Articles and Stories

May 23, 2013

My son is taking Latin next year (voluntarily) yet claims it is a dead language. I remembered that the reporter in Rome with the first scoop on Pope Benedict’s retirement spoke Latin, which is what gave her the edge. I mentioned this to my son and he just shrugged, “well, no one really speaks it anymore except in the Vatican”.

But, according to many scholars, writers and language enthusiasts, Latin has been and remains the language of learning and science. It gave rise to Romance languages and is central to the vocabularies of medicine, law and the sciences.

The study of Latin has been thought by many to be the sign of an educated person, along with the study of Greek, the Classics. But is it relevant today?

It is if you consider the Harry Potter books and movies in which the spells are in either Latin or pseudo-Latin (pseudo being Greek, actually). These books have brought the “dead” language back to life for generations of readers. The Hogwarts motto, “Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus,” is Latin for “Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon.”

Here are a few more fun Latin sayings:

“Una lingua numquam satis est”  =  One language is never enough.
“Bonam sanitatem! Bene tibi!”  =  Cheers/ Good health!
“Extinctus ambitur idem”  =  The same (hated) man will be loved after he’s dead. How quickly we forget.
“Semper idem”  =  Always the same thing.
“Veni Vidi Vici”  =  I came, I saw, I conquered.
and one of my favorites:
“Veni Vidi Visa” =  I came, I saw, I shopped.

Recent figures showed that the study of Mandarin was floundering in British schools. Latin, however, was experiencing a revival, with a 7.5 percent increase in student numbers.

It is the same in Germany, where a third of high school students will be studying Latin this year and the language places third after English and French as an exam choice.

So it would seem that whether dead or alive, Latin is wanted.