CHAT: required courses [was Re: Welsh - Verb-Nouns]

Quoting Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>:

> --- Christopher Bates <christopher.bates@...>
> > > I wish Old English was a required subject in school,
> > > so I could have had more than one college semester of it.
>
> It wouldn't be a bad idea. Course, I also think Latin
> should be required. Perhaps three of Latin one of Old
> English. I'm sure that's asking for too much!
This of course *used* to be the norm throughout the Western
world.  My friend from North Carolina once told me that when the
University of North Carolina opened its doors in 1792, all
students were required to take at least two years of Latin
and one of Greek.  A few decades before, when Kant was going
to school, his schoolmasters still obeyed the precept that
all instruction must be *in* Latin, "not in German, as that
is frivolous and in children is scandalous and disgraceful".
In parts of Europe, the pendulum might be swinging back the
other way now, save that instead of Greek or Latin, it is
English that is required...

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Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
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