The Underlying Principles of Learning a LanguageYour Own or

Another
By Leigh Bortins
As a classical educator, I am supposed to talk about Latin in any conversation about foreign
language instruction. That is not what I want to address this month. Dont get me wrong. I
believe that Latin is critical to giving your child a classical education. However, before we
can address the issue of which language, we first need to understand how to teach a
language. If we focus on the underlying principles of language, our students foreign
language study will teach them mental discipline and the proper use of words in any
language. In other words, they will be good thinkers, writers, and speakers who can fulfill
the Great Commission.
Homeschool parents often wonder or even worry about teaching their children a language
they do not know themselves. In my case, I wanted my boys to learn Latin. When I began
to delve into Latin and writing with my children, I realized that I needed to learn about my
own mother tongueEnglish. I began to search for the common elements that must be
mastered in all language study.
1
What are some of these common elements?
First, every language has the concept of a sentence. Every sentence requires that there
must be a subject and a predicate. We can define a subject as that part of a sentence
about which something is being said. A predicate, then, is that part which says something
about the subject. On the surface, these definitions do not seem helpful until we begin to
unpack them. Lets consider this example:
God loves.
In this example, God is the subject (the person about whom something is being said). Loves
is the predicate (that part which says something about the subject). How does this sentence
look in Latin?
Deus amat.
Now you can introduce the concept of pronouns. A pronoun replaces a noun in order to
avoid repetition. In our example above, the sentence would become He loves. There are
pronouns in Latin also, but here we come to a point of contrast between Latin and English.
By way of background, we must first know that Latin is an inflected language. This means
that nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech take different endings to express
different jobs. Therefore, I dont necessarily need a separate word for the pronoun. In Latin,
I can simply say amat to indicate that he loves. If I wanted instead to say I love, I can
simply say amo.
So far, we have covered the following points of commonality between Latin and English:
subjects, predicates, and pronouns. We have reinforced the similarities by investigating a
difference that occurs in English. We can build on the foundation by considering the concept
of the direct object.
Whom or what does God love? God loves the son. In our new sentence, son is the direct
object. How does this sentence read in Latin? Deus filium amat. If we were to translate this
sentence literally, it reads God the son loves. It turns out that, in English, word order is
much more important and fixed than in Latin. We always write our sentences in this
pattern: SubjectVerbDirect Object. Because Latin is an inflected language, word order
matters less. The direct object does not have to follow the verb for us to know that it is the
object. Instead, we know that filium is the direct object because it has m on the end. Deus
is the subject because it has s on the end.
This conversation about language depends on students understanding the universal concept
of direct object. Students struggle with language because they do not know their own
language and thus have never learned the principles of language. They need a solid
understanding of direct objects in English before they can transfer that knowledge to
another language.
Now that we have covered subjects, predicates, pronouns, and direct objects, we can get
slightly more complex. So, let us consider another principle of language. All languages have
a way to denote verb tense. Did this action take place already, is it taking place as we
speak, or will it happen in the future? In the case of our sample sentences, these
statements are all true. God loved the son (past tense). God is loving the son (present
tense). God will always love the son (future tense).
Armed with this basic principle of languageverbs have tenseshow does one express
these three thoughts? In English, we often use helping verbs. To move from the present
tense to the future tense, I moved from saying God is loving the son to God will love the
son (Is helps the verb indicate present tense; will helps the verb indicate future tense.)
How do we indicate verb tense in Latin? Again, Latin is an inflected language, so we
accomplish this change by changing the verb endings. This is the skill of conjugating a verb.
In Latin, we say Deus amavit (God loved); Deus amat (God is loving); Deus amabit (God
will love).
What else do we need to know about language? Lets take a slightly different idea about
God. In English, John 1:1 reads as follows: In the beginning was the Word. What in the
world is the job of these three words: in the beginning? First, our students need to know
that this group of words comprises a prepositional phrase. This definition is not very helpful,
however, unless you understand both of those words: prepositional and phrase. First, what
is a phrase? A phrase is a group of words that does not contain a subject and a verb and
cannot stand alone. I cannot say in the beginning period. Second, what is a preposition? A
preposition is a word that relates a noun or pronoun to another word. In this case, we are
adding information to the noun word. When did it exist? In the beginning.
Now that we understand the phrase in our own tongue, lets investigate it in a foreign
language. How does this phrase read in Latin? In principio erat verbum. What can your new
Latin student see about these two sentences? In principio is one word shorter than in the
beginning. Why? It turns out that the reason is that Latin has no articles (a, an, the). Now
the student can consider how articles are used in English. What else can he notice? Based
on our examples above, we see that filium in the sentence Deus filium ama has a similar
ending to verbum in the above sentence: In principio erat verbum. Since we have already
learned that we change the noun ending when it is the direct object, we can guess that
verbum is an object instead of a subject.
This is a very brief foreign language lesson, but hopefully we have uncovered some general
principles. Language study requires that we understand the universal elements of language:
What is a sentence? What are the parts of speech, i.e., the jobs of each of the words in the
sentence? What are the patterns of the sentences? (Example: SubjectVerb; Subject
VerbDirect Object, etc.) In this manner, we can teach our children the skills that they
need to learn any language at any point in their lifelong learning journey.

Endnote:
1. Eventually, I compiled these into a grammar curriculum: Essentials of the English
Language.

Leigh A. Bortins is author of the book The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations
of Classical Education. In addition, Ms. Bortins is the founder and CEO of Classical
Conversations, Inc. and host of the weekly radio show, Leigh! At Lunch. She lectures
about the importance of home education nationwide. She lives with her family in West End,
North Carolina. To learn more, visit her website, www.classicalconversations.com, or
her blog,www.1SmartMama.com.

Copyright 2012, used with permission. All rights reserved by author. Originally appeared in
the July 2012 issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, the family education magazine.
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