“Latin is a dead language,” people would tell me whenever I told them that my class schedule included Latin. Or they would say that no one uses it. I would think to myself, “you’re using Latin right now, how is it dead?”
Now, I’ll admit, I don’t walk around the streets conversing in Latin, nor do I write in the language, and I’ve forgotten a bit of it over the year and a half that I haven’t studied it. But I do not consider it a dead language at all.
Pieces of Latin are alive and well in this very article, and in the languages spoken by the majority of North and South Americans and a large chunk of Western Europeans—and anyone, anywhere, who speaks English, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, or Portuguese. Latin roots make up almost the entirety of any Romance language, and make up a large portion of English (which is technically a Germanic language).
Beyond helping me to ace my SAT and ACT vocabulary sections, Latin has really helped me when it comes to understanding English grammar. There are a lot of (seemingly) “unexplained” rules in English grammar, but once I learned Latin, I was able to understand things like the reason why “whom” is the object of the sentence and “who” is the subject and why you can’t split an infinitive (and what an infinitive is).
I also don’t misuse or misspell many commonly misused and misspelt Latin abbreviations, like “etc.” (et cetera), “i.e.” (id est), and “e.g.” (exempli gratia).
Because I studied Latin, learning other Romance languages has become significantly easier. I came to college with five years of Latin and two years of Spanish under my belt, and because of the experience with Latin, I was placed into a level that someone who took four years of Spanish in high school would be placed into. Although I had never used or seen the Spanish subjunctive, I knew all about the Latin subjunctive.
With studying Latin, we also studied ancient Roman culture. I can tell you facts about Julius Caesar, would never get the Roman gods mixed up, and can give someone a basic run down of what your experience in a Roman bath house would be like. I have learned a mountain of information about one of the most influential and powerful empires to ever thrive on this planet. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me.
Do I think that studying this “dead” language is a waste of time? Certainly not. I am a better writer, speaker, and Spanish major because of it. Studying Latin is a piece of my high school (and middle school) experience that I will love and appreciate for the rest of my life.
