Why should an adult take time out of his busy schedule to learn classical languages? Latin and ancient Greek unlock the cultural heritage of the West.
When it comes to ancient languages, many people seem to believe that there is an incredibly small window of opportunity for learning. I encounter this belief frequently, since I teach college-level Latin and ancient Greek through the Ancient Language Institute (ALI) – an online school that offers courses for adults and children in the classical languages, as well as adult courses in Biblical Hebrew and Old English. Most adults I meet think they are too old to learn a language, especially a “dead” one like Latin or ancient Greek. Whatever the person considers his “best by” date, he usually sees adults who come to ancient languages after age 30 as too late, particularly if they do not know a foreign language already. However, from personal experience as a teacher of adults, I can attest that the window of opportunity for classical languages is immensely wider than one might think. Indeed, I would argue that adults can – and should – learn the classical languages, no matter their age or level of previous familiarity with Latin and ancient Greek. I say “should” because of the Western Tradition, and I say “can” because of educational experience.
Why should an adult take time out of his busy schedule to learn classical languages? Latin and ancient Greek unlock the cultural heritage of the West. Knowledge of ancient Greek allows someone to experience the poetry of Homer, the biographies of Plutarch, the Socratic dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, the theology of the early church, and (most importantly) the truth of the New Testament – all on their own terms. Similarly, since Latin served as the West’s lingua Franca for centuries, it lets the learner read the actual words of Cicero, Vergil, Livy, Saint Augustine, Boethius, Saint Anselm, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, and many others. Furthermore, because these Greek and Latin authors influenced subsequent generations, facility with the older works gives deeper insight into the authors whom those texts shaped. For example, William Shakespeare’s Elizabethan grammar school education included extensive training in classical Latin. Consequently, a reader who knows Roman authors like Ovid and Seneca will understand Shakespeare’s allusions to those ancient writings and their significance for his work.
But, what about translations? Of course, people can – and many do – appreciate classical works through a translator’s mediation. However, reading in translation and reading in the original language are as different as seeing a black-and-white photograph of Raphael’s School of Athens and standing before the real-life fresco in all its glorious riot of color and light. Poetry particularly suffers in translation, because poetic effects often depend as much upon meter and sound as upon content. Vergil in English is excellent because of what he says. Vergil in Latin moves the soul because of how he says it. Even prose works lose some of their color when translated into another language. I often tell my students that Saint Paul in any language is an inspired writer of Scripture and a master theologian, but Saint Paul in Greek is also a rhetorical artist. Without the sounds and grammar of Greek, we miss the direct experience of his prose’s stylistic power, even though the Spirit-filled content still comes through. That is why I am dedicated to equipping my students so they can experience Greek and Latin authors directly, without depending on a translator. That is why adults ought to learn classical languages.
Moving from “why” to “how,” an adult of any age truly can learn classical languages if he actively uses them on a consistent basis with a teacher’s guidance. “Actively using” means speaking and writing in the language – in addition to reading, hearing, and translating. But, wait, these languages are dead. How can someone use them? Well, Latin and ancient Greek are “dead” in the sense that they are no longer people’s native languages. Yet, Latin was a cross-cultural language centuries after Rome’s fall in AD 476. In fact, C. S. Lewis corresponded for years with the Italian priest, Don Giovanni Calabria, entirely in Latin because Latin was the language they shared.[1] Even today, Pope Leo XIV has a Latin feed on X, and I have attended conferences where Latin or ancient Greek served as the common language for attendees from all over the world. These languages may be technically dead, but they are certainly not fossilized.
So, how exactly do my ALI colleagues and I teach our students? We employ a mixed educational methodology, employing the best parts of both natural and grammatical language acquisition approaches. We take the active use of ancient languages from the natural method, requiring each student to read, write, listen, and speak in the ancient language starting on the first day of class. We begin with simple words and sentences (accompanied by numerous images) and progress from there. While tailoring the difficulty of our materials and exercises to match the student’s comprehension level, we provide direct exposure to the language in context-rich, meaningful ways, similar to language immersion programs. This method may sound new for classical languages, but it is actually quite old. The first surviving illustrated children’s textbook is the 1658 Orbis Pictus – a Latin textbook by Czech educator John Amos Comenius – which uses an active approach.
At the same time, we care about grammar at ALI. Through our partnership with a wonderful language education company called Picta Dicta, we provide just enough explicit grammar instruction in English to help the student use the language and understand what he is reading, hearing, or saying. Throughout our instruction, we move the student closer to the moment that he realizes the truth of C.S. Lewis’s observation, “The very formula, ‘Naus means a ship,’ is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.”[2] This helps the student know the language experientially, speeding his progress and giving him a greater affinity with the authors he reads.
Personally, I have seen this method work wonders with adult students. Although ALI has programs for children, all of my students are adults (the oldest is in his late 70’s). Since we are an online school, my students have hailed from around the world, including Australia, Brazil, the British Isles, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, South Africa, and various parts of the United States. Students meet with me on Zoom each week, either in group classes or individual sessions. Between these meetings, students have assigned activities that include engaging readings, innovative digital tools, and large amounts of video and audio input. This makes the most of in-class time, which is devoted to practicing speech and composition, as well as troubleshooting difficult passages or concepts. We teach this way because it is quicker, more effective, longer lasting, and more fun. I have seen adults move from barely understanding simple sentences to reading, understanding, and discussing primary sources fluently in their ancient language of choice. Moreover, our method reflects the fact that these languages exist to communicate meaning. People expressed their ideas, needs, wants, fears, dreams, and even grocery lists in these languages, just as we do in ours. So, ALI respects the inherent connection between language and meaning by guiding our students in active use of their chosen language both inside and outside of the online classroom.
The intertwining of language and meaning is why I teach with ALI, and why I know that studying a classical language is perfectly feasible for adults. ALI exists to facilitate the cultural renewal of the West both by using our mixed teaching methodology to guide students on their path to proficiency and by training others to do the same. This is why we equip our students to understand the authors, ideas, and inheritance of the Western Tradition by making supposedly “dead” languages live again in our classrooms. So, to adults who want to gain direct access to the wisdom, wit, and wonders of the past by learning Latin and ancient Greek, I say, “It’s not too late. Come join the fun.”
Please watch this two-minute video from the Ancient Language Institute.
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Notes:
[1] C. S. Lewis and Don Giovanni Calabria, The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited and translated by Martin Moynihan (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), back cover, https://archive.org/details/latinlettersofcs0000lewi/mode/2up?view=theater&q=italian.
[2] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: HarperOne, 2017), 172, Kindle.
The featured image is “Saint Jerome” (by 1610) by Caravaggio, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.