<p>You should check out how your HS handles the Latin. At our HS, Latin students participate in tournaments all over the country. They have junior divisions too so the 1st and 2nd yr students can participate. Latin club is a big deal and officers really have duties. They often have a whole page in student newspaper listing activities and awards. Since enrollment is low relative to other languages, kids are strongly encouraged to participate in the extracurricular activities, and many get drawn in who might not have, had they been in another language. This is a way it might look better on college apps than some other languages, by adding to ECs. My kids both took French as my unenlightened H forbade Latin. We had some …disagreement about this. French is fine anyway. They go to France every other summer for 2 weeks and big bucks and the honor society has a movie once a month at a local pizza shop, but nothing like what the Latin kids have going on. I would guess this varies a lot from one school to another.</p>
<p>OP here - I hadn’t thought about the one teacher thing. There is only 1 Latin teacher at the school and more than 1 spanish teacher. I don’t know how he is with languages. He took the ACT as a 7th grader for Duke TIP and got a 29 in reading so I think his vocabulary should be ok when he takes the SAT for real. Part of the reason he was thinking about Latin is that it’s harder to get into Spanish and he may not be able to start taking it as a freshman. Which would mean he may only be able to take 3 years instead of 4. </p>
<p>I also hadn’t thought about him having to take a language in college. My oldest starts at Georgia Tech in the fall and I thought there was a way around that by taking other humanities classes. However more than likely DS2 will go to a different college so I do need to keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your input! You have given us some things to think about. He has to decide by the end of the week…</p>
<p>Latin --good for vocabulary but you can learn all those prefixes etc. without taking Latin. Same with medicine–there is only so much you need to know–you’ll just memorize it when it comes.
Spanish/French–I liked French and H took Spanish. Both are romance languages so both still help with vocabulary with the added advantage of still being useful as a spoken language.</p>
<p>I do not think that Latin looks better for college admissions. In fact, I suspect that many schools would give preference to an applicant who had Spanish. </p>
<p>However, QMP took Latin in high school (4 years), and I was tremendously glad of it! One great advantage of taking Latin is that the teacher is usually the type of person who enjoys Latin! This can be quite a plus, depending on your school. If your son is intellectually inclined, enjoys history, and enjoys literature, he may prefer the reading material in the Latin course.</p>
<p>I think also that there are differences in learning approach, which make one language or the other better for a student to study in school. This started to really make sense to me when I read a column about visual-spatial learners. As I recall, in terms of learning “living” languages, this group does better with immersion than with high school textbook approaches. A lot of scientists/engineers have this learning type.</p>
<p>QMP took Spanish in middle school, then shifted to Latin. The Spanish teacher remarked,
“Well, that will come in handy when you visit . . . Latvia.” (It was a joke.)</p>
<p>Quick addition to #24: I don’t mean to suggest that teachers of subjects other than Latin are less enthusiastic about their subjects! Just that the Latin teacher usually enjoys <em>Latin</em>! Just my personal opinion, but I think this increases the odds that the teacher will be intellectually sympatico with a smart student.</p>
<p>(Can’t speak to the issue of teachers of Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, nor other non-European languages.)</p>
<p>Not an endorsement of the whole kit-n-kaboodle of the analysis here:
[Visual-Spatial</a> Learners](<a href=“http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/Visual_Spatial_Learner/vsl.htm]Visual-Spatial”>http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/Visual_Spatial_Learner/vsl.htm)
but I did find it illuminating in some regards.</p>
<p>My two cents’ worth, based on my own experience.</p>
<p>I took Latin in high school in college. Later in college, when it became apparent I’d need another language for graduate school, I picked up some French.</p>
<p>Latin had some benefits for me. First and foremost, I really understand how languages are put together. Indo-European languages, anyway. I understand grammar way better than most people who haven’t studied classical languages, and way better than I need to in order to understand English grammar. Additionally, I find learning other languages (even non-Romance languages) is pretty straightforward after having learned Latin. My daughter, who studied French, followed by Latin, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic, says Latin makes a difference for her, too.</p>
<p>Here’s what I don’t find. I don’t find it has any real benefit for understanding either medical or legal nomenclature. I’m not a doctor, but I am married to one who was plenty able to learn the names of muscles without ever having cracked a Latin textbook. And often, as far as I know, the Latin on which medical terminology is based is such late Latin that it’s not much like what I studied when I was reading Ovid, Vergil, Cicero and Horace.</p>
<p>The big downside to having studied Latin (and to a lesser extent French)? I can’t talk to anybody. I never find, for example, that a contractor has hired Roman (or Quebecois) day laborers to paint my house.</p>
<p>My brother-in-law is a doctor who studied Spanish. Being able to speak a bit of Spanish in an urban emergency room is probably more useful to a doctor than understanding based on ninth-grade Latin I why an abductor is called an abductor and an adductor is called an adductor. </p>
<p>YMMV, of course.</p>
<p>I am a veterinarian, and let us just say I attended high school a long time ago. I took three years of Latin. Both of my kids are taking Spanish, even the one aiming for medical school. I think they do so much prep work for the ACT/SAT and other vocab type of things in high school you pick up the root words you need to know. For example, cardio - heart, optho = eyes, trans=across, photo=light …you get the idea. If you are going to be studying the classics or going to seminary, take Latin. If not, take a different language. I wish frequently at work I had taken Spanish instead of Latin.</p>
<p>I think it’s 6 of one 1/2 dozen of the other. Where college admissions is concerned, on a transcript I think it’s more about “committment” to the study of a language (seeing it thru for 3 or 4 years) than about which language you studied. There are exceptions of course, but I don’t know too many people who leave high school…even with 4 years of study behind them…with enough fluency in a language to really have a major impact in their lives besides very basic exchanges.</p>
<p>Is there any chance that your school system will discontinue a language to save money?</p>
<p>If they do, the one they’re not going to drop is Spanish. </p>
<p>Also, is there any chance that you might have to move while your child is in high school?</p>
<p>You can be sure that the district you move in to will teach Spanish. You can’t be sure about any other language – not even French.</p>
<p>I took 3 years of Latin in HS and loved it. I am a much more visual than auditory learner and I liked just sticking to reading in Latin. At my HS, Latin was very much limited to a class for the smart/geeky kids so I liked that aspect too. I suspect that the same is true in most schools to some degree. Latin definitely improved my grasp of grammar–and in that sense helped when I took German later. We don’t really deal with noun case in English. It’s a big deal in Latin and also in German.</p>
<p>In retrospect it is very weird that I studied Latin and have never studied another Romance Language. I often wish that I had picked up some Spanish along the way. But I will say that between Latin and German I can figure out the roots of almost any English word 
</p>
<p>In my defense, the Spanish teacher at my HS did not have a reputation for being very good. That was a factor in my initial decision. And probably more a factor in my decision to pick up German as a HS senior. It was new offering and my HS only offered 3 years of Latin, so I opted to switch languages rather than do a 4th Latin as independent study and my HS had started offering German so I decided to give it a try. </p>
<p>My kids are both in Spanish now. These days it’s even more practical. When they picked languages, I pointed out some of the things I liked about Latin but said Spanish was probably the most immediately practical. And, as has been mentioned, it’s quite easy to get opportunities to practice and stay at least somewhat fluent in most places in the US.</p>
<p>A long post got sent into post limbo, so now I will cut to the chase. For most students learning a language they can speak, particularly Spanish, would be more useful as many have said. But for the right student Latin, and Roman history is a real life changer. It was for my son, and it has become the basis of his entire academic journey.</p>
<p>I currently take Spanish 2 and the class is fine. Our latin teacher is not that good so I did not take it. Colleges do not care if you take latin or any other language. They weigh languages the same. Some say that latin will help in the SAT, it does but I prefer spanish because that is a better language because the language is interesting to me. However, it is up to your son/daughter to take his/her pick. You would not want to pressure them to take a language, otherwise they might not show that much interest in the subject and not do so well.</p>
<p>I studied Spanish, Russian, and Latin in high school.</p>
<p>The Latin was very valuable for SATs, vocabulary, and sentence structure. I found it useful for med/vet sorts of coursework.</p>
<p>The Russian is great for speaking to the cabbies in New York City. And for convincing one’s Polish FIL that you aren’t such a bad sort or a total WASP.</p>
<p>The Spanish comes in very useful for speaking with the landscapers, the grooms at the stable, and the sales clerks on big box stores on the Post Road in Norwalk.</p>
<p>And … since I studied them all at once I sometimes get confused and answer a Spanish question in Russian, and throw in an Italian or French word for good measure. (Not that I have any real Italian or French you understand.)</p>
<p>I pushed S into HS Spanish…he’d had some exposure in middle school. Before the start of freshman year we received an email stating basically “We know many students choose Spanish because it is the safe choice. However, if you have had a change of heart let us know…”. My S jumped into Latin and has absolutely loved it. That said, he has a pretty good grasp of German so he started with a second base language. </p>
<p>Curiously, he was recently at a UC reception and they were going over their study abroad program. Something like 140 different options. For 139 the classes would be taught in English. Only the program in Germany would be in the native language. If your going into STEM, I’d seriously consider German, French or Mandarin. For everyday life in the US…Spanish helps.</p>
<p>If you or your D are looking forward 4 years and want one way to “make her application stand out”- then have her study Latin , and take the Latin Subject test as a Jr. Only about 7000 students nationally take that test each year, so that in itself will set her apart when she is applying to colleges.
DS took Latin for 4 years, partly because I encouraged it, partly because he also had a auditory issue, but also because he was an avid reader and I knew that Latin would help him figure out new words and their meanings when confronted with more advanced writing. The 2 Latin teachers at his HS was also among the most popular teachers there, and his advanced Latin teacher, an older gentleman who was educated at Cambridge and Oxford, was also a classical music aficionado and often had music playing in the background during class. DS loved his 3 years of classes with him.</p>
<p>S and D1 took Spanish in middle school all the way up to the high school AP level. The rationale was general usefulness and to be able to communicate with relatives. However, neither one of them achieved verbal fluency. I studied French in middle school and high school, and then for two full years in college. I learned a lot, but wouldn’t have said I was really fluent either. But after a living a month in a Spanish-speaking country, I became functionally fluent in Spanish. So I think that unless your school has an exceptional language department (which most schools don’t), your son will likely have to do study abroad or participate in some immersion program to really learn the language well enough to truly converse or count it as a marketable skill. I am fluent in Spanish (lived abroad for 3 years) and can tell you that I have never met an American who was fluent or even close to fluent just from taking classes in high school or college, despite the claims made. Heck, half of my kids’ Spanish teachers couldn’t speak well. I’d cringe at back to school night. </p>
<p>That said, one advantage of taking Spanish in our high school is that it’s the most popular language so there are plenty of sections and course scheduling is easy. Fewer people take Latin, so it can potentially render one’s class schedule too inflexible. The biggest drawback to Spanish for my kids was the frequent oral exams, which tended to involve conducting practice conversations with fellow classmates. Way too many kids don’t even try to speak well and are only taking Spanish because they have to for college. This situation is frustrating and can do a real number on your grade when the other person persistently mangles the words (and this was true even if the teacher swore she’d grade you just on your part.) Secondly, a significant part of the class grade was always class participation. If you answer a question, you get a “punto.” However, lots of kids complained about how capricious teachers were about whom they called on and how often. My kids were good at Spanish, so the teachers usually liked to call on them because they knew they’d answer correctly and with good pronunciation. However, plenty of my friends’ kids had trouble with this system and were stuck with B’s just for lack of “puntos.”</p>
<p>IMO a little bit of Latin is far more helpful than a little bit of Spanish. But an excellent command of Spanish will be more useful than a lot of Latin. I doubt an excellent command will be the result of high school study, though. D2 is taking Latin, and that’s saying something because her dad is Hispanic and we could have helped her a lot in Spanish.</p>
<p>Pick Spanish!!! </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Kids did Latin in 7th and 8th (required) and Spanish in 1st through 11th grades. They thought Latin was fun and loved the fact that they didn’t have to speak it, but Spanish is what will be useful in the future.</p></li>
<li><p>As a physician, Spanish is FAR more valuable than Latin. Latin helps when learning the “vocabulary” of medicine, which is the 1st year of med school. It’s only 1 year. Spanish allows you to talk to your patients, which lasts for 30 - 40 years.</p></li>
<li><p>In HS, everyone told me to take Spanish because it was going to be more useful. I wanted to learn French. Totally regret it now. I can’t practice French to stay up on it. I can speak Spanish every day in CA, if I knew it.</p></li>
<li><p>A physician friend of mine likes to say that of all the stuff he learned in HS, the only thing he uses on a daily basis is Spanish.</p></li>
<li><p>Maybe Latin would have a teensy, wow, in college apps because fewer students take it, so an adcom would notice it. But I think that the usefulness for the rest of your life in knowing Spanish, outweighs the teensy boost that you may get in knowing Latin this one short time in your life.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Yes, Latin is fun and Latin is cool, but Spanish will be used and useful. You can communicate with a ton of people in your adult life, so how cool is that?</p>
<p>S took Latin for three years…liked it and did well. </p>
<p>After college graduation (he was in NROTC/commissioned upon graduation) he was offered the opportunity to take the aptitude test required for admission to the Dept. of Defense Language Institute. It was a difficult test, almost all auditory but in a made up language. He had to identify language patterns,parts of speech,etc. in sentences sounded essentially like gibberish. There are many languages taught at the DLI. They are tiered. The higher score on the test means, the more language choices there are. Spanish is in the lowest tier. S scored high enough to be eligible to study some of the more difficult languages. </p>
<p>His best friend who made comparable SAT scores/high gpa/class rank also took the test and didn’t pass. He was a straight “A” French student for four years.
S thought his Latin background must have helped him.</p>
<p>I took Latin ( 5 years- required at a Latin school), 4 years of French as well as Hebrew and the only language I needed, I had to learn during my residency and that was Spanish!!!
I wish I had studied it in high school as it would have served me better. YMMV…</p>