Earninglay Atinlay…
No, not that kind of Latin.
One of my life goals that I have had for a very long time has been to learn Latin. Seems odd and a bit geeky, but I already command an expansive grasp on the English language and its grammatical quirks. Learning Latin will serve the dual purposes of helping expand my English vocabulary and will give me the ability to decipher ancient texts discovered in dusty crypts at the drop of a beat-up fedora.
OK, not exactly.
Tonight, I finally started picking up the various and sundry pieces of scholastic material to be used in my self-torturous task of learning the lost language on my own. I’m a long way from reading my copies of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis or even Cattus Petasatus. I’m not even ready for Latin for Dummies, but I have to start somewhere.
I popped in my software disc into my laptop to go for some good ol’ fashioned CBT (computer-based training), expecting some basic conversational phrases. I figured the software package I bought would be a whole lot better than its competitor that was developed “by native speakers.” Considering there are NO native speakers left and there haven’t been for centuries, I guessed that the more honest version would work just fine.
I am frightfully amused by the fact that the third phrase I am learning is “the slave is in the atrium.” Not “my cocoa is too hot” or “Please stop looking at my asp” or something equally mundane by today’s standards. Slaves. Atriums. Useful vocabulary.
Of course, just as funny, the next paragraph educates the viewer on the proper Latin pronunciation of “the cook is sleeping in the kitchen.” Oooh, this is going to be fun! Hail Caesar!
Now if I can just learn how to say “the waiter with the false leg has just recovered from a terrible case of the whooping cough and seems to have contaminated the borscht.”
Oh, wait. That’s not until Chapter 2…
No native speakers? Ah, when selecting a language to take in high school I choose Latin, much to my mother’s dismay. “There isn’t anywhere in the world you can hop off a bus, say ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ and have them understand you!” The Pope was so disappointed in her…
Nope, today there are no native speakers of Latin. Karol Joseph Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) speaks eight languages virtually fluently: Polish, Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English. While Latin may be considered the “Language of the Church” and the Pope is well versed in the language, Karol’s native language is actually Polish. While you could probably engage someone in scintillating conversation in Latin in the Holy See, there are no remaining locations on Earth where Latin is the first language learned and where the fundamentals of education primarily occur in Latin, therefore there are no native speakers of the ancient language. quod erat demonstrandum. - RDL