I know what you're thinking. Isn't Latin a dead language? And if Latin isn't a dead language why doesn't anyone speak it anymore? How come people are still studying an empire that fell thousands of years ago? And how can this 3,000-year-old language be better than Spanish? Well, you're about to find out.
1. Other languages are overrated.
(Except when I was required to take it in elementary school.)
GiphyYes, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world and definitely very useful in the modern day. That doesn't make it superior to Latin. Just think: Spanish came from Latin, yet Latin doesn't get any respect. Is that fair to the Romans?
2. You'll learn a bunch of random trivia.
Noses were often broken off or eroded from marble statues (especially Egyptian ones).
For example, the word "trivia" comes from "tri" and "via," which translates to "three roads," or the place where three roads met. This term came to mean a common place, which is why we can see that trivia is just the "commonplace" things you know. Another example is that Vergil, the author of the "Aeneid" (which entails the journey of the Trojans after they lost the Trojan War), really loved bees/bee metaphors. Also, his name is NOT spelled like Virgil.
3. You'll get to feel like Hermione.
The spell Reparo is from reparo, -re and is translated as "to prepare (again)".
GiphyHermione was and still is my academic heroine. The true way to channel that "we'll be killed, or worse, EXPELLED!" energy is to take Latin, a language Hermione definitely mastered as soon as she realized it made up about 90 percent of magic spells.
4. Roman culture is interesting!
Roman sculptors painted their masterpieces. So this is what they actually looked like.
GiphyIt's almost as if Ancient Rome was a civilization with its own unique identity, language, traditions, and people! But seriously, learning Latin is so much deeper than just taking it for the foreign language credit; you'll have to dive into their society to understand the ramifications of, say, Caesar declaring himself dictator, or the lower class Gracchi brothers redistributing the land to the urban poor.
5. It's way easier to learn than most languages.
I can barely speak my native language, so don't ask me to speak in another!
This isn't to say that the word structure is super simple or that you'll instantly memorize all the tense endings, but chances are if you speak English, you can excel at Latin. The alphabets are pretty close, so there are a lot of similar words. You don't have to learn a whole new system like the specific strokes for making characters in Chinese, or remember exactly which sounds you can actually pronounce like in French.
6. Latin words and roots are found in tons of other languages.
A happy family of Latin languages!
There is literally an entire category of languages called Romance languages. Not because people particularly find them romantic, but because they all derive from the language of the Roman Empire, i.e. Latin. English, on the other hand, is a Germanic language, but 60 percent of its words are derived from Latin. And if you go into the languages of science, technology, or medicine, majority of the terms you'll find are also, you guessed it, from Latin. It lives on.
7. There are still people out there who speak Latin.
Salve, Pope!
And it's not just the Pope! Classics scholars and Latin teachers alike are technically speaking Latin. You gotta understand the language if you're going to impart your knowledge onto a bunch of kids and/or academics. And understanding the language means studying the past to see how the social/political/cultural environments influenced the way people spoke. Like, in a thousand years some anthropologist is going to be asking what the connotation of slang words like "swag" and "yeet" are, just as much as researchers are still debating over specific translations and interpretations of "Caesar's Gallic Wars" now.
Sure, it's not very conversational. That's also because the Romans basically talked in a monotone. So we'd either have to become realllllllllly good at Latin or all lose our personalities if we wanted an authentic experience. But I see people caption their Instagram pics with veni vidi vici all the time, so we're basically halfway there.
8. Its popularity is growing faster than ever.
Did anyone else ironically enjoy the Percy Jackson films?
GiphyFun fact: apparently, some schools in New England allow their students to learn Latin from as early as kindergarten. That means by the time they're in middle school they can probably read Latin faster and better than you can read any language after taking it all through high school. It also probably helps that books like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have made Latin seem way cooler than they are. So if you don't like Latin, you pretty much don't want kids to cultivate a love of reading!
9. It can be so... graphic.
Rough translation: "Beautiful mountains." "They are." / "Actually, (reminds) me of home. I remember home..." / "What's the time?" "Noon."
Two words: Catullus 16. Read at your own discretion. (NSFW)
10. Because I said so!
Abby Lee said it best.
GiphyI'm tired of being criticized for taking Latin. Who cares if it's old? It's fun!
In conclusion, Latin is alive and well, and the best language to take if you need a foreign language credit. Honestly, where would we be without it?
(Probably speaking a lot more German.)
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