India Uncut
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Saturday, January 27, 2007
What's the point of learning Latin?
There isn't any, writes Matthew Engel in the Financial Times.
The same thing could be said of learning Sanskrit in India, I suppose. You may think that's a bad thing or a good thing or just a non-bad-non-good thing, but it doesn't matter: Sanskrit will decline as Latin will, and there's a simple reason for that: opportunity cost.
As time passes, there are more and more things we can do with our time, which makes it less and less likely that kids will learn dead languages, or that their parents will want them to. And so it goes.
The same thing could be said of learning Sanskrit in India, I suppose. You may think that's a bad thing or a good thing or just a non-bad-non-good thing, but it doesn't matter: Sanskrit will decline as Latin will, and there's a simple reason for that: opportunity cost.
As time passes, there are more and more things we can do with our time, which makes it less and less likely that kids will learn dead languages, or that their parents will want them to. And so it goes.
