Latin: Why it is the best

Jaclyn Miles

First and foremost, Latin has been the most helpful within different classes and aspects of life than I've observed in other languages. It's all around us every day and many don't even notice, but here are five examples which you or anyone could observe:

1) In general, lots of the English language are derived from Latin roots. That means that while in English, I can understand and interpret certain vocabulary words. A showing of this is the word "colloquial". I didn't necessarily know what this meant when I first saw it. But, I then learned the word "colloquium" in Latin and that helped my understanding of it. This is only one example, and there are many more words that I have been able to decipher due to taking Latin.

2) Recently, we just finished reading the Odyssey and Latin was quite helpful during that period because I could relate the events that happened in the book. We discussed the Trojan War and that is practically the basis of the story. So, because of my prior knowledge of the war from Latin class, I was able to connect points that Mr. Flickinger was referring to. Also, the story of Orestes and killing his mother was mentioned a few times, and because we talked about it in class, I was able to know what the characters were alluding to.

3) As I mentioned before, Latin is around us every day with us not even noticing. Earlier during the year, we did a mottos project which was us choosing one motto of an organization or college with Latin in their motto. I learned that a lot of companies usually have Latin mottos or words that have Latin roots. So, whenever their slogan or motto comes on TV, I am able to comprehend/translate it with much thought. Also, some brand names are Latin/Greek based such as Trident gum. That obviously refers to the god Poseidon and his symbol of the Trident. Through that blog post project, I'm also able to recognize connections in Greek mythology to products I use.

4) In chapel and at my church, there is an extremely common song with the lyrics "Dona Nobis Pacem" etc.. I never knew what that meant. Though, because I have been taking Latin, I was able to try and figure out the meaning of the lyrics which is "Grant us Peace". I also do this with other songs and Latin phrases that churches typically use.

5) Not only has Latin helped me in English, but overall understanding other languages like Spanish. I've been able to help and figure out certain words in Spanish due to them being derived from Latin. An example of this happening was one of my friends asked me what "easy" was in Spanish and I answered "facilis" knowing that was easy in Latin. I actually was quite close because the actual way to say "easy" in Spanish is "facile". They are quite similar and I was opened to the fact that there are so many other words in Spanish that are extremely similar to Latin. This happened in 8th grade when I was still fairly new to how expansive Latin.

In all, I would definitely recommend taking Latin in the future for even just a single course. It has been proven helpful in a lot of aspects of my life. Many may think that just because it's a dead language that it no longer shows up anywhere. But, they couldn't be more wrong and taking Latin has overall been a great eye-opening experience.