My Experience Learning Latin

Learning a different language is both an insightful and a strenuous  process. I believe that one truly cannot fully understand a culture or its people unless one also knows their language. Think of all the complexities and colloquial phrases used in English everyday. Every generation seems to have new trendy expressions that can be misinterpreted if taken at face value. For example, the phrase “that’s sick” has sometimes been used to mean “that’s awesome.” Individuals that aren’t informed of current language trends will never be able to fully understand current cultural complexities. The same applies to learning dead languages. Learning ancient languages unlocks the door to further insight and understanding into ancient people’s cultures and ways of life. For my EDGE Project I started learning Latin. Although there were many struggles along the way, I have made significant progress and gained insight into the Roman people as well as insight into the English language.

My Ancient Greek Professor always said that “Greek is like a misbehaved child, but even though they don’t follow any of the rules you can’t help but love them.” If Greek is a misbehaved child, Latin is the perfect little sibling that never does anything wrong. Latin is highly structured and rarely breaks any of the grammatical rules. Latin is a case based language: you don’t read Latin left to right like English, you read it by noun case. Nominative nouns are usually the subject of the sentence, accusative nouns are usually the direct object, and dative nouns are usually the indirect object. Other cases include the vocative (signifies direct address), the genitive (modifying nouns and signifies possession), and the ablative case (modifying or limiting verbs, i.e. by/with/what). Because of the case system, word order can be more fluid than in English. Greek is the same way, but from the study I’ve done so far Latin tends to be more consistent and straight forward with it’s rules.

As I’ve studied Latin I’ve come to see the contributions it has made to the English language. Seeing Latin roots in English words has given me a deeper understanding for English. Being able to take an English word and break it down to the roots and the meanings of the roots gives me more of an appreciation for English and for linguistics in general. Here are a list of some of the words I’ve come across through my studies and their corresponding English words:

• Nihil: nothing
• Nil, annihilate
• Amo, Amare: to love
• Amorous
• Cogito, Cogitare: to think
• Cognate, cogitate 
• Debeo, Debere: to owe
• Debt
• Erro, Errare: to wander, err
• Erratic, error, aberration
• Laudo, Laudare: to praise
• Laud, laudable
• Moneo, Monere: to remind, advice, warn
• Admonish 
• Servo, Servare: to preserve, save
• Preserve, observe
• Terreo: to frighten
• Terrible, terrify
• Valeo: to be good, strong
• Valid, prevail
• Video: to see, observe, understand
• Evident 
• Voco: to call, summon
• Vocation, advocate
• Fama, Famae: fame
• Famous, infamy
• Ira, irae: ire, anger
• Irate
• Nauta, Nautae: sailor
• Nautical
• Patria, Patriae: fatherland
• Patriotic
• Ager: field, farm
• Agrarian, agriculture
• Amicus: friend
• Amicable, amiable
• Femina, Feminae: Woman
• Female, feminine
• Vir, Viri: Man, hero
• Virtue
• Romanus, Romana: Roman
•  Romance, romantic

Learning Latin has been an incredible experience, but there have been plenty of struggles throughout my project. In the beginning I had a group of people that wanted to learn Latin along with me, but after about two weeks all of them had changed their mind. Not having that support was difficult because it got rid of the group of people I could collaborate with when I was struggling to understand certain aspects of the language. The lack of a study group also made it difficult for me to stick to a strict schedule. The project definitely would have been easier and I think I would have been able to make more progress in the language if I had been collaborating with more people, but ultimately I have still been able to progress and learn the basics of the language.

Another struggle that I had with learning Latin as opposed to when I learned Spanish several years ago, is that it’s a dead language and there isn’t a place you can go to practice with the “locals.” I was able to retain and solidify my knowledge of Spanish as I spoke it and practiced it with other individuals that were already fluent, however I didn’t have that luxury with Latin. Because of that it definitely took longer to process and retain the information I was studying. After getting through a substantial chunk of my textbook I realized that I wasn’t retaining as much information as I wanted. I decided that although it meant I wouldn’t get through as much of the textbook it would be a better idea to go back through the chapters I had already studied in order to truly learn and absorb the information. I ended up doing that three times, but each time I went through the chapters I was able to gain different insights and retain more information. Although it wasn’t the ideal way to learn a language, I feel like it was the best, and most efficient way for me to work through learning Latin so that I can use it later on in my graduate and postgraduate studies.

Although I’ve had my struggles I feel like my project has been very successful. It’s been difficult, but I’ve been able to cope with the struggles and obstacles I’ve encountered and have been able to make significant progress. I’m extremely happy with where I am at in terms of learning Latin and am confident that the work I’ve put in will help me as I continue on in my studies.