Today is the Ides of March, a day of infamy because of William Shakespeare’s account of the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar. In Rome, the ides simply marked the middle of the month, and the day when you paid your bills.
The day reminded me of the vanished prestige of Latin. Up until
at least the late 1950s, high schools encouraged anyone planning to go to
college to take Latin. Even then many students refused to study a “dead”
language. Not many studied a “live” language either. The schools offered few
opportunities. Most students didn’t envision themselves ever working, or even
traveling, in another country.
In my little world, you rarely heard or read a foreign language.
Latin seemed exotic, a key to a secret world. That illusion soon vanished, but
I enjoyed studying Latin and found it useful for several reasons.
1.
Many
English words come from Latin. Even a limited Latin vocabulary helps you
decipher unfamiliar words.
2.
Learning
another language teaches you how languages work, including your own. We learn
our mother tongue through imitation and don’t analyze it. By studying the
structure of a foreign language, we gain a better grasp of the structure of our
own.
3.
When
you study a language, you study a culture—another way of thinking and behaving.
You expand your world and become more tolerant of others.
4.
Studying
Latin prepared me to study other languages, particularly such cousins as Spanish,
French, and Portuguese but also such unrelated languages as Amharic and Chinese.
When I went to high school, most people concerned themselves
with local affairs, not a global or even a national economy. Studying Latin—or any
another language—is still a good way to prepare to live in this larger world.
—Carolyn Mulford
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