Latin is an ancient language, used within the Roman empire. It was brought to the territory that nowadays is Italy by Indo-Europeans from the north of the continent.
It began as a local language in a small region by the Tiber river called Latium, and developed along with the community that used it, who eventually founded the city of Rome in 753 BC.
As the Romans were spreading their territory in Italy first, and Europe later, the Latin language did so too.
Once the Roman empire fell apart, Latin evolved in different ways ending up in different evolutions, called Romance languages. Main ones are Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.
Even though Latin is not actively spoken in our societies anymore, there are plenty of good if not very good reasons to study Latin.
A new science means a whole new set of words, a whole new vocabulary. Think of all the new words that came with computer science. Think of all of the big words in biology, chemistry, astronomy, psychology, sociology, and economics. The first task in learning a new subject is to learn the vocabulary. Learning the vocabulary is half the battle.Latin provides the root words for the specialized vocabularies of not one, not half, but all of the modern sciences
How will your child learn all of those big words in his science education? What preparation do we give our students to help them master the tremendous demands of learning the specialised vocabularies of the sciences he will study in high school and college? We don’t! But we can and should.
While a large number of words in science come from Greek, the law is the exclusive domain of the Latin language. All legal terms are Latin. The Romans excelled in the practical arts of law and government, and it is from them that we derive our legal and political language. Latin is invaluable for the business and law student. And although logic was first explained by Aristotle in Greek, it was really developed and systematised by the schoolmen in the Middle Ages—in Latin, of course.
Latin is the best preparation for learning a Romance language or any language. Once you really understand how language works, the task of learning a new language will be more than cut in half. Why settle for just one language? Learn a dozen, but learn Latin first.
The student who has learned how to learn with Latin will be a better student at all of his other subjects. Latin is an unexcelled system. Once you learn one system, you learn how to think systematically and approach any new subject with greatly enhanced learning skills.
Our Latin classes at MIL will prove you all the above good reasons to be true. Try it for yourself in a trial lesson!