Mortis Momentum Est Ultimum Vitae Momentum

My high school offered Latin and I did not take it.  Regarding my education, that decision is one of my biggest regrets.  One of the arguments against taking the class my dad made was "Latin is a dead language, what would you use it for?"

Latin is dead.  Or is it?  As Justin Bailey points out in this very interesting post, Latin is more "alive" now than it has ever been.  Bailey is a Latin teacher at Pacifica Christian High School.  He offers some compelling statistics with a dose of humor, in explaining the liveliness of Latin:

the population of Latin speakers today is larger than that of the entire ancient Roman Empire.  This alone should settle the matter of whether Latin is dead according to the popular, non-linguistic definition, but there is more.  The number of people today who speak a language directly descended from or extensively influenced by Latin is well over ten times the number of people in the entire world in the first century.  That’s right: if every such speaker had to travel back in time and find a prom date from among all the people on the face of the first-century earth, nine tenths would end up going solo.  We won’t get into the fact that much of the triumphant tenth would be dancing with infants or seniors, nor will we treat the dynamics of cross-temporal dating, which I imagine to be quite delicate.  Suffice it to say that Latin is alive and well both in its progeny and as itself.

He also makes the good point that studying something is not simply merited by its current use.  If it was, history would not exist as subject.  Abraham Lincoln, Caesar, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King are all dead.  Despite their 'deadness,' we still want to have our children know about them.  In fact, the more they know about these dead folks, the better equipped they will be to understand their modern lives.  In that way, studying that which is 'dead' is still 'useful.'

Bailey notes numerous dead people we still, rightly, study.  He concludes:  "Brief reflection will show that the study of Latin has value—and delights—for our present beyond its use by clergy, scientists, and esoteric unions.  Future articles will attempt to characterize more vividly the nature and means of these delights.  For now, I would argue that the effect of Latin on our world, especially its western part, has been more pervasive than that of anyone on the above list except Eve."

"Value and delights" is one of my favorite combinations.  I'm looking forward to the rest of Bailey's series on this topic.  You should read the opening post here.

Res Ipsa Loquitur,

Thomas More

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Comments

[Philomena]

I was lucky enough to take Latin in high school-at least for a couple of years until they forced us to chose between Latin and a modern language and I bowed to the "Latin is dead, German is alive" lobby. I still remember my final latin report card...."A fairly credible swan song". Gee thanks. But, with my very limited foundation in languages (ancient or modern) I think knowing Latin is by far the most useful because of it's underlying presence in so many other languages. I've tried to encourage my biology students to work out the meaning of "scary" long scientific names by teaching them the Latin roots. If they could do it, it would give them so much freedom to understand scientific terms they haven't necessarily come across before. Sadly, most of them aren't interested.

[Lucy]

Thanks, Thomas. I'm considering now which curriculum to teach my children, and the classical model is in the lead. This model of education includes teaching Latin (particularly in the early grades), and now I have more reasons why this is valuable and delightful.
-Lu

[Thomas More]

Delightful Lucy!

Teach 'em Latin and let them learn from Philomena's and my mistakes (and then they can make fun of us and our mistakes, and we won't even be able to understand them doing so.)

I'll try to get a post up on the classical model later this week. I have a great article on it.

[Didymus]

JUST THIS MORNING I sent yet another email to the powers that be in my school district - why aren't we teaching Latin? My district prides itself on being one of the best in our state, and we are - we even offer Philosophy - but we don't have Latin. SHAME on us.

I share in the regret of Philomena and Thomas opting for Spanish over Latin in college.

Didymus Jr. however, will not carry this heavy burden through life. At age 10 he has been taking Latin for a year now - I'm delighted (and valuable).

Ab Irato,
Didymus

[Nicodemus]

It's good to see the change in the air: many, many homeschoolers and classical curricula are pursuing Latin for the children of parents who missed out on the patrimony. I'm like More and Didymus who came to the language later in life. Would that we were like the young 16th century French essayist Montaigne who learned Latin in the nursery at age 3 and could speak it even before his native tongue! Now what about Greek, messieurs, for those of us who want to read the New Testament, the great philosophers and poets of antiquity, and the early church fathers?

[Thomas More]

It's all Greek to me.