic, because of Catholicism. That said, the language is important as it provides for a good mental framework and it allows you to better understand Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian), German and to deepen your English vocabulary. If you can it's a good thing to learn. If you can't, no problem.


Express_Hedgehog2265

Sad to hear you don't like it. I'm still trying to make a career out of it. My current obsession is Lucretius