Is Latin Considered a Language?

Applying to College
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<p>As someone mentioned before, not to sound geo-politically discriminatory if you will, but, the on the global economic level, Spanish speaking countries lag woefully behind those of Asian and other European countries. Outside Venezuela (purely for the argument of OPEC and their diplomatic leverage) the Spanish speaking world (and French too to a lesser extent) is NOT by any means a hotbed of business opportunity or economic growth. Otherwise, in South America, there's Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world, but, that's Portuguese, which hasn't exactly taken off here. Is Spanish an excellent asset? Certainly, but don't think it eclipses Chinese or Japanese or Korean or Hindi at present. The power of Spanish is vested in our large Mexican immigrant populace in the States. Honestly, the propensity of language is in flux over time, who knows where we'll be in ten, fifteen years. Heck, the CIA had everyone learning Russian for a very long time, then, boom, Cold War's over, now what? I just don't think Spanish is as much of a business asset purely for the economic and political stature of the countries who speak it. I hope this does not offend anyone, that is not my intent, I'm just stating things as they are.</p>

<p>And clearly Latin will do you no good in this area anyhow, but it is an excellent springboard for learning all other languages. </p>

<p>Knowledge of Latin also serves to help learn and dissect other Romantic languages.</p>

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<p>"Wrong. Spanish the arguably the 4th most spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English. This means mastering the Spanish language can be an incredible asset in the working world...On the other hand, unless you plan to be some kind of Latin linguist, chances are you're not going to be using Latin in the workplace."</p>

<p>Wow, way to selectively use my post. Maybe if you had read my entire arguement, you might not appear incompetent.</p>

<p>Please, next time you feel the urge to say something ignorant or already been addressed, turn off your monitor and do it away from the computer.</p>

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<p>"Knowledge of Latin also serves to help learn and dissect other Romantic languages."</p>

<p>LOL. So does Spanish (I became fluent in French after learning Spanish. Believe me, it helped). </p>

<p>I think we all need to be honest here and admit that Spanish is often viewed as a commonplace language because of Americans' perceptions of Spanish-speaking immigrants and the Spanish-speaking world in general.</p>

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<p>This is an old thread, but I recently ran across a survey of colleges as to how they viewed Latin that I thought would be of interest. </p>

<p>Only a very few places that require a foreign language don't accept Latin.</p>

<p>A significant number of places view more favorably those who study Latin, whether a foreign language is required or not.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mla.org/adfl/bulletin/v24n3/243029.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mla.org/adfl/bulletin/v24n3/243029.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I would be interested in the names of any colleges that don't accept Latin. This topic comes up every so often here and on other boards.</p>

<p>Forgive the cross-posts that will all show up at once -- I wanted to reach those who had previously discussed this issue on different threads.</p>