The author perpetuates a myth. Greek did not go down before an all-powerful Latin. The eastern part of the Roman Empire was dominated by the Greek language. The split of the empire into east and west reflected the linguistic division.

To spend time learning a language that one does not use outside of the classroom is a waste. Learning a language in itself yields nothing of an alternate worldview. Language is a tool to enter into another culture. The tool must be used to have meaning. Unless those who learn the language have contact with native speakers, become familiar with works in the language or become familiar with the history, culture and politics of the area where the language is a living one the student's time would be better spent in other learning.

david f,

Moreover, there is a distinction between Attic Greek and Koine Greek. Much of the knowledge lost during "The Decine and Fall of The Roman Empire" [Gibbon] was because folks wrote in Vulgar Latin and Koine Greek.

English become degraded to with loss of punctuation and grammar, over the past thirty years. Today, the finger still writes, "and having writ moves on" [Khayyam] to lesser literacy.

“For some reason, our politicians - and supposedly, our public - are desperate to be reassured that all these new citizens will have a command of English, but indifferent whether they retain their linguistic links with the cultures of their families.”

Well, of course! Proficiency in the language of the country in which they live is paramount if they are to succeed or even get by. The language of their birth is their responsibility to keep if they wish to.

I agree with david f. Unless you live with people whose language you wish to learn, you are wasting your time. Teaching languages in primary and secondary schools will help you only in making a fool of yourself if you are ever silly enough to use what you have ‘learned’.

Australian kids have much more important things to learn than someone else’s language

While I agree that learning another language broadens the mind in any number of ways, I'd be happy if all Australians learned to speak and write English correctly. It is evident to anyone who reads this forum regularly that the English language skills of many contributors are woeful, and in some cases the article authors aren't much better.

These language education threads seem to keep proving the point: an openness to learning other languages helps greatly for better understanding English. The respondents so far have seriously misread the article.

Ostler did not push a myth at all, but quoted Valerius Maximus' supremacist myth-making against Greek. What the writer implied - and it seems well supported by sources - is that Latin overtook Greek as the language of higher learning in those areas of Rome's closer supervision. Note Ostler's words: "regime of Greek-speaking in the Levant". That translates roughly into david f-ese in his clunkier "The eastern part of the Roman Empire was dominated by the Greek language".

So any dominance by such views limiting the learning of languages would apply to these first respondents, but that would be a pity. Ostler again: "To discard (languages) knowingly diminishes all of us", which can shift its meaning for this case to assert that ignorance of other languages degrades our command of our first language.

Such attitude could have severe results if Right's approach gained influence. Botching your English comprehension so badly could make it much harder to be trusted with learning another language, as the education mandarins could say: "better to spend the resources where it would count more efficiently", etc.

And david f's "Learning a language in itself yields nothing of an alternate worldview" is so wrong. For example, in "dura" we can know the Slavonic view's closer meanings for two separate concepts in the English "stupid" and "crazy", and it took me none of david f's special conditions for me to learn that.

Again proving my and CJ's points (if you missed it):

david f: "alternate [sic] worldview" - I'm sure you meant "alternative".