Duolingo for Latin - am I torturing my 7 year old?

[Nurit]

I was using Duolingo for learning Italian, when my DD7 said she wants to participate too - mostly because she sees the fun characters and rewards and want to "play" along. I thought, "Huum, rather than Italian, why not try Latin with her as it can be useful learning other languages later on..." So I let her start it, she is on lesson 3 or 4...and has not lost interest yet...

Would Duolingo be effective? And should I really torture her with full Latin (grammar and all) rather than just focus on learning words?

First lessons included words for family members and for the first time I understood where "sorority" comes from since "soros" = "sister" in Latin!

Does knowing Latin really help down the road is that just a myth I like to tell myself?

 

 

[maize]

Latin is not as well developed or professional in quality as most Duolingo courses, that program wouldn't be my preferred option for teaching a young child (or anyone who wanted to really learn the language.)

It's fine for her to do it for as long as she is enjoying it if course.

I personally prefer to have my kids focus their efforts on living languages. Learning any second language has value. In terms of helping with future language acquisition, Latin doesn't in my opinion have significant value over other languages. Learning one language in the Romance languages family (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian...) will give you some familiarity with vocabulary and grammatical structures/terminology that will somewhat transfer to another related language. Same within the broader Indo-European family. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by maize

[kirstenhill]

My high schooler loves studying latin and is making a lot of language connections, but he also did two years of latin in Elementary school (4th-5th grade) using GSWL and Visual Lain, and he retained very little and didn't make as many language connections at that age. 

We've never done latin in Duolingo, but in the other languages my family has tried, there are often sentences/passages on topics you might not find appropriate for a 7 year old - stories about dating relationships and sentences like "I like to date this man because he pays for dinner" or something like that.  Not terrible, but just not things my kids would have cared about at age 7. 

[Nurit]

This is the OP. Thank you for the thoughtful answers especially related to language acquisition later on and the topic appropriateness of some lessons.

But even from this little exposure to Latin, literary 4 lessons, I see how useful it would be for 'guessing' the meaning of unfamiliar English (or other romance languages) words. 

Perhaps we will switch to a living language soon when the grammar starts to get too confusing.

 

So then, why would anyone spend time to learn Latin in full, with all its gnarly grammar rules, if it does not translate to quicker language acquisition later on?

Any other tips on Latin?

[historically accurate]

33 minutes ago, Nurit said:

This is the OP. Thank you for the thoughtful answers especially related to language acquisition later on and the topic appropriateness of some lessons.

But even from this little exposure to Latin, literary 4 lessons, I see how useful it would be for 'guessing' the meaning of unfamiliar English (or other romance languages) words. 

Perhaps we will switch to a living language soon when the grammar starts to get too confusing.

 

So then, why would anyone spend time to learn Latin in full, with all its gnarly grammar rules, if it does not translate to quicker language acquisition later on?

Any other tips on Latin?

We did Song School Latin around those ages. Super fun - easy to implement - nice introduction to foreign language. We did Latin just because I had it and I had kiddos who were in speech therapy, so I chose a language where pronunciation isn't a big deal. One went on to do several years of Latin and a year or so of ASL, one went on to really like foreign languages and did German and Arabic, and one is slogging through Spanish. 

[maize]

2 hours ago, Nurit said:

 

So then, why would anyone spend time to learn Latin in full, with all its gnarly grammar rules, if it does not translate to quicker language acquisition later on?

Any other tips on Latin?

For historical reasons. Latin still carries a certain aura of academic prestige because it was THE language of writing and scholarship through the middle ages. A person had to study Latin to be a scholar because it was the language scholarship took place in.

These days, English is the primary international language of scholarship.

Latin (and Greek) word roots study is absolutely useful, especially for science and medicine. The grammar not so much, and since all of the languages descended from Latin ended up with much simpler inflection structures, learning Latin inflection is not super useful for these languages. A person who has already learned Latin grammatical inflection may very well find it easier to understand the grammar of other highly inflected Indo-European languages like Russian, but that doesn't result in less time and effort overall dedicated to language study. Might as well start directly with studying Russian grammar if that is the goal.

Edited March 11, 2023 by maize

[cintinative]

Another vote for Song School Latin.

Latin is the basis of the other romance languages, however my kids have not found that learning Latin first meant that Spanish was "guessable"  However, the discipline that they worked through in translating Latin, in understanding verb tenses and conjugations, and studying vocabulary words did transfer over to Spanish when we studied it. 

[Nurit]

Thank you all for the commentaries, super useful to crystallize my thinking around Latin. Latin does carry some sort of mystique of antiquity😜. But for practical purposes in allocating time to different subject it may just be as useful going with something like MCTs Cesar's English as this was mentioned on other threads as a vocabulary building method using Latin stems. 

 

I will look at the Song School Latin just to see how it is presented for that age group.

 

Appreciate all the time allotted to this 'silly' ambition of mine.

[happypamama]

I love teaching Latin, and most of my kids have enjoyed the basics of it.  We start around third or fourth grade and use Getting Started With Latin.  The reasons we learn Latin are not really for being able to speak Latin, so I don't think DuoLingo would be my preference for it.  GSWL is one of my very favorite homeschool resources, though, and I'm going through it now with my fifth kid.  I like teaching it for the grammar, the logic, and the discipline of learning a language.  

 

Now, as for DuoLingo, I'm a fan of that because it's fun and does teach some language skills.  I have one kid who used it a lot for Spanish, such that she can communicate with Spanish-speaking patrons of the restaurant where she works enough to help them (that was not her only Spanish -- we did Homeschool Spanish Academy for two high school level classes, and I'd recommend that too).  Another kid loves the Italian and has a five month streak going because it matters to him.  Another kid has enjoyed learning Irish just for fun through DuoLingo.  If my kids, younger than high school, are doing DuoLingo and getting joy out of learning languages, well, I can't complain. 😉

[serendipitous journey]

On 3/11/2023 at 6:21 AM, Nurit said:

...

So then, why would anyone spend time to learn Latin in full, with all its gnarly grammar rules, if it does not translate to quicker language acquisition later on?

...

You are right that if general language acquisition and/or English proficiency is the goal, then Latin mastery is a poor tool. 
Though the experience with an inflected language, and with Latin/Greek generally, means that my older child thinks Russian is easy.  🤣  But again, for Russian mastery, Latin would never be an efficient route. 

My children do have to study a classical language (up to high school proficiency, then they can drop it) but it is as a "fine art": as an end unto itself.  Sort of like studying literature, or art, or music. 

I think one of the strongest benefits I've seen, for a classically educated child, is the way ancient language readings make one deal seriously with people from a very different moral center (ie, slave-holding & rather sexist).   I also used Latin to force my older child to learn to read carefully.  But again, there are other routes, perhaps more effective and easier.

Edited March 20, 2023 by serendipitous journey

[Nurit]

18 hours ago, serendipitous journey said:

I think one of the strongest benefits I've seen, for a classically educated child, is the way ancient language readings make one deal seriously with people from a very different moral center (ie, slave-holding & rather sexist).   I also used Latin to force my older child to learn to read carefully.  But again, there are other routes, perhaps more effective and easier.

Thank you for the thoughtful multi-prong response. Could you share further thoughts on the above? How have you seen this  manifest in your homeschool?

[serendipitous journey]

You're welcome!  As always, please take what's helpful and ignore the rest. 

RE further thoughts/local manifestations: I'm too foggy-headed with the flu today, but will try to answer later this week. 

[Nurit]

19 hours ago, serendipitous journey said:

You're welcome!  As always, please take what's helpful and ignore the rest. 

RE further thoughts/local manifestations: I'm too foggy-headed with the flu today, but will try to answer later this week. 

Feel better!  Wishing you speedy recovery.

[serendipitous journey]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:03 AM, Nurit said:

Thank you for the thoughtful multi-prong response. Could you share further thoughts on the above? How have you seen this  manifest in your homeschool?

Okay!  Easiest first: 

My older son was a fast, rather sloppy reader and a quick study.  So he could get by with skimming, generally.  I do think that his Latin work forced him to learn to parse difficult sentences carefully; he still skims, but he also has the discipline to slow down when he's not "getting something" and to work through it.  In high school he's been able to independently handle, for example, translations of Aristotle as part of his science reading, and I think the combination of WTM logic-level reading lists, science non-fiction reading, and his Latin work have made that possible. 

In terms of the cultural things, well, this can be a fraught and tricky topic.  So let me say that we are NOT cultural relativists.  But I am trying to teach the children to be humble and willing to learn from people with different values and from different times, and how to begin to sort the wheat from the chaff.  So we'll read Aristotle, though it is clear that his thinking vis-a-vis women isn't at the level of our modern standard. 

When the children work through translations of anything the least bit interesting in Latin or Greek (or classical Persian, I should think; or classical Chinese) they are beginning to see the world of people who thought slavery was just part of the civilized human condition and so was the idea that women were not fully people, in the sense that men could be. 

And the children learn to be willing to learn what those cultures have to teach.  How not to "cancel" them. 

And stretching that to the next level: we have the chance to discern the difference between the reasonable cultural differences and the grotesque ones.  For example -- this next is something I'd only introduce around the upper end of logic stage & in the rhetoric stages -- in ancient Rome it was acceptable to marry a girl of 12, and these marriages were not in name only.  Now this is a horrid treatment of children.  And we find that some Roman authors themselves pointed this out; Galen thought it was cruel.  So we begin to see that within the culture there were shades of ethics & humanism, and I think we can use this as leverage to consider which authors to take seriously on ethical matters, and also to help us critique our own participation in a complex and not entirely benevolent modern civilization. 

Anyhow, that's the gist of it.  But many people teach Latin and the children do not gain these benefits.  Latin doesn't automatically make one humble.  And many people gain similar benefits without the classical languages. 

Edited March 29, 2023 by serendipitous journey