Does Latin really improve your advanced English vocabulary?

>>71367296
Why wouldn't directly learning English improve it more efficiently? Though if you intend to learn other languages heavily derived from Latin then maybe it's useful.

>>71367296
>Also, didn't the Normans introduce Latin-derived vocabulary to English indirectly via French. So for the purpose stated above wouldn't it be better to learn French for figuring out the meaning of advanced English vocab?

But English formed a lot of neologisms using Latin and Greek, and those didn't come from French.

For example, the word neologism. You could deduce the meaning on that word instantly if you had studied Greek.

Latin is dead. Its a waste of time if you want to learn it just to improve your understanding of English.

Just learn the roots from Latin and Greek.

French or any other Romantic language will be helpful for figuring out some advanced or obscure English words.

Ex. Riñones is spanish for kidneys. Renal is another English word referring to renal. Note how renal and Riñon are similar.

Note vice versa you can more easily and more quickly learn romantic language words from English words derived from them or from Latin.

>>71367296
I've studied latin. It is not helpful in anyway apart from maybe some amusing trivia to do with etymologies.

>>71369331
>if you intend to learn other languages heavily derived from Latin then maybe it's useful.
You're better of learning a romance language that's actually in use. Those commonalities inherited from Latin are present throughout all of them anyway.

>>71367296
Latin is [spoiler]fun[/spoiler]

>>71367296
Yes, the Latin languages also help, since the Normans weren't around to learn Latin and a huge amount of stuff people wouldn't expect comes from them, not Latin.

Most complex/technical/academic words in English are derived from Latin either directly or through French, so yes, it does help a lot.

>>71375923
Do you speak Gaelige?

>>71375954
Then learn French or another Romance language instead of wasting your time on a dead language.

>mfw a retarded European tried to tell me that Latin was essential to his medical studies so that he could know the etymologies of the disease names

You people are idiots.

Learn French, useful and beautiful language which will help you to understand English better

Latin is useful if you are a historian or linguistic.
It is a very interesting language if you are into roman or medieval literature and philosophy, old catholicism and its theology, the history of science and mathematics (since many old works are written in latin), or anything old related to Europe and european culture.
Otherwise, there is almost no reason to learn it.

>>71376061
Why learn history? It's dead anyway, not going to teach us anything.

>>71376724
The OP is talking about improving his language skills. Latin will barely help, certainly much less than a living Romance language which actually has utility to it. That's where this begins and ends.

As for your cringeworthy false equivalency, how is history "dead"? You're making no sense. History is still discussed constantly. You don't need to learn a dead language to study history unless you're going into a very specific and specialised field.

Should've spent more time studying your English than Latin maybe?

>>71376864
I have no idea why you're so angry as to immediately go to irrelevant personal attacks, but I suppose I shouldn't expect anything else on this site.

If your standard for whether something is alive or not is whether it's being discussed, then Latin is clearly alive as evidenced by this thread. As for your claim that you don't need to learn the languages of various historical civilisations to study them, how else do you propose to actually read their primary sources? What do you think proper historians do?

There's nothing wrong with learning a modern Romance language, but it's not the case that it is simply "better" or has "more utility" than learning Latin. It has different utility. As for the direct contribution to the more advanced parts of the English vocabulary, most of that is in fact derived directly from Latin and not in a roundabout way through French. Scientists of all fields used Latin for many hundreds of years as their common language, and that was the result.

>>71367296
Spanish actually improved my English vocabulary. There are words common in Spanish that have uncommon English cognates, like calcinado/calcined.