Latin in My Everyday Life

Latin in My Everyday Life

Latin is a class that many people think is useless. I frequently hear a lot of things like "nobody speaks it," and "it won't help you communicate," but while these things are mostly true, Latin provides more insight to history, mythology, and the origins of most modern European languages than any other language at Parish could hope to offer. It not only helps me in school, but in my everyday life as well.

I am a giant nerd. Coinciding with this, I was preparing for the debut of Stark Trek: Picard last weekend by watching a lot of the Next Generation series. While watching the last movie made for this series, I noticed something that should have been extremely obvious. One of the major antagonistic alien races in Star Trek are just walking Roman history in space. This species is called the Romulan Empire. Almost every name used by this fictional empire was stolen from the Romans. The main reference is that their planet's and sister planet's names, Romulus and Remus, are directly taken from the mythological founders of Rome of the same name, who supposedly founded Rome in 753 B.C.E.

Last summer my family went on a trip to Scotland. It was very beautiful, but one of my favorite bragging moments from the trip was when I was able to read an inscription on the wall of the king's quarters located in Edinburgh castle. I do not remember specifically what the text said, but I remember the words "dues" and "rex," meaning "god" and "king" respectively in Latin. This is a prime example of how knowing Latin can positively impact a normal experience by allowing me to gain insight on a place's historical context without needing to look it up.

This year in English, I was able to get a 100 on a grammar quiz, something that I was personally very surprised by, and I entirely attribute this feat to my years spent in Latin class. Most of the grammar topics that we were covering had to do with structures such as direct objects, indirect objects, and prepositional phrases. I was able to quickly understand these structures in English by thinking of the nouns as if they had cases like in Latin. Sectioning off nouns as ablative, dative, and accusative helped me easily figure out the function of each noun in the sentence.

It seems like almost every other day I will find myself reading Roman Numerals. This counting system originating in Rome is still in used in a lot of places today. It uses a series of letters that translate to numbers, with a letter in front meaning subtraction and a letter behind meaning addition. I most frequently them on clocks and in books. All the time in English class people will ask me what a certain combination of numerals means in a book, and I am delighted that I am able to help people with this knowledge that I picked up in Latin class. I had a decent idea of what the numerals meant before taking Latin, but the class really helped me further grasp the concept.

Two summers ago, I found myself playing Minecraft with a downloaded modification to the game called "Thaumcraft." Back then, I probably wouldn't have mentioned this on an assignment, but with the modern "meme-ification" of the game, I am willing to share this strange way that Latin has helped me. The modification to the game revolved heavily around the concept of different types of elements called "essentia" that made up the in-game world. These elements could be used to create powerful weapons and tools. For many remembering what essentia type was called what was fairly confusing, but for me it was easy because every element was named in Latin. Latin words like "ignis," "aqua," "terra," "vis," and "mortuus" (which mean "fire," "water," "earth," "force," and "dead" respectively) were some of the many names for elements found in the mod. As funny as it sounds, knowing Latin really helped 14 year-old me gain in-game items to brag about to my online friends.

Overall, Latin has made a much more impactful change in my life than I ever could have expected any language class to do. It helps me in my daily life with things such as English grammar, understanding references, and understanding words based on their Latin roots. It is an experience that I would believe that everyone should be able to have, and I wouldn't trade it for anything, especially not Spanish class.

Christopher Foster