WHY DO WE TEACH GREEK AND SPANISH

GREEK

The people of ancient Greece developed a sophisticated language with an extraordinarily rich vocabulary. It has existed for nearly 3,500 years, the longest of any language derived from early Indo-European. It also has a heavy influence on the English speaking civilization of the West. For example, English Greek was phonetic and was the first language that used vowels. Greek's incredibly diverse vocabulary also influenced and contributed to modern English. Thirteen point two percent of Modern day English is derived from the vocabulary of ancient Greece.

Greek's written language has also influenced the creation of the English alphabet. The Greek alphabet produced many letters that are similar to the English. For example Greek's Beta is extremely similar to the English letter B. The letters of the Greek alphabet are used nowadays in modern English to represent mathematics and scientific concepts, and even more popularly, as names for sororities and fraternities.

SPANISH

Spanish is the second most common language in the United States after English. There are more Spanish speakers in the United States than there are speakers of French (another language inherited from European colonization), Hawaiian, and the various Native American languages taken all together. According to the 2000 United States Census, Spanish is spoken most frequently at home by about 28.1 million people aged 5 or over. Of these, 14.3 million reported that they also spoke English "Very well”. United States is home to more than 40 million Hispanics; the fifth largest Spanish-speaking community in the world, after Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina.