Alright, so technically the language selection was due exactly a month ago, but my parents are kind of mad at me for picking Latin over Chinese. I’m half Chinese, and I went to Chinese preschool so I have an elementary-level knowledge of the language. I thought that I’d want to learn Latin, but now I’m having doubts. I mostly chose Latin because of how difficult it is to learn Mandarin, and how I wanted to read the classics. But Chinese will be, in the long run, more useful especially when I visit my relatives. I kind of want to switch. Is that a good idea? Thank you.
At the college level, I would say that unless you want to be a classics major, Chinese would be the better choice. Even at a level well below fluency, it will be useful to someone who is likely to spend time with native speakers.
My Chinese daughter takes Latin, probably will keep it up through high school. She loves it. And it helps her English vocabulary immensely.
I am sorry. I thought this was a college student. Ignore my comment! Either would be fine.
I have a friend who took Latin 1 and 2, and then switched to Chinese. She plans to go up to Chinese 3. If that makes sense with your schedule, that could be a fun option.
Latin is better for STEM, Chinese is better for anything business-related. I’m Chinese, and I take Spanish at school while attending “Chinese school” on Sundays. I have to say, Chinese is immensely useful when traveling to China (kinda obvious…lol), and nobody actually speaks Latin, it would be more for expanding your current English vocabulary.
I would think about it short term:
How would the classes be? Mandarin would be harder than Latin…is that taken into account? Would you be starting in Mandarin 1?
And also long term:
When you are an adult, will you be visiting your relatives? Will you be wishing you had taken it?
How likely it is that you will actually read the classics in Latin?
Seems like learning Mandarin would be more useful for family and possible business purposes.
Latin would only be useful if you are majoring in classics or perhaps medicine.
Mandarin would be much more useful on a resume and probably wouldn’t even be too hard since you already know some.
Well, you could always take Mandarin 2 (? or did you place into 1?) and take Latin 1 too as a elective…?
You’d have to continue Mandarin till Level 4, but you could drop Latin after level 2 to leave space for electives. Note that if you’re a Chinese heritage speaker aiming for Top 25 universities/LACs, you’re better off taking both rather than just Chinese. Indeed you’re supposed to learn a “foreign” language, and being able to present subject tests in both languages would also definitely help you (vs. presenting Chinese results, which wouldn’t really, same as if a French student took the subject test in French.)
Thanks everybody. I’ve heard that colleges don’t exactly look favorably upon those who learn a semi-native language. My mom is Chinese and still speaks with an audible accent and I was spoken to in Chinese as a baby, plus I’ve had five or so years of Chinese classes already (that I’ve now forgotten). Sooo would it be in my best interest to learn Latin?
But I don’t want to learn Latin just for college. I do have a geniune interest in it, but what use is it to learn a dead language? Vocabulary and medicine, I guess, but how much will they really affect my life?
I always have regretted taking Latin in high school. It was fun at the time, but it is a dead language. Much better to become fluent in a spoken language… unless your research interests or other areas of study attract you to Latin, in which case you could study it just for the joy of learning it. For me, there is real pleasure in being able to speak to people in their language when I travel.
Forget what “looks good” to colleges, and choose what interests you and/or what you think you will be glad you took in the long run.
Latin. You can use it for many fields, plus classics, plus theology.
Russian was my first language but I promptly forgot it when I started school. I can still understand people when they speak in Russian but if my school offered Russian classes I would take them without hesitation. What colleges think comes secondary because that class would be super useful to me.
You heard wrong.
Take whichever one interests you more.
A few observations:
Classics is an enormously rewarding area of study - if you have the aptitude for the languages, are interested in the material and are willing to do the work. Classics helps you understand Western history, literature, art, philosophy and politics more deeply and enriches your life experience.
That aside, I think the practical applications of Latin are generally overstated. It might help you a bit with vocabulary, or in learning Romance languages later. There is one area where it can be quite helpful, though, which is getting into an elite college.
Harvard and its peers all have Classics departments which don’t attract enough students (although Harvard has less trouble than most), in these days when there are more STEM majors than ever. As an illustration of how you can distinguish yourself, about 3,000 people take the SAT II Latin test each year, and about 150 of them score 800 (see here to understand how comparatively rare an 800 in Latin is: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-subject-tests-2015.pdf). If you’re one of them, the admissions offices will notice, particularly if it looks like you might go on to be a Classics major and ideally do further work in the field.
Chinese has infinitely more “practical” use, but you need to bear in mind that a native English speaker (as you seem to be) can study it for many years before achieving fluency or being able to read a newspaper (see this classic article on why: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html). You really need to live in a Chinese-speaking country for a while to get to a level where you can have extended conversations on a wide range of topics. If that’s something you think you might want to do, particularly if you might use Chinese in your career, then getting started as early as possible might be better for you.
Bottom line: both can be rewarding and useful, but in very different ways, and you’ll have to work hard to get the benefits, whichever you choose.
There’s a sufficient number of good students who’ve had Latin for it to be virtually a non-factor in admissions. The Ivies and peer schools draw heavily from private schools and top publics, many of which offer Latin. In any case, East Asian studies departments need students too, and they’re often not much bigger than classics departments.
I recommend Chinese. It’s a very useful language today, and as DeepBlue86 mentioned, it can take a few years to get to a good level of Chinese.
If you really want to learn Latin, you could teach yourself by using Wheelock’s excellent grammar; as ancient languages go, Latin is certainly one of the easier ones. Working through the grammar can take about a year if one moves slowly or a few months at a fast pace. There’s some excellent resources online, such as the [Dickinson commentaries](http://dcc.dickinson.edu), and even smartphone apps for practicing Latin grammar and vocabulary.
Latin literature (both Roman and medieval) is definitely interesting, but Chinese has a long and rich history of literature in its own right.
Sorry if I was unclear - I’m not asserting that just studying Latin punches your ticket to a top-tier school - you need to be an absolute star (e.g., 800-level), probably with a lot of demonstrated interest and achievements in related areas (and an otherwise-strong application) for it to move the needle - but I believe it made a big difference in several cases I’m familiar with.
Related to this, I believe a total of maybe 2,000 US high school students study Ancient Greek - so, if that’s an option, I think it would bolster the case. But only try it if you’re really interested - it’s harder than Latin!
On the other hand, no matter how strong you were at Asian languages, I doubt it would significantly influence the results of your college process.
Moral of the story: do what your heart tells you…