The renowned British scholar and writer Dorothy Sayers said in a speech entitled The Single Greatest Defect in my own Latin Education that“if I were asked what, of all the things I was ever taught, has been of the greatest practical use to me, I should have to answer: the Latin Grammar.” Sayers went on to give five major arguments in support of this conclusion:
Grounding in Latin grammar “is the quickest and easiest way to gain mastery over one's own language, because it supplies the structure upon which all language is built.”
Latin is the key to over fifty percent of the English vocabulary through French and the other Romance languages.
“Latin is the key to all the Romance languages directly, and indirectly to all inflected languages.” Latin enables the person to learn any (or all) of the Romance languages in a fraction of the time required to learn that language without Latin.
“The literature of our own country and of Europe is so studded and punctuated with Latin phrases and classical allusions that without some knowledge of Latin it must be very difficult to make anything of it. Here we are getting away from the uses of grammar to the benefits of background and culture. “
“There is also the matter of derivation, as distinct from vocabulary. I cannot help feeling that it is wholesome, for example, to know that "civility" has some connection with the civitas; that "justice" is more closely akin to righteousness than to equality; and that there was once some dim and forgotten connection between reality and thought.”
More of this speech by Miss Sayers may be accessed by clicking here.
