ONE LANGUAGE ENHANCES ANOTHER January marked a new beginning for Augustine School. The students of the 10th/11th grade class became the first Augustine School students to begin formal study of Greek. As instructor of the course, I was curious to see how well the students’ previous Latin study would aid in their pursuit of a new language. Now that we are over three months into it, I must say that I am more than pleased with the results. In a relatively short amount of time, we have covered twelve chapters of William Mounce’s Greek grammar, Basics of Biblical Greek. That is one-third of the book. Students are translating sentences from the Greek New Testament and other early Christian literature, and they have already learned vocabulary words that make up about 60% of the New Testament! The benefits of studying Latin are many. It provides training in attention to detail, complex thought processes, improvement of speaking and writing ability, and other skills. In addition, it provides access to a wealth of written works in the Western classical tradition. And, as Augustine School’s 10th and 11th graders can now affirm from firsthand experience, the study of Latin enhances one’s ability to learn other languages quickly. Perhaps there are future biblical scholars at our school who will one day credit their years of Latin study for opening doors to the Greek New Testament.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:25:04 +0000
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