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Latin or Greek ?


roanna
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This is for next year...

 

My sons strong point is LA. He seems to pick up languages decently, not in a gifted way though. My husband and I both know Greek and Arabic but I am tempted to start him with Latin because I'd like to learn it and the letters seem more straightforward than Greek.

 

My two questions are if you we're choosing between the two to start out (we will probably do Greek at some point if we don't start with it) which would you think would be easier to start at age 7?

 

The other question is what program would you choose to teach it? I've looked on the forums here and other places so I am familiar with some.

 

Thanks.

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Latin is easier to find resources for, and is easier in general just because it uses the same alphabet, Greek is more challenging. After 2 years of both, DD has elected to let Greek go for a little while and focus on Latin this year (she wants to take the ELE), mostly because we didn't find much between "too easy" and "college level textbook" for Greek. It gets even more limited if you want Attic, not Koine. We'll try Athenaze again in a year or two (I have found it in her room, so I think she's still working on reading it on her own).

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My DD has done well with Cambridge Latin (after SSL and Minimus), using the LfC CDs as a listening resource and for grammar reference (I also have Wheelock's). She didn't retain much going part-whole, but with the whole-part reading basis of CL, she's able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This year we've diverged a bit because she's preparing for the Exploratory Latin Exam, which is vocabulary/derivative focused rather than reading focused.

 

I don't know that I'd consider CL a good choice for a high school Latin class, but I think it's a great fit for a gifted young child who reads well and wants to learn Latin.

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I'd also suggest starting with Latin.

 

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Latin for Children series by Classical Academic Press. There is also a Greek for Children series, but only the first book has been released so far. Two more are coming in the next few years. For a 7 year old who is a natural at LA, I wouldn't start with Song School Latin. Just go straight into Latin for Children. SSL is a very gentle intro to Latin, which is great if you have younger siblings (ages 4-6, perhaps) wanting to "do school" with older ones, but otherwise, it sort of a waste of time for a 7-8 year old. Latin for Children starts at appx a 3rd grade level. It assumes you already know the basics like nouns and verbs, and assumes you already know how to read and write fairly well. It does a great job of reviewing the basics, though, so if you haven't covered English grammar yet, don't worry about it.

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TBH, I'm never seen the point of studying Greek unless the student was super-interested. Latin is still being used, and is the official language of our church. We sometimes attend the Tridentine Mass, which is said in Latin. Studying Latin makes learning a modern Romance language easier. Far more words in the English language are of Latin than Greek origin.

 

The only argument I've ever heard in favor of studying Greek is to be able to read the classics in the original. To me, this is not a particularly compelling argument. I read The Aeneid in the original Latin in 12th grade and didn't think I got anything more out of that exercise than reading Homer in translation.

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I did a minor in Greek in college and really enjoyed it. I was able to read the whole New Testament in it's original language. I guess I could compare it to watching a black and white TV show and then watching it in color. It really comes alive when you read it in Greek. I also enjoyed reading Josephus in Greek.

 

We are just language people at our house so anything is fun.

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We started out with Latin using GSWL and subsequently Henle, although in an alternative universe and with more money, I may have used Latin for the New Millennium (own the textbook/workbook, not the TM). Last year we began Koine Greek using Elementary Greek. DD claims that a child of 6 should begin Greek first because it's easier. I think it's just easier for her because she already had about 2 years of Latin.

 

I've noticed that DD has been able to use her limited Greek vocabulary to figure out difficult vocabulary words and, although that's a great benefit, we study it to read the NT in its original language.

 

Memoria Press' First Form Greek is almost available, which I would prefer to use before Athenaze. The latter's text size is just too small.

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At age 7 I think you could start either language successfully. I started Greek at age 5 or 6. I put off a language that used the same alphabet as English until 5th grade. We have no plans to do Latin. I :001_wub: Greek and my young kids didn't have problems with the different alphabet. I plan to start my youngest at age 5 as well. I just go really slow the first couple years.

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TBH, I'm never seen the point of studying Greek unless the student was super-interested. Latin is still being used, and is the official language of our church. We sometimes attend the Tridentine Mass, which is said in Latin. Studying Latin makes learning a modern Romance language easier. Far more words in the English language are of Latin than Greek origin.

 

The only argument I've ever heard in favor of studying Greek is to be able to read the classics in the original. To me, this is not a particularly compelling argument. I read The Aeneid in the original Latin in 12th grade and didn't think I got anything more out of that exercise than reading Homer in translation.

 

I have to agree that arguments for Greek are not usually compelling; and that Latin is the more robust choice.

 

I will say that ancient, classical Greek seems to be like Persian: a language par excellence for communicating clearly and beautifully. I was intrigued to learn that many educated Hebrews, pre-second temple if I recall correctly, studied Greek and used it to write and present arguments to each other. There's frankly no hope we'll learn Persian, but maybe Greek is within reach ... I also like the idea of getting different a alphabet and a more-different-to-English-language in Button's head, and don't think I can teach a modern language well. So that's why we're even considering it; though following Halcyon's language choices & dilemmas makes it clear that pursuing more than one language takes an enormous amount of time, and is a de facto choice against doing something else with those hours.

Edited by serendipitous journey
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though following Halcyon's language choices & dilemmas makes it clear that pursuing more than one language takes an enormous amount of time, and is a de facto choice against doing something else with those hours.

 

This is my biggest concern.

 

Reading LCC as someone who studied science in college married to an engineering undergrad, I was pretty disturbed (actually, it was more like horrified) by Drew Campbell's suggestion to spend quite a bit of time studying both Latin and Greek in middle school but no science at all until 8th grade, and then only 1 day/week after that. That may be true to what classical education was in the 19th century and earlier, but in the 21st century, I think parents do their children a major disservice to skimp on science in order to study ancient Greek.

 

If my kids decide to use an elective slot in high school to study Greek, I wouldn't have a problem with that. But it's not something I plan to incorporate into our HS otherwise. Rigorous science, OTOH, is a big part of our HS.

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This is my biggest concern.

 

Reading LCC as someone who studied science in college married to an engineering undergrad, I was pretty disturbed (actually, it was more like horrified) by Drew Campbell's suggestion to spend quite a bit of time studying both Latin and Greek in middle school but no science at all until 8th grade, and then only 1 day/week after that. That may be true to what classical education was in the 19th century and earlier, but in the 21st century, I think parents do their children a major disservice to skimp on science in order to study ancient Greek.

 

:iagree:

And I'm trying to keep our "classical" roots rather grounded in the [best] traditions of Classical Greece & Rome; and of course for the ancient Greeks, foreign language study was simply not an essential part of education; but an understanding of natural philosophy did seem to come into it, esp. with astronomy. Tossing arcane languages in favor of understanding the natural world seems a choice consonant with those classical ideals ... (IMHO :) )

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So that's why we're even considering it; though following Halcyon's language choices & dilemmas makes it clear that pursuing more than one language takes an enormous amount of time, and is a de facto choice against doing something else with those hours.

 

It does take time, but if you start young and work at it in little bites every school day you may find it won't crowd out major things like science. My oldest is working on 4 languages this year and spends 1 hour each day in lessons and another 20-30 minutes on exposure. We still have lots of time for science and other important subjects. My 3rd grade is working on 3 languages and my 4 year old is exposed to the basics of 2 languages.

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It does take time, but if you start young and work at it in little bites every school day you may find it won't crowd out major things like science. My oldest is working on 4 languages this year and spends 1 hour each day in lessons and another 20-30 minutes on exposure. We still have lots of time for science and other important subjects. My 3rd grade is working on 3 languages and my 4 year old is exposed to the basics of 2 languages.

 

Well, that's sort of encouraging and also sort of terrifying: I've been to your blog over the past year, and you do SO MANY LANGUAGES!!!

 

Quite seriously: it seems like middle and high school is when it starts getting tight -- when I read those boards, it seems that hsing parents are fighting to preserve free time for thinking and being and hobbies, and that's without multiple languages. Your 5th grader is still fine, it sounds like?

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Hmmm. A bit off the topic here, and probably a bit random and incoherent. I am doing Latin with my oldest now, and planning to start Greek next year. I've always loved Latin; it was my absolute favorite subject in high school (I did the Aeneid too, but in 11th!) and I've always regretted not doing more than one semester in college (my major required a minor in a modern language). So Latin was never in doubt. I've always been somewhat fascinated and interested by Greek, but wasn't sure if we would incorporate it. I didn't find LCC particularly compelling - I actually couldn't even make it through. I read Climbing Parnassus this past spring and it really changed my outlook. I do think, for my kids, studying Greek and Latin will be of enormous benefit. Simply the training and discipline involved, without even considering the other benefits, really appeal to me. We are heavily focused on math; science is important too, but not quite as much as math. We will go lighter on history to compensate. History is more of a straight overview here - no frills (no activities, no historical novels unless they are classics). Literature is for now still just reading wonderful books, mostly on their own time. So, focus on Latin, Greek, math, science, writing. It seems doable to me. We will see. I'm definitely sensitive to time constraints. We are pretty heavy on extracurriculars here, so five hours per day is the absolute max for now. I also believe that starting Latin and Greek later means you can go faster. I start Latin in 4th, and will start Greek in 6th. By that point, grammar and spelling take up very little time. We don't do separate vocab. I've really reprioritized and I feel pretty happy with my current plan. Of course you never know how it will pan out in reality. I guess my conclusion, if it's possible for such a mess to have a conclusion, is that I really love TWTM, and it was at the heart of my decision to homeschool, but I've realized I don't want to be history focused. I want to be math and classics focused. And of course, I feel even more out in the wilderness than I did when I decided to homeschool! :D

 

Curious to hear the thoughts of others.

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I'm joining you in the wilderness, Diviya :D. I could have written your post!

 

I know around here, well....not so much on the accelerated board, but on the other boards, people think that doing more than one foreign language is impossible, but I don't think so.

 

In the Netherlands all children study English in 7-10/11/12 grade and a couple of years of German and French. The students that go to a gymnasium, the top 10%, will add Latin and Greek to that in 7-12 grade. My kids would probably be in that top 10% and I don't think it would be fair to tell them 'yeah, we decided to homeschool you, because we think that is superior...but we can't manage more than one foreign language' :tongue_smilie:. Either we do English, Latin, Greek and at least German or French at home, or they would be better off at school. I will have to outsource German/French and I'm self studying like crazy to be able to teach Latin and Greek. We'll probably also need someone to speak English with, because you do not want to hear my accent :lol:.

 

I will have to spend less time on other subjects. We will definitely NOT be history centered. I'm also not convinced that logic needs to be a seperate subject.

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This is an interesting discussion. Thank you for changing the thread. :)

When I was learning Arabic, while in the military, all our teachers were natives from many different countries and they thought it was quite silly that Americans don't see the need to be at least bilingual. Most knew Arabic, English and at least one other language such as French, but many knew more.

If anyone is interested the scale of difficulty that the government considers for languages is as the following:

 

(easisest) : Spanish , French, then Hebrew, German, Farsi, serbo-croation, vietnamese, Thai

The highest level of difficult : Japanese, Arabic, Chinese and Korean

 

Of course there is a ton of languages in between but due to grammar, tonal issues and alphabets the most difficult take 18 months to become fluent.

 

Farsi has a great mix of French, Greek and Arabic so it's a language I wish I could have learned. Anyhow, I hope we are able to teach our kids Arabic just because of the world situation right now but it is quite difficult and we only lightly speak it at home. I am saving that for when he gets a tad older since for every letter there are four distinct forms.

 

So my sort of eclectic wild plan is to have fun with Spanish while we are in deep south Texas just minutes from the border and start Latin maybe next year and then begin Arabic a bit after that and in high school maybe build on his Latin skills by learning Greek. Who knows but it should be fun. I felt sort of bad about this but I have relegated history to Fridays only. I thought I might be shot here for saying that but now I know there are other people who may do similarly. I just compact it and save our readings for that day.

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... Anyhow, I hope we are able to teach our kids Arabic just because of the world situation right now but it is quite difficult and we only lightly speak it at home. I am saving that for when he gets a tad older since for every letter there are four distinct forms.

 

...

 

I'd love to do Chinese and Arabic for these reasons. They are ancient cultures, not well understood by the average American, and are so important and central in the world today.

 

I will say that I'm in favor of a strong history background for reasons of world citizenship, too. There are resources available now that present a coherent historical framework -- I am thinking of Jared Diamond's books and Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature -- for history readings. I strongly believe that students, especially the bright ones, should know history well; certainly well enough to have apoplectic fits whenever somebody harkens back to the chivalrous codes of the Middle Ages, &c. But this could easily be developed in high school. And I don't know how to think about the time tradeoff btw., say, history and multiple languages: in my experience, those multi-lingual Europeans have a fine grasp of their history, too. I suppose we'll have to let the children's parents decide what the best strategy is ... :)

 

ETA: For the record, Pinker is somewhat insulting to fundamentalist Christians. Well all fundamentalists really. So that might make him harder to read objectively: but the book is excellent.

Edited by serendipitous journey
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And I don't know how to think about the time tradeoff btw., say, history and multiple languages: in my experience, those multi-lingual Europeans have a fine grasp of their history, too.

 

You are right :D, reading back my post it sounds like Americans are not learning multiple languages because they are spending maaaaaassive amounts of time on history. That might be true on this WTM-inspired forum, but I doubt it is true among all homeschoolers or public school students.

 

Still there has to be a trade off, learning a language takes a huge amount of time. I have thought about it a lot, but I haven't yet figured it out. And that scares me, those languages are non-negotiable, but I still want to have time for Great Books and writing and plenty of science.

 

The only other difference I see is the amount of extra-curriculars. I don't know if this forum is representative, but to me the amount of extracurriculars and the time spend on it is :svengo:.

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I would have opt for Latin and Greek and see which one catch on with the child. Luckily my hubby is very tolerant of us choosing languages by elimination.

 

Still there has to be a trade off, learning a language takes a huge amount of time. I have thought about it a lot, but I haven't yet figured it out. And that scares me, those languages are non-negotiable, but I still want to have time for Great Books and writing and plenty of science.

 

My kids are doing german and chinese now, and possibly latin next year. Learning a language does take time but not a huge amount of time. It depends on how fast you would like your child to reach proficiency in the language.

 

For example, my boys did german slowly last year and could read and understand decently but are not strong enough in grammar to write or speak coherently. This year they are in saturday german class and are catching up on grammar. We took german as a foreign language in university so we could still help our boys with their homework. I actually took german because I wanted to read german engineering books in german.

 

For chinese, we are native speakers and we have taught them informally. If we wanted them proficient, it would take up less than an hour a day using curriculum. We would want them one day to be able to enjoy chinese classics in chinese. Besides I am biased and chinese calligraphy is another art form I hope my boys would enjoy learning.

 

My younger boy is interested to learn enough French to watch Tin Tin in French. We are waiting to see if he is still interested next year.

 

For extracurriculars, piano would have been Music in school, gym, swimming and indoor rock climbing would have been Physical Education. So while it might look a lot, its just school.

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For chinese, we are native speakers and we have taught them informally. If we wanted them proficient, it would take up less than an hour a day using curriculum.

 

That you are native speakers of Chinese is awesome! You are so lucky that you are able to teach them informally. I could never do that.

 

For extracurriculars, piano would have been Music in school, gym, swimming and indoor rock climbing would have been Physical Education. So while it might look a lot, its just school.

 

:D This proves my point. You are doing gym AND swimming AND rock climbing and are calling it 'just PE' :lol:. 'Just PE' in the Netherlands would be a maximum of two 50 minute periods of gym class a week.

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Belgium is not so different from the Netherlands, so yes, we also do a lot of languages, several sciences and a lot of Math.

But beside Math we don't do every subject every single day...

(impossible wit 12-16 subjects per year)

 

It took me a while to realize most American curriculums are written for 5 days a week, a full lesson per day, all year long. That was a new point of view to me.

Seriously agree!!!

I never knew that history is so important in the American homeschool community. For us in China, it is math, Chinese, and foreign languages that are more important than history. It is only studied two times a week in public schools there. Here, we have five day history! That really makes me doubt my choice of TOG for history because it is very heavy and I do want to add more foreign languages. English is my boys' native language, so we are doing Chinese, Latin, and Spanish for foreign languages, but I so want to add Greek and French! I thought i forgot a lot of my French, but I found i could read quite well still after 16 years of not reading or speaking it at all!

I wonder if I should use some lighter history to make room for languages.

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Seriously agree!!!

I never knew that history is so important in the American homeschool community. For us in China, it is math, Chinese, and foreign languages that are more important than history. It is only studied two times a week in public schools there. Here, we have five day history! That really makes me doubt my choice of TOG for history because it is very heavy and I do want to add more foreign languages. English is my boys' native language, so we are doing Chinese, Latin, and Spanish for foreign languages, but I so want to add Greek and French! I thought i forgot a lot of my French, but I found i could read quite well still after 16 years of not reading or speaking it at all!

I wonder if I should use some lighter history to make room for languages.

 

I do lighter history (around 6-8 hours per month - once a week at most), but more time with geography than most people.

 

Plus when you get to a certain point things like history, literature, and writing can all mesh together so you are actually spending more time on history than just "history class".

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If you pick your Latin right, you can get quite a bit of Roman history/culture integrated into it. Athenaze does the same for Greek-or, you can use Koine Greek and study the bible at the same time. I've also gone to using a lot of historical fiction and biography as part of literature, so we're killing two birds with one stone there as well, since DD doesn't really need a reading curriculum. I figure alternating historical fiction and classic literature is a good option for her now and helps let me feel better about lightening up on history a bit to allow more time for math and languages.

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:iagree: with the person above who suggested starting both and seeing which one generates the most interest. :)

 

Belgium is not so different from the Netherlands, so yes, we also do a lot of languages, several sciences and a lot of Math.

But beside Math we don't do every subject every single day...

(impossible wit 12-16 subjects per year)

 

It took me a while to realize most American curriculums are written for 5 days a week, a full lesson per day, all year long. That was a new point of view to me.

 

Thanks so much for this perspective. I've been considering a long loop schedule and was concerned that I wouldn't get to everything every day. It's wonderful to know there are other ways. :)

 

:D This proves my point. You are doing gym AND swimming AND rock climbing and are calling it 'just PE' :lol:. 'Just PE' in the Netherlands would be a maximum of two 50 minute periods of gym class a week.

 

I would love to spend less time on extracurriculars! Unfortunately only 100 minutes a week of exercise would leave my DS literally climbing the walls. :willy_nilly:

 

Plus when you get to a certain point things like history, literature, and writing can all mesh together so you are actually spending more time on history than just "history class".

 

I had a high school honors class like this - it was called humanities and it was scheduled for 2 periods each day (instead of history and english). We studied the history/literature/the arts of each time period and wrote about what we learned. I loved it! I thought I was getting something similar with MBTP, but I've not been thrilled so far...

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I decided, just this week, to switch my son from Latin to Greek because he wants to be an Egyptologist and Greek is required. He may change his mind, of course, but he can always Latin as well in the future. For my physics-minded daughter, however, Latin is still the obvious choice. In the absence of a specific requirement for or interest in Greek, I would stick with Latin for the reasons given previously.

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Late to the party here, but my older son started studying Latin at 7, we more dabbled in it as we didn't get much momentum, he was in a tutoring group for a while but as usual the other kids weren't as interested so it didn't last long. He really wanted to study Greek, we played a bit but I have no background so he finally started with the Lukeion Greek class and it has become his passion. Doing the Latin we did was a huge help even though we didn't get far. Now he is in his second year of Greek and he is taking Latin 1.

 

Just to encourage you, right now just focus on Latin as you have as it is much easier for a nonexpert parent to help with. If he loves it you can get more serious from there. And definitely contact me if that happens :001_smile: as I have more experience with a young kid in the classics than I know what to do with.

 

Also, to talk about some other issues, it is sort of pushing other subjects out more than I would like. I am trying to really ramp up our science this year. Math we are going at a more normal pace, whatever that is, but he is already pretty accelerated so that is ok. Also, I read a lot of the experienced parents posts about more informal science before high school, and I realize that we will be done with Latin and Greek grammar well before then so we will have more time during high school for formal science. We are doing less intensive writing and history than I would like, we are progressing with writing but I feel all the experience with languages is going to help immensely in this area anyway. It has become a learning experience itself, doing languages so heavily, that the study and learning skills and discipline of learning this so thoroughly will help when we study math and science. On the other hand, the earlier ages are really great for languages. And if you can definitely try to incorporate some audio, we loved listening to CDs of Minimus and it seeps I to their brain. Lots of saying everything out loud, even with imperfect pronunciation but hopefully with some guidance from audio files or someone who has some background.

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