Retinenda—Latin for Lutherans

What is the object of learning Latin? To this question there are many answers, all of which it would be tedious to enumerate. Two objects frequently specified are, first, to improve the learner’s English, and, secondly, to provide a Gymnastic for training the reason: according to the latter view the ‘reason’ is apparently the big muscle, the biceps muscle, of the brain, and Latin is a sort of weightlifting which makes it strong. Now, it may be admitted at once that learning Latin ought to improve the learner’s English, or at least his English vocabulary, because so many English words come from Latin; it may be admitted, further, that Latin, like any other exercise which requires continuous effort and attention, will ’strengthen the mind’, whatever be the exact meaning of this expression. Yet it is permissible to doubt whether the answers proposed have not completely missed the real object of learning Latin.

If we were to ask a plain man what is the object of learning a language, he would almost certainly say ‘to speak it’. And surely he would be right, right in several ways…because here he lays his finger on the characteristic feature of language, namely that it is something spoken. Language is speech…This is the primary
thing in language, all else is secondary. It may be objected that there are languages, e. g. ancient Egyptian, which nobody can speak or learn how to speak. But such languages are not real languages, they are fragmentary or fossil languages, or (in the true sense) dead languages. There are some who maintain that Latin is such a language, that we cannot know the rhythm of or even the pronunciation of it…

We shall assume then that anybody learning a language is learning it for the purpose of using it, that is, primarily, for the purpose of speaking it. The question now arises, How is he to learn it? And the answer is that the best way to learn to speak it is to practise speaking it ; and, generally, the best way to learn to use it is to practise using it, by speaking it, singing it, reciting it, acting it, writing it, and doing with it whatever else a man does with a language that he knows.

From Andrew, S. O., Lingua Latina – Praeceptor: A Master’s Book, 7-9.