Comment by jchin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchin | Hacker News Reader

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I've recently come across Latin as I was reading "The Well-Trained Mind" by Susan Wise Bauer. It's a book describing how to provide a "classical education" to kids at home. (I'm homeschooling my two young kids this year and reading everything I can about how to homeschool.)

The author strongly recommends having the kids learn Latin. In case anyone is interested, some resources/curricula for homeschooling Latin she mentions in the book include Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, Song School Latin, Latin for Children, The Big Book of Lively Latin, The Latin Road to English Grammar, and Latin Alive!.

Anyone have experience/thoughts/opinions on teaching their kids Latin? Or even learning Latin as a kid?

I took a few years of Latin as a kid. I remember that I enjoyed learning about Ancient Rome, but realized I didn't want to sink hundreds of hours learning a language just to read some old books.

I ended up spending a few years studying Spanish in college, I'm reasonably conversational now and met my wife, who's from Puerto Rico, in the process.

Even if my wife wasn't Puerto Rican, I would teach my kids Spanish. Grammatically it's far easier than Latin and will connect them with culture and millions of speakers that are alive today.

Not really "as a kid" but I had Latin for a couple years in high school.

Pro I guess is that it lets you read some classical literature although in 2 years I never got remotely proficient. In some ways it's easier than a modern language because you're mostly learning to read.

Con is mostly the obvious. You could be spending the time learning a modern language. (I also took 4 years of high school French. Never got very proficient in that either. It helps a bit when I visit France but I never spent enough time living it to get good.)

timthorn in a thread below suggested http://www.minimus.com/ for young kids and https://classroom.thenational.academy/subjects-by-key-stage/... for older ones

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