From moira@wcox.com Thu Mar 23 19:28:58 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA33446 for ; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:28:57 -0800 Received: from wcox.com (dns.wcox.com [204.144.138.10]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA24958 for ; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 19:28:56 -0800 Received: from wcox.com [204.144.138.98] by wcox.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-6.00) id A0F638A01EC; Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:28:54 -0700 Message-ID: <38DAE128.72EC0EC@wcox.com> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 20:29:44 -0700 From: Maire Lawry X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Language requirements References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I'm afraid that this definition of the objectives of language study leaves > out at least one important objective, one that overarches the others in > fact: the reason for "reading, writing, etc." in the language is to learn > more intimately the culture of those who spoke/speak/write/wrote the > language. Perhaps I should have added "inter alia" > Let us not sell the study of > classical languages short I don't believe that pointing out one of the shortcomings of dead languages vs modern languages qualifies as "selling the study of classical languages short." Many people who study Latin go on to become fluent in a modern language, but nothing in Latin prepares you for struggling with immediate verbal responses, trying to express complex thoughts, or straining to understand a native speaker in a language you are still learning. Few Americans have had this experience. .