Hey everyone, I'm choosing my electives for next year (my first year!) ... and my major decision is between French 1A06 and Latin 1Z03 (I know there are differences in the units, I'll take psych also if I choose Latin).

I know language courses are generally harder, is it worth taking these classes? I'm definitely interested, though. Which electives would you recomend?

I would disagree with that. I took German 1Z06 in first year, and it was one of the easiest classes I've ever taken in university.

I would say go for it if you're interested. No point in taking something just because it's easy :p.

Latin is certainly an interesting course, but it is really quite different than any other language course (with the exceptions being Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew, and Sanskrit, as these are all languages that exist only in writing)

Whereas in a French class the emphasis is on becoming a speaker of French, and thus being able to understand conversational French, Latin focuses entirely upon grammar; I took French to Gr12, and I learned more about the structure of language in one semester of Latin than I did in four years of high school French.

Also, the course is extremely fast-paced. By the end of second semester, you are expected to be able to read fairly complicated passages from ancient authors. I believe we read Caesar's "On the Civil War" at the end of first semester.

That being said, if you can keep up with the 2 hours+ of homework after each class, the course is so well-taught and designed that you become familiar with the Latin language pretty quickly.

Of course, this all depends on how much you enjoy language, and whether translation is a task that seems daunting to you. In the end, though, you have a Classics professor as your teacher, and they are generally a hilarious and immensely intelligent bunch.

Although I've taken neither, you may want to think about practicality: you can use your French elective on your resume...your Latin class...not so much.

Then again, if you know Latin, the other Romance-based languages become incredibly easy to pick up as they are all descendants of it. Putting Latin on a resume actually does increase your marketability as well, as you can guess that not many people can boast that knowledge. To study Latin it takes a lot of dedication and it differentiates you from people who have typical things on their resumes.

Originally Posted by lorend

Although I've taken neither, you may want to think about practicality: you can use your French elective on your resume...your Latin class...not so much.

Unless one was going to minor in French, one or two semesters of French doesn't really say much.

Also you may want to think about how hard it is to get into the class... Language classes, and especially French, is usually filled up pretty quickly

Originally Posted by Shmowen

...
Whereas in a French class the emphasis is on becoming a speaker of French, and thus being able to understand conversational French, Latin focuses entirely upon grammar; I took French to Gr12, and I learned more about the structure of language in one semester of Latin than I did in four years of high school French.
...

By structure of language, do you mean it helps you understand all languages better? Would it make learning French/German/Russian easier? Increase english vocabulary?

Originally Posted by rcrw88

By structure of language, do you mean it helps you understand all languages better? Would it make learning French/German/Russian easier? Increase english vocabulary?

You can learn about language structure from studying foreign languages, but plenty of folks have already done so and put that knowledge together in phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax (a part of linguistics).

So, if you want to study the structure of languages, you'd probably be better off taking a linguistics course

Originally Posted by Shmowen

Unless one was going to minor in French, one or two semesters of French doesn't really say much.

True, but once you have the basics you don't necessarily need a class to study. And there are tons of other ways to gain more competency of a language outside the classroom.

Originally Posted by rcrw88

By structure of language, do you mean it helps you understand all languages better? Would it make learning French/German/Russian easier? Increase english vocabulary?

It certainly does help, especially with French, German, and Russian (as these are all Indo-European languages, and German and Russian are even inflected like Latin) It also helps a lot with English vocabulary - about every other verb, noun, or phrase you learn in Latin has been adopted by English. Also, by being a grammatically-oriented class, first-year Latin really helps to clarify phrase and sentence ambiguities in English (ie, the difference between "who" and "whom", recursion and participles in sentences, etc. [AND the origin of the phrase "etc" ---> "et cetera" = "and the rest"] )

In short, there's a lot of linguistic terms and concepts that you learn from Latin that are transferable to other languages. (This is also the case for Ancient Greek)

As Mahratta said, linguistics classes, in addition to analyzing extra-grammatical phenomena, study with greater depth the rules of language structure, including those of both non-Indo-European and Indo-European languages.

Originally Posted by lorend

True, but once you have the basics you don't necessarily need a class to study. And there are tons of other ways to gain more competency of a language outside the classroom.

Ah, I see what you mean - my mistake. I definitely agree with you in that sense.

Originally Posted by Shmowen

Ah, I see what you mean - my mistake. I definitely agree with you in that sense.

No worries, I was replying quickly and not explaining myself that well.