Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong

Re:Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong by dantheman0207 on Monday January 30, 2012 @06:07AM (#3528224)

One of the most effective ways to learn a new language(I've found) is to actively tie new vocabulary & grammatical structures to existing knowledge and etymological backgrounds. This makes it much easier to recall and use in familiar ways.

The corollary is my personal hypothesis that learning Latin actively helps you learn other European languages. In fact, learning French probably makes it easier to learn German, and knowing both gives you more background on which to build the English language. Eventually the limiting factor is memory and ability to differentiate language in context.

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Re:Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong by benohear on Monday January 30, 2012 @08:58AM (#3528774)

I'm not sure if this is the point you were making, but I'm really skeptical of the value of learning Latin as a route to learning modern Latin languages. It seems to me that if you want to learn, for example, Spanish, then you are considerably better off learning Spanish straight away and not Latin then Spanish.

And if you're getting carried away and want to learn a second or a third one, then Spanish will give you most of the value of Latin in terms of transferable knowledge.

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