Why Learn Latin?
Most people mention the more utilitarian reasons. Latin helps with SAT scores (for those outside the United States, this is an exam people take - or used to take; I never did because some colleges stopped asking for it after the pandemic - when applying to college in the US). As a rule, I always say if you gain a strong knowledge of Latin and at least one romance language, say, Spanish, learning to at least more or less read the others is suddenly much easier. Latin certainly helped me with Italian. My grandmother was of the same general opinion, for what that’s worth.
It also helps with etymology of course, and understanding more difficult words in English or even the grammar of longer, more ornate sentences. Some of those old-timey guys from previous centuries that teenagers have to read in high school learned Latin and it arguably changed the way they structure sentences. Of course, this is less of an issue for people who learned English in a country where grammar is taught. The younger generation of Americans, as a general rule, did not learn grammar in school, thus, learning about e.g. accusatives and datives in Latin class is sometimes their first introduction to the idea that sentences have objects or indirect objects. Without this knowledge, reading complex texts in even English is difficult.
Having to grapple with Latin grammar and the elegant, rigorous way longer sentences are structured also teaches a different way of approaching writing in general. You have to look closely and think deeply. Word order is freer, so you must consider the placement of words - often, by placing a word in an unusual place, say, at the end or beginning of a sentence, when more ordinarily it might be elsewhere, the author is trying to make a point of some kind. You must try to understand. This is one reason reading in translation is not enough to really understand the nuances of a text. Also, any act of translation - especially into a language with a vastly different grammatical structure, necessitating a much freer approach to render the meaning of the text even generally close - is inherently an act of interpretation. Having the option of approaching the actual text ourselves is preferable.
Also, there is the obvious issue of medical and legal terminology. You’ll have a much stronger grasp of what all these works and phrases mean if you’ve learned Latin. There is a reason many countries require medical and legal students to take Latin.
Many Latin teachers find these reasons cold or uninteresting. Who is not tired of the endless push for optimization? Not everything in life is about being a perfect, efficient machine. I agree - constantly talking about these benefits to justify the study of a “useless” language (i.e. a language from which one cannot directly derive financial benefit - to the non-Americans reading, yes, this is why as a rule Americans only speak English, sadly) is annoying and boring, but these are real too and a legitimate reason to study Latin, even if it is not our favorite reason. They are worth mentioning.
Of course, if you ask me, the real reason to learn Latin is to, in fact, read Latin. You can read nearly anything, save for perhaps romance novels or maybe detective stories (although Arcadius Avellanus translated some into Latin in early 20th century). Do you want to read Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Decartes, Spinoza? I’m afraid you’ll have to know Latin. What about medieval poetry? It’s in Latin, more often than not. The writings of female mystics like Hildegard? Many of the church fathers, e.g. Augustine and Jerome? The version of the bible used by the Catholic church for centuries? Amorous lyrics written in the first century by Catullus or Ovid? A play written a few years ago about the mythical founding of Lithuania? Early descriptions of the Americas written by Europeans? The earliest translations of Confucius into a European language? Anything by Cicero, Caesar? The classics of Roman antiquity? An old and disconcerting novel about a man that gets turned into a donkey? Weird science fiction from the 1700s? Scholarly works on archaeology and classics? A book from 2012 about Latin teaching methodology in the Renaissance? Latin, Latin, always Latin.
Latin is the language to learn if you like reading old things. It also has the benefit of not really changing structurally. New vocabulary is occasionally (rarely) introduced if absolutely necessary, but not at the scale or speed of modern English. Shakespeare’s English is sometimes quite difficult for students, despite being technically the same language as that spoken today (Old English is something else entirely, despite what some secondary school students might assume upon first encountering Hamlet). Even Charles Dickens can pose a challenge for young people more used to modern newspapers, young adult novels, or blog posts. Yet if you can read Horace or Catullus, you can read Pascoli’s Latin poems (late 19th to early 20th century) or Marcantonio Flaminio’s (1500s). It’s an eternal language, through which we can connect to the people of the past and even the present on their own terms.
Also, why not?
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