LATIN AND GREEK MINOR

Did you love Latin in high school? Are you curious about the original language of the New Testament: koine Greek? Do you stay glued to YouTube videos about ancient cultures? If so, we may have the minor for you. The minors in ancient Latin and Greek are now offered in the Department of World Languages and Cultures. Minors in these ancient languages will introduce you to multiple cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean basin, including ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Egypt, Nubia, North Africa, Greece, and Rome where they were spoken for millennia from the 2nd millennium BCE through the fourth century CE. Through a minor in Latin or Greek you will gain access to the ancient beliefs, values, and traditions that have shaped modern cultures. Students of Latin and/ or Greek will acquire additional cultural literacy, becoming better critical thinkers and more engaged global citizens. And just in case you are wondering, what you will do with this minor after graduation, let me remind you what a famous Roman poet named Ovid once wrote: Nihil utilior est quam artibus inutilibus (“Nothing is more useful than things that have no use”). A minor in ancient Latin or Greek has been called a "golden ticket" to the most competitive graduate programs. As such the minor is an excellent foundation for people who wish to pursue careers in all sorts of fields, including Law, Business, Medicine, the Ministry, and Teaching. And you may be surprised to learn that in addition to its intrinsic interest, a Latin minor happens to be a good career move since there is a great demand for teachers of Latin in public, charter, and private schools with only a BA required. Indeed, the field (often lumped under Foreign Languages) consistently has been singled out by the US Department of Education (https://classicalstudies.org/amphora/there-shortage-certified-latin-teachers-please-spread-word-0) as a teacher shortage area that may qualify students for reductions up to 100% cancellation of student federal loan debt (https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/pol/tsa.pdf) Indeed, your Latin or Greek minor may make you eligible for employment on the day after graduation!

Latin is a dead language. By this we mean that no native speakers of Latin are living among us today. In a peculiar way, its moribund state makes Latin an easy language to study: Latin is a language that like a fly caught in amber is frozen in time with none of the dynamic, often frustrating (to students) fluidity that characterizes languages in daily use. In other words, Latin has no native speakers to mess it up!

Latin originated as an Indo-European Italic dialect spoken by a prehistoric tribe inhabiting Latium, an area in central Italy in the region of the Tiber River. Over the course of several centuries beginning early in the 2nd century B.C.E., these Latin speakers radiating from their capital city of Rome came to dominate politically the entire Italian peninsula, most of the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as much of the hinterland. From the British Isles through France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, tribes and nations fell under the linguistic imperialism of their Roman conquerors (particularly in the Western empire; in the East, Greek held sway). Over time, Latin mingled with various European vernaculars to create the languages known today as the Romance (from Roman) languages: Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese. Until very recently Latin was the official language of the Catholic Church. Most important, we have a sizeable body of interesting, valuable, and often beautiful ancient historical, legal, and literary texts which may be read in the original by those who study Latin.

Whether you are studying Latin in fulfillment of a language requirement or because you are interested in ancient languages, literatures, and civilizations, the study of Latin will not only introduce you to a "dead language" that still wields enormous influence over western civilization but will also give you a better understanding of how language—all language—works. You will also broaden your English vocabulary (especially helpful for GREs and the like) and perhaps for the first time you will come to understand English grammar. Finally, in the course of studying Latin you will have to learn in a new way, a way that sharpens your mind and powers of concentration. If you meet the challenge of studying Latin, you will gain enormous satisfaction, confidence, and other lifelong rewards from the effort.

Ancient Greek was one of the most prominent languages used in the Ancient Mediterranean, and many of our best surviving sources about Egypt, Carthage, Nubia, modern-day Turkey, Rome, and Greece were written in Greek. So, too, is the original New Testament. The Gospels and Paul’s Epistles were all written in Greek, and by reading them in the original, you not only better understand early Christian theology, but other significant Near-Eastern cultures as well. From Homer to Marcus Aurelius, some of the most famous writers in literary history wrote in Greek. It should come as no surprise that Greek literature has inspired many other writers and thinkers that have encountered it, from ancient Roman poets to American abolitionists and activists. Greek has also had a profound impact on the development of the English language. This impact is obvious when one looks at much of the technical vocabulary of fields such as Biology and Medicine. Greek’s sophisticated grammatical system likewise can deepen your understanding of English grammar. Reading a Greek sentence can entail all the pleasure of doing a word puzzle—there is a logic to reading it—and recognizing that logic brings satisfaction and an ongoing sense of pride. Plus, who doesn’t like to show off their knowledge of another alphabet?