Latin is a Dead Language

Like many of the authors that we have read over the past couple of weeks I have also come across difficulties while trying to acquire a new language. Of course like every other high school student in this nation I was required to take a couple of years of a foreign language. I then choose Latin as my foreign language. This foreign language class gave me a greater insight to the usage and misusage of English than the majority of my English classes ever did.

During my first couple of days in this class I was not sure about what I had gotten myself into. My teacher was fresh out of college and did not even have the certification to become a teacher. The kids in my class were not my favorite either. Many of the kids had attitudes and had no desire to learn anything from this Latin class. While I had little appreciation for the majority of the students in the class we now had something in common; we where now attempting to learn a new language that none had previously spoken.

I felt that this experience of attempting to learn such a strange language brought us so much closer. There was only one Latin class in my high school so we were pretty much stuck with each other. We spent all of our class time in a collaborative effort trying to learn this crazy language that many of us knew very little about. Through this I began to see that not all of the people where as bad as I had made them out to be. We even began to form our own Latin class jokes. Funny vocabulary and making inappropriate sentences in Latin were always the guy’s favorites. Nobody else in the school got these jokes because they had no idea what we were talking about. I could now relate to these students in my class because we had this new bond created through our attempt to learn Latin.

Soon I came to know a girl named Kristen in my class. I did not really know much about her but she seemed to be pretty decent, or at least much better than the rest of the kids in the class. While during the struggle of both of us trying to learn a foreign language it was almost as if we had forgotten how to use English. We were working on grammar worksheet together, and we were not doing to the best. We looked to the paper and saw that there had been a typo. The sheet said that Harry Potter reached for his wand. We had no idea what a whand was. We then looked over at each other, and asked each other what exactly a whand was. We then knew it had to be our teacher; she probably had gotten something wrong on the paper and we could just not wait to tell her. Kristen and I beckoned for our teacher, and as she walked over we proudly proclaimed that she had messed up. She had messed up and we could prove it to her. We then asked, “ What exactly is a whand.” She then nicely reminded us that it was not a whand it was a wand. She then said, “Like Harry Potter has a wand, get it.” We got it, but we felt really stupid. This one little mistake made on a grammar worksheet brought me and Kristen much closer, and because of a simple grammar mistake made we are still best friends today.

While I will agree that Language has had a severe impact on my life, it is not like many of the others such as Sedaris and Rodriquez. My experience is one that is much different, and much more positive. In my attempt to learn Latin I saw English more clearly. I also developed bonds and relationships with people that were all strengthened by this tie of language. This language was something that was relatable and understandable by us, and that is something that can be understood by people all over the world.