<p>So here's my situation: I took Latin as a high schooler, taking first-year as a freshman and second-year as a sophomore. But I took a break from Latin in my junior year and I forgot all my Latin in the process. In my senior year, I took AP Latin (third-year Latin isn't a prerequisite for AP at my school) which is independent study and I just had to claim that I was studying AP material (translating Vergil & Caesar) to get credit for that class. At the university that I'm attending, I have to place into a foreign language class and the general education requirement is at least four semesters of the same foreign language. Since I knew almost no Latin beyond the first year level when I took the placement test, I placed into the lowest class. :( Here, I was thinking about taking Spanish instead in college since whether I take Latin or Spanish, I will be starting at the first level and Spanish is probably more useful for pre-med students anyway, since communication is necessary for physicians and surgeons. Can anyone give me advice on which language is better to take for a pre-med student? And also, can anyone tell me at what level it is good to take Spanish/Latin in order for it to be useful and applicable in the actual field? (Doing the minimum four semesters or going further and taking the third year of the language) Thank you!</p>
<p>Spanish is much more practical than Latin. It doesn’t particularly matter what “level” you get to. What matters is how fluent you are in the language, and that depends a lot on you. If you’d like to become adept enough at Spanish to practice in the language, you might want to consider studying/volunteering abroad or practicing your Spanish by volunteering in a clinic. You’ll likely also want to practice your Spanish in medical school so you can become more practiced with medical Spanish.</p>
<p>As to Latin: when I was in high school I was required to take 4 years of a foreign language, the first 2 being Latin. In the end I took 4 years of Latin. I have 3 decades of professional background in health care and law. Over the years, my background in Latin has sometimes helped me solve some crossword puzzles. That’s it. I’d skip Latin unless you really enjoy reading things like Caesar’s Commentaries, Virgil’s Aeneid, or appreciate iambic pentameter, AND can get “A” in the class(es). Although someday you may learn a lot of words or terms in medicine that are derived from Latin, you really do not need a background in Latin to effectively communicate with other physicians.</p>
<p>As to Spanish: if the class deals in conversational Spanish, you enjoy it, AND you can get “A” in the class(es), then that could be very useful in the practice of medcine. However unless you continue to speak the language on a regular basis, any value to you would probably diminish over time.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice, guys!</p>
<p>Thing is, the whole reason I took Latin in high school in the first place was because when the high school foreign language faculty were trying to advertise their foreign languages, they described Latin as a language that would really help you with your word roots, thus expanding on your vocabulary which would help you on your SAT’s and possible future medical/business career. Well, idk if that worked for anyone else but for me, since I’m not very particularly good at memorizing a ton of vocabulary (the reason I did well in pre-AP/Conversational Latin was because it was very mechanical and aside from vocabulary, not a lot of memorization was involved), the way that the high school faculty advertised Latin didn’t really work out for me (my highest CR SAT score was 640 -_-).</p>
<p>I am well aware that Spanish (and pretty much every other often-utilized foreign language taught in US schools) is less mechanical and requires a lot more memorization than Latin but since my goal is to be a surgeon, I will probably need to know how to communicate in other languages other than English (and Korean, which is my home language) and Spanish is probably the best option. So yeah, I decided to go through the Spanish route in college. As for the highest level that I plan to go to, my university offers enough credit for people who got 5’s and 4’s in both AP Spanish Language & Literature to get a Spanish minor. Though obviously, since I took Latin in high school, that does not apply to me, I think that I will take the courses that my university offers credit to for AP Spanish credits and get a Spanish minor in the process. Hopefully, by taking those Spanish courses (which are four semesters of beginning Spanish and four semesters of intermediate Spanish including grammar and writing, conversation and literature), I will have enough knowledge of Spanish for it to be practical in my career.</p>
<p>I do not know anythig about Latin. However, Spanish is very good if planning for Med. School. In fact, D. continued taking Mediacal Spanish while at Medical School. She had additional opportunites at Med. School because of her Spanish, while she iondicated at every instance that she is not fluent. </p>
<p>…BTW, she took only one semester of Spanish at college, but it was a 3rd year class. She was speaking after this class.</p>