Studying Latin and Spanish simultaneously - am I setting us up for failure?

[Tranquility7]

So how possible would it be to study Latin and Spanish at the same time? How confusing would it be? I’ve avoided it in the past (Latin is going great for us, dropping it is not an option), but we have some really good opportunities to speak Spanish with various hispanic friends, so I hate to put it off.

[TranquilMind]

My oldest found that extensive knowledge of Latin made other languages - and the SAT - extremely easy to learn. 

[Tranquility7]

Yes, that is what I have heard, and I can understand that when studied consecutively. Did your DC study Latin simultaneously with another related language?

 

[8filltheheart]

My ds studied Latin and French simultaneously and my dd French, Latin, and Russian simultaneously.  No issues here.

 

ETA:  I just read your x-post thread.  I didn't realize your ds was only 9.  My advice doesn't apply since you say dropping Latin isn't an option, but I would drop Latin and take up Spanish and restart Latin in 6th grade.  ;)  

[Steven]

My daughter does both Latin and Spanish (as well as German and Korean). Mixing has not been a problem. Although we have apparently completed about the equivalent of 2 years of high school Latin, our text book has yet to introduce past tense forms. I am hoping that my daughter's knowledge of Spanish past tense and subjunctive will grease the skids. 

[Ms.Ivy]

We do more than one foreign language and it hasn't been a problem.  I am very dedicated to languages, though.  We spend 30 minutes a day on Spanish, and 15 minutes on Latin and Greek each.  One kid spends another 15 minutes on French because she wants to.  Many people in the world learn more than two languages as children.  Audrey Hepburn spoke English, Dutch, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, and she turned out okay ;-)

[Miss Tick]

We've been working on Spanish for years and Latin for a year and a half.  No issues, except time, never enough time. We often compare the two directly - vocabulary similarities and differences, and conjugation similarities.  Our Spanish study has been more free-flowing, less programmatic due to my dc's ages, but latin has been a more grammatical approach nicely tying together some of the concepts we've discussed in Spanish but not truly studied. One thing I do try to do is separate the two subjects by at least one other subject. Preferably we do one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

[Ethel Mertz]

We study both Latin and Spanish. No confusion (except for me!)... We often compare words in both languages. DS may add a third language at some point (either French or German). Like a previous poster said, we try to do one language in the morning and one in the afternoon.

[Ms.Ivy]

I forgot that once, when my oldest daughter had learned the Latin present tense verb endings, but hadn't learned to conjugate Spanish verbs yet, she tried to write a story in Spanish.  She used Latin conjugations on all the Spanish verbs.  She got a good laugh out of it when I pointed it out to her.  Other than that, we haven't had any issues with studying multiple languages.   My only problem is that this board is the only place I feel comfortable mentioning that we study languages other than English.  I think that foreign language is taught so badly in American schools that most people I know have a strong negative association with learning foreign languages, and imagine that I am torturing my children for several hours a day to make them understand grammar, or something  :-( 

[Classical Katharine]

I saw your other thread and posted there. I had French and Latin together when I was a little older than your son and it went well. Here's from there:

"I had a year of Latin first, at age 11-12, then started French and studied them together. Initially French confused me because it was easier! In my mind "foreign language" meant "inflected language" and at first I was puzzled that French nouns didn't change as Latin nouns do--even though English nouns don't change. But that was just at the beginning. Before long they were just two separate tracks and there was no confusion.

 

I think it helped that French is pronounced so very differently from Latin. My "mind's ear" just filed all the vocabulary in separate places because it didn't sound the same.

 

Certain areas where the grammar is the same were actually helpful: French adjective agreement? No problem, we have that in Latin, it's just easier in French. Big tables of verbs? Right, like Latin.

 

Doing the grammar topics in a different sequence in the two courses helped and I think it probably also helped that the "vocabulary world" of the two courses was different. I learned "agricola" in Latin but still don't know the word for "farmer" in French. I learned "bakery" in French and still don't know what the equivalent would be in Latin.

 

At times I would catch a French derivative of Latin word but that just made it easier to learn the French word.

 

I think you could try this for a very language-oriented child. If you conclude you need to end the experiment, no harm done."

 

 

 

[Tranquility7]

Thanks for all the input, everyone! I think we are just going to jump in with Getting Started With Spanish and see how it goes.

 

Katharine, I think you are right that the difference in pronunciation as well as the different content vocabulary will help us keep them straight.

 

Now I can't wait to start :D

[Classical Katharine]

Tranquility, I'm glad that was helpful. At least for the Latin and French programs we were using back then, the vocabulary world was very different in the two progams. Even though I loved Latin just because it was a language, sentences like "the sailor is on the road to Rome" did not thrill me. I am glad that later I had the chance to do something about it!

 

Have fun with it!

 

[hermione310]

My daughter's 8 and she studied Spanish for about a year before we started Latin with Latina Christiana. Studying both at once (Latin each day, Spanish 3x/week) hasn't posed a problem for her -- in fact, the Spanish has helped her with her Latin and vice-versa. 

 

Best of luck to you!