by Emily Monaco

Created on: March 12, 2009

I absolutely hated Latin when I took it in high school.

I slogged through a year of declensions and conjugations. I barely passed pop quizzes. It was too much information, and what was the point: you couldn't even speak it! However, there are certain benefits of learning Latin in high school that even I am now reaping.

1. The SATs

Yes, that looming bad guy that every high schooler dreads: Latin can help. First of all, you have to remember what even the Princeton Review says about the test: The SAT is a test that guages, not how smart you are, but how well you take the SAT. That means that there are ways to take the test that will up your score, and figuring those out is the key to success.

A lot of the verbal section is made up of vocabulary exercises, but what many people forget to focus on is that it's not about defining the words, but about having a basic sense of what they mean. Having taken Latin can teach you to recognize roots, so while you may not know the exact meaning of a word, you'll be able to guess an approximate meaning and complete the exercise with confidence.

2. Foreign Language Learning

Latin may not be helpful for all languages, but as far as Romance languages are concerned (French, italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian), Latin is a big help. Latin forms the root for many words in all of these languages, and so a background in Latin is extremely useful if you decide to take the plunge and start learning a second language.

Even if you decide to tackle a non-Romance language, it can still be helpful to take Latin. Latin teaches you how to learn a foreign language and how to study for one. Having already learned one can help you learn another much more quickly and easily.

3. English Grammar

English grammar used to be one of the main topics addressed in English classes, but it has slowly fallen by the wayside. Some of the hardest things to learn when just starting a foreign language is finding out what different terms, such as "prepositional phrase" or "plus perfect tense" even mean in English! Latin teaches you all of these things so that they become easy to identify in our native tongue. This makes English both easier to teach to others and easier to use properly.

4. For the Hell of It!

It's common to continuously ask "what will this do for me" when deciding what to take in high school. What some people forget to ask is what they will like, what will interest them. Latin may not be a spoken language, but there are still tons of fun things that you can do with it, including reading ancient epic poems in their original language. Latin is like a puzzle, and to anyone who likes logic problems, it can be a fun class you take whose benefits you will reap for the rest of your life.

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