Academic Prose? Mostly Latin, With Greek and Hebrew

To the Editor:

One piece of advice good deans offer to help faculty members improve their teaching is this: Ask who your students are.

I began the spring semester by asking the students in my logic-and-nature philosophy classes (mostly freshmen and sophomores), "How many of you have had difficulty understanding this lecture?" Not surprisingly, many hands went up.

Because philosophy courses are often rich in unfamiliar vocabulary, I also asked, "How many of you have attended a high school in which Latin was offered as a foreign language?" Three or four students out of 30 raised their hands. I did not bother to ask which ones actually took advantage of what was available.

Troubled by a sleepless night, I picked up the Benedictine College catalog, read the mission statement, and highlighted words derived from Hebrew or other Semitic languages (here indicated by small capitals), those derived from Greek (here indicated by boldface type), and those derived from Latin (here indicated by italics):

The Mission of Benedictine College

Benedictine College is an academic community sponsored by the monks of St. Benedict's Abbey and the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery. Heir to the 1,500 years of Benedictine dedication to learning, Benedictine College in its own time is ordered to the goal of wisdom lived out in responsible awareness of oneself, God and nature, family and society. Its mission as a Catholic, Benedictine, liberal-arts, residential college is the education of men and women within a community of faith and scholarship.

As a Catholic college, Benedictine College is committed to those beliefs and natural principles that form the framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is committed further to those specific matters of faith of the Roman Catholic tradition, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and handed down in the teachings of the Church. The college embraces students and faculty from all faiths who accept its goals, seeking in its members a personal commitment to the ideals and principles of a spiritual life and the expression of these in worship and action. Benedictine College promotes the growing involvement of religious and laity in the Church's ministries. ...

If the linguistic sample just given is typical, standard academic English prose is mostly Latinate, but with some of its most important terms derived from Greek or Hebrew. To judge by the sample from my 60 students in "Logic and Nature," more than 90 percent of the students who come to us as freshmen have attended high schools where Latin, even if they wanted to study it, is simply unavailable. In short, they come to us with an infantile, not an adult, vocabulary. This deficiency handicaps their learning.

E. M. Macierowski
Professor of Philosophy and Classical Languages
Benedictine College
Atchison, Kan.

Comments

1. dalcyanne - July 13, 2010 at 12:12 pm

You missed a few! Academic, monastery, is, ministries, Scholastica, scholarship, Catholic... This is fun!

I am all in favor of more Latin and Greek education generally speaking, but students' ignorance can't be solely traced to that (how many wonderful false etymologies did the learned Isidore of Seville make up?).

Also, knowing Latin and Greek roots will not always ensure comprehension--especially in a spoken lecture where you cannot see the spelling. In addition, etymology rarely makes meanings transparent without historical education: the distinction between awful and awesome, for instance. Sometimes the roots can obfuscate meaning, as with flammable/inflammable or "apology."

So, yay for Latin and Greek, but not so much for the argument of this letter.

2. tkgerson - July 13, 2010 at 06:32 pm

Indeed. Knowing the Latin and Greek roots, suffixes, and prefixes does not ensure the vocabulary, reading comprehension, rhetorical and writing skills that are the mark of a learned person. All I know is the students who were exposed to Latin or Greek are better students (given that they attend class and complete assignments!) Professor Macierowski is spot-on.

3. bjgeorge - July 17, 2010 at 04:31 pm

There is a degree of truth to what Mr. Macierowski writes. However, there is more than one way to gain a vocabulary. Maybe the issue is to recommend dictionary use. Such a fundamental tool should not be taken for granted in students using it or knowing how to use it. Starting at the top with needing to know Latin is not necessarily the best starting point. Instead working from a lower level up would be better.

4. macierowski - July 21, 2010 at 05:50 pm

The hard copy published on page A26 of the 16 July 2010 issue of the Chronicle accurately reports the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words whose typographical formatting has been filtered out here.

While on the topic of filtering, let me suggest reading the mission statement aloud, first eliminating the Semitic items, then also the Greek items, and finally also substracting the Latin items. This is an informative exercise. More than merely vocabulary is at stake.