Do You Need Latin Before Learning Greek?

By Regan Barr with The Lukeion Project

At a recent homeschool conference, we were approached by a mother whose daughter desperately wanted to take Classical Greek. Another exhibitor had told her that she shouldn’t take Greek until she’d had several years of Latin. The daughter was devastated! She wanted to read Greek literature, not Roman!

The cynical side of me believes that this poor advice came from someone trying to sell a Latin curriculum, but perhaps there are those who truly believe that all languages start with the study of Latin. It’s certainly true that the study of any romance language will profit from a healthy understanding of Latin grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and morphology, but Latin is in not a prerequisite for the study of Classical Greek. Here are some reasons why your student doesn’t need Latin to start Greek:

Chronologically, Greek is attested much earlier than Latin and is therefore not derived from it. The earliest written Greek, Mycenaean Linear B, dates to around 1450 BC. It used a combination of syllabic and pictorial characters rather than the Greek alphabet used from the Archaic period until the present. In 1952, Michael Ventris and John Chadwick deciphered this script and demonstrated conclusively that Linear B was truly Greek. In comparison, the earliest known Latin inscription, the Praeneste Fibula, is from about 650 BC, 800 years later. This inscription on a piece of jewelry simply records the name of the craftsman and the name of the owner. The Iliad and Odyssey were produced a century before this earliest known Latin inscription.

Greek uses a different alphabet than our own, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. If you or your student were the ones pouring over Tolkien appendices and learning to write in Dwarven runes, Greek could be right up your alley! Just as the strange alphabet can be intimidating to some, it can be intriguing to others. When Greece was plunged into its Dark Age at the end of the Mycenaean period, writing and the Linear B characters that went with it were forgotten, but the language continued to be spoken. Written Greek would reemerge in the Archaic period using phonetic characters borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet that are still used in Greek today. Homer and Hesiod wrote in this re-invented alphabet, and many students today enjoy the novelty of it.

Latin and Greek are both highly inflected languages: word forms change to reflect the role they play in a sentence. In this regard, however, Greek is no more confounding than Latin. In fact, Greek has fewer declensions and cases, and roughly the same number of tenses (discounting the rare future perfect in Greek). Studying either Classical language will connect new synapses in a student’s brain and force new logic into their thinking.

Never discount passion and motivation! A student who yearns to learn something should not be discouraged without good reason. Just as some students long to read Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Ovid in the original language, others yearn to read Euripides, Aristotle, and the New Testament. Passion and desire are half the battle in education; don’t throw that away! We’ve all been forced to sit in a classroom that held no interest to us; don’t force students out of a classroom they really want to be in.

Both Classical languages are equally respected on a high school transcript and each will help you in picking up the other. Once a student understands inflection, cases, morphology, etc., picking up the next language becomes a bit easier. We’re often asked if students should study both languages at the same time. Why not?? Our advice is for the student to begin with the one that intrigues them most, and after a year they can dive into the other one. Chances are good that they won’t need quite as much time to pick up the second one.

In short, if your student has a craving for ancient Greek, feed that craving! It will open a world of exciting and important literature to them, from history and drama to philosophy and faith.