Teaching a language you don't know

I don't know Latin. I took German when I was in high school and my first year in college, over 20 years ago. I haven't used it since. I have taken 3 years of college level Spanish more recently. I'm not fluent by any measure, but I could teach the beginning levels of it, if only my daughter wanted to learn Spanish. She doesn't.

Since Mi'ita didn't want to learn Spanish and the classical method encouraged Latin, I figured we would learn Latin together. Latin, they say, is the easiest language to learn because it's dead. You learn to read and write it and no one is going to laugh at your accent. The vocabulary is the useful bit. Well over half of the English language is Latin based, so if you know the Latin roots, you can figure out lots of English words. Clamari is Latin for shout. Clamor and claim both come from clamari. Mi'ita is learning lots of high level English vocabulary. Our favorite by far is defenestrate, which means to throw something out the window. How cool is that?

So how do I teach Latin since I don't know Latin? Latin is the easy one, like I said, because it's dead. Pronunciation is not critical, and no one will be looking at us sidewise if we make a mistake in grammar. We are both using the Latin for Children curriculum, which comes with a CD, a DVD, and a book. Each chapter has a nerdy guy explaining the grammar on DVD. His beautiful 16 year old daughter leads a bunch of little kids in the chants, which are catchy and stick with you all day. We do the workbook orally, since my daughter seems to be allergic to the feel of a pencil. I made up a bunch of Latin flashcards with the vocabulary, conjugations, and declensions to memorize. She loves it.

German has been trickier even though that was her language choice. We're still trying to find a good curriculum. We tried German for Kids, which was a DVD and workbook program led by a boy her age and his talking dog, but that bombed spectacularly. "It's for little kids." So we bought Instant Immersion German, which is a computer program with CD and DVD, too. It hasn't come in yet, but it was well reviewed. Rosetta Stone has been marketed to death, but was third or fourth down on my review, so I didn't buy it. Also, Instant Immersion German was $50 and Rosetta Stone is well over $200. I am cautiously hopeful. Instant Immersion German isn't for kids at all, so we'll see.

So how do you teach a language you don't know? I don't think you can, fully, but you can get a good start with the programs out there today. At some point we'd need to have a fluent German speaker to take over Mi'ita instruction, but at this point it isn't necessary. I wish that she wanted to take Spanish. We are surrounded by native Spanish speakers here, with a lovely Mexican family living across the street that has a daughter her age and everything. I have hope that at some point she will see the usefulness of Spanish and take it, but at this point there is no reason to force the issue.

Learning a language is tremendously useful, even if you are just looking at vocabulary and grammar and never become a speaker of that language. I don't need to teach English grammar at all. I never really understood English grammar myself until I took German. Then the difference between a subject and a direct object became clear.

Learning languages is fun, and I'm glad Mi'ita agrees with me.