<p>In the fall, I'll be one of the many freshmen who will be taking a mandatory, full introductory course in a language. I've looked at the Harvard course catalog online, but there's no real section for foreign languages. Does anyone know where there might be a list of all the language courses that Harvard offers, especially those that count towards the mandatory freshmen language requirement?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>well, all the courses taught at Harvard can be accessed from this website:
<a href="http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/Courses/%5B/url%5D">http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/Courses/</a>
Just click on the department.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if the Romance Languages and Literatures concentration requires you to know one romance language well or several of them? I'm considering this as my major, but I only know French.</p>
<p>Yes, that was the website I was talking about, however you really have to dig to find some of the language courses. I was hoping they might be listed somewhere else.</p>
<p>Suburbian: Here's the webpage listing all of the different options and requirements for Romance Languages and Literatures concentrators. </p>
<p>Scroll down towards the bottom to find the 'Romance Languages' and 'Romance Literatures' concentrations, specifically, as opposed to the specific language concentrations above.</p>
<p>Is it common for colleges to offer Sanskrit and Gaelic, or is that restricted to Harvard and perhaps a few other colleges? I want to take both Sanskrit and Gaelic (and Ancient Greek, and Swedish...) and it doesn't seem to be commonly offered.</p>
<p>Big, comprehensive top-tier universities generally offer a good number of obscure languages. Of the ones you name, Ancient Greek in particular is widely available, but even though the others will be a little harder to find, Harvard is certainly not the only school to offer them. You'll have to check schools' individual web sites to see whether they have the specific ones you're interested in, though.</p>
<p>Oh man...ancient Greek. Terrible, impossible language. Have fun. But don't say I didn't warn you. (Your language plans are admirable if ambitious--languages are pretty intensive at Harvard, and you're naming some very difficult ones.)</p>
<p>I know that ancient Greek is pretty common, but Sanskrit and especially Gaelic aren't. I didn't see them both offered anywhere else, except Berkeley, which is huge, aw.</p>
<p>Phoenixy, I've always been extremely gifted at languages. I took 4 college semesters of Latin in 2 months through an intensive college program when I was a high school junior, and it was me and a bunch of classics majors and my teacher begged me to keep going and told me that I would be able to pick up Greek and Sanskrit easily with my linguistic talent. I know Latin is an easy language, but languages are just something that I've always been really gifted it, and I'm not afraid of studying them intensively. I know Greek has like 8 declensions and a different alphabet, and Sanskrit is even worse...but I love ancient Greek and Sanskrit drama and philosophical texts way too much to not learn how to read them untranslated. :(</p>
<p>This just makes me really sad, though, because I'm interested in Gaelic too and planning a trip this summer to go to Ireland and part of it involves studying Celtic culture...and I'm also teaching myself Dutch and getting some bilingual Dutch/English literature and visiting my friend in the Netherlands...and they're all things that I would loooooooove to study in the future, but there's no way I'm getting into Harvard. :(</p>
<p>Good to know that your pursuing such ancient languages... Knowing Sanskrit will help you understand Hindi and Arabic which have similar words... Hence, you could probably take a few courses in Hindi and Arabic once your done with Sanskrit so that you could master these 2 languages too :p Your knowledge of Sanskrit coupled with your ability to learn languages will make your study of Hindi and Arabic relatively easy... </p>
<p>I love learning languages and am trying to see if I could fit it into my summer schedule although I dont think I will be able to do so since i'm joining an engineering / research summer program ( damn it :( )</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Engineering/research should be awesome, though. </p>
<p>(Sorry to the OP for hijacking your thread!)</p>
<p>Most of the languages I love are dead languages, but I'm spending 40 days in Brazil and taking Portuguese lessons, so hopefully that will be picked up fairly well by the end of the trip. Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh I'd love to just spend my life learning obscure languages and reading ancient texts and doing absolutely nothing practical.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>This just makes me really sad, though, because I'm interested in Gaelic too and planning a trip this summer to go to Ireland and part of it involves studying Celtic culture...<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>When you get to Ireland be sure to call the language Irish instead of Gaelic. The Irish are sometimes touchy on this point.</p>
<p>Weird! My mother told me the same thing. I already made the mistake of saying "Gaelic" to an Irish family and they seemed very offended by it. Could you explain why this is? I feel ignorant, but I don't get it. I love that word. :(</p>
<p>It is partly to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, plus there is a strong streak of Irish nationalism tied up with the whole issue. Having your own language is a big part of maintaining your national identity.</p>
<p>Aw, I feel so ignorant.</p>
<p>suburbian... Romance Languages and Literatures is the department, not the concentration
what concentration you choose determines the number of languages you are required to know. For example, one could choose to concentrate solely in Hispanic Literature, or complete a double concentration combining Italian and French Litertature, or complete a concentration in Romance Studies, combining any 3 Romance languages.</p>
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Engineering/research should be awesome, though.
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<p>True.. but I found this great prof at cornell who teaches Arabic and its kinda disheartening to know that I cant perfect my Arabic skills... My Arabic skills were good but as with the probllem with languages in general, I lost practice ( since I moved to the US and found no use for it here ). It irritates me to think that I spent 8 years in school learning a language ( Arabic was compulsory language that I had to take in my school in the middle east ) and then within a few years time, lack of practice made me forget quite a lot of it.. </p>
<p>Oh well, I guess one has to prioritize in life and research comes first on my summer to-do list since I plan to major in Engineering..</p>
<p>Well, don't let me dissuade you. I just consider it my moral duty to warn anyone who's good at languages and who likes Latin and wants to pick up Greek thinking it'll be more of same--because it's not, and the alphabet has nothing to do with it and the declensions are only a tiny part, and even the explosion of tenses and moods, and accents, and the six principal parts, and the constructions, aren't so much the bad thing, as the sheer number and profusion of irregulars--Greek involves MUCH more memorization than Latin.</p>
<p>I know that Greek is a btch of a language to learn, and thank you for fulfilling your moral obligations. ;) But the prospect of learning an impossible language (or ten) excites me, and I know that Greek is in a whole seven realms beyond Latin in terms of difficulty.</p>
<p>"
True.. but I found this great prof at cornell who teaches Arabic and its kinda disheartening to know that I cant perfect my Arabic skills... My Arabic skills were good but as with the probllem with languages in general, I lost practice ( since I moved to the US and found no use for it here ). It irritates me to think that I spent 8 years in school learning a language ( Arabic was compulsory language that I had to take in my school in the middle east ) and then within a few years time, lack of practice made me forget quite a lot of it.. </p>
<p>Oh well, I guess one has to prioritize in life and research comes first on my summer to-do list since I plan to major in Engineering.."</p>
<p>I bet it would definitely come back to you quickly, though, if you take it up again. Languages, I find, don't really leave you.</p>