Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco – Contributor

We have probably all been told at some point in our educational careers that there is value in learning multiple languages. Popular languages are often Spanish, French, Mandarin or Korean. Seldom anymore do people consider learning an ancient and dead language. I am currently in my third year of classical Greek and in my second year of classical Latin, and I have seldom had a more fulfilling learning experience.

Language courses were never my favorite when I was in elementary school and high school, mainly because I found grammatical concepts to be too arbitrary and abstract for my liking. I remember desperately trying to understand what the points of direct and indirect objects were and why they mattered when it came time to conjugating the verb avoir in French class. I eventually fell back on memorizing the conjugations rather than understanding the linguistic structure behind them. Once I had finished CÉGEP and mandatory language courses, I swore never to take a language class again. Flash forward two years, and I found myself sitting in an ancient Greek course, specifically classical Greek, with Dr. Jenn Cianca. Admittedly, I had not switched into the Classical Studies program for the study of the languages—it seemed to be but a necessary evil to be withstood along the way to better studies. However, I was taken aback by how quickly the study of classical Greek captured my interest. We started at the very building blocks of language, learning the alphabet, then basic conjugations, and the minutiae of cases.

Graphic by Payton Langevin

Since modern European languages come from the Indo-European language tree, they are descendants of ancient languages like classical Latin, and to a lesser extent classical Greek. So, learning these ancestors greatly impacts your understanding of modern grammar and syntax. As my classmates and I advanced our knowledge of grammar and syntax, I began to understand all the concepts that my French and English teachers had tried to explain to me in the past. For example, after all these years, I fundamentally understood how and why the objects of the verb avoir matter in conjugating it in the passé composé. Now that I understand the building blocks of a language, I found that my writing in English, French and Spanish—languages I already knew—significantly improved.

Not only did I become more proficient in writing, but my reading comprehension improved. You might believe this is an obvious result of learning a new language. After all, once one has learnt a new language, one could now read a whole new selection of untranslated texts. This fact is undoubtedly true, I increasingly have the ability to read ancient texts that are untranslated. Yet, building a vocabulary in ancient Greek and Latin has helped me understand the depth of meaning behind English, French and Spanish words. The etymology of much of our modern European vocabularies originates in the Latin and Greek languages. Words have meaning and their meaning is powerful. Knowing the Greek and Latin etymology allows me to harness the depth of that power to write purposeful pieces.

I found that one of the most rewarding and empowering experiences was to learn in my ancient language courses. I do not believe that learning new languages, especially ones that no one speaks anymore, is easy. I have struggled to learn ancient languages. And learning new languages is not for everyone. I am by no means a language master, but I now have the confidence backed by knowledge to better communicate. Learning an ancient language opens up new possibilities and understandings—without the pressure of trying to talk to a native speaker of the language. I encourage everyone who can to sit into an ancient language course as you will undoubtedly take a valuable lesson from your experience.