Give me a justification for learning Latin

[thevagrant88]

Almost all scientific, philosophical, theological and historical books for the last 2 thousand years were written in Latin. Most of which are still not translated, including many famous books.

*In western civilization.

[bedtime]

Speaking for myself, Latin has helped me to better understand my own language—English. My grammar was terrible before I learned Latin. Now it's well above average.

[T0NIN0]

Almost all scientific, philosophical, theological and historical books for the last 2 thousand years were written in Latin. Most of which are still not translated, including many famous books.

Can you give me some examples?

If you search for "Untranslated Latin Texts" you will find lots of results. The amount of untranslated texts is enormous, particularly in the middle-ages.

[Dragon27]

But it's not the fact that they're untranslated that should be alluring, it's the actual content of these texts. I don't care if Aeneid or whatever has been translated into one of the languages I know, I want to read it in its original form. I already know (from having studied a couple of foreign languages) that there's a world of difference between reading stuff in original and in translation (enough to compel me to study the language).
If something wasn't translated though, chances are that it might be something very niche and boring for the general audience, because works of any relevance tend to be translated sooner or later.

[nooj]

What is the general taste though?

I mean, maybe it does interest the general public to read monastery land zoning documents.

[rdearman]

Here are some reasons:

Scientia est potentia !
Sic faciunt omnes !
Sola lingua bona est lingua mortua !
Dictum sapienti sat est.
Cineri gloria sera venit.
Excelsior
Malum consilium quod mutari non potest.
Ut sementem feceris, ita metes

[DaveAgain]

If something wasn't translated though, chances are that it might be something very niche and boring for the general audience, because works of any relevance tend to be translated sooner or later.

I'm not sure that's true. I looked at a handful of Latin texts recently, there were translations in English, I had to struggle to find them in French.

Hildegard von Bingen's works (originally written in Latin) are available in German, some in French, I've not looked for English translations.

[samfrances]

I think what it comes down to is:

1. You're speaking the language of Ancient Rome! If you don't think that's at least a little bit cool, I don't think we can be friends.

2. There's something I really like about case systems, where who is doing what to whom is encoded in the morphology of the words rather than their order. It's just so elegant, and so different to English. I want to know what it feels like to fully internalise such a system. I guess I could get the same thing from learning Russian, but I don't want to learn Cyrillic.

[Dragon27]

I guess I could get the same thing from learning Russian, but I don't want to learn Cyrillic.

But it's just 33 letters. Many of which are similar to latin letters (because they come from the same source - Greek alphabet). It's nothing compared to the number of words, phrases and collocations that you have to learn (one way or the other) to have at least semi-intermediate command of the language.
Anyway, non-cyrillic Polish is cool and has lots of interesting content

The real problem would be, imho, the relatively more foreign vocabulary of the Slavic languages. English borrowed (either directly, or through French) a lot from Latin, and that might make it easier to learn.

[samfrances]

Ok, I'm gonna do it! Here goes.