Today I am publishing my first article on the blog and it is about the most useful language I have ever studied : Latin.
(I think you noticed that my last sentence was ironic)
Some of my classmates ask me why did I choosed to study latin and I never know what to answer to this question. Indeed, I have been studied this language for four years now and I still do not know why I choosed to continue latin this year. Already at collège the first, second and third declinations traumatized me, without talking about the parisyllabic and imparisyllabic exceptions.
So to explain my choice (which is maybe a bad choice, or not), I present you five reasons to study latin and five reasons to not study it.
Reasons to NOT STUDY latin:
- It is a dead language Latin professors can say what they like, latin is a dead language which is not spoken by anyone, except few crazy people of Roman mythology.
- It is a lot of additionnal work If you are in OIB, (even if you are not) you have a lot of work when you go back to home, so with this mountain of work, essays and books to read; the rosa,ae declination is not really welcome.
- You study it when all your classmates are at home Finish at 6 P.M. every mondays and tuesdays,when your other classmates finish at 4 P.M. is psychologicly very hard, espacially when you know you will sleep at 2 A.M. because you have to learn by heart how to conjugate the five groups of conjugation at passive form for the next day.
- Exceptions and complexcity Latin is a complex language, add to the many conjugations, the words have declinations, which means that they do not have the same form according to their place on the sentence. Moreover, there are a lot of exceptions, maybe more than regular words.
- A travel which will never take place When you have to choose if you want to study latin, teachers always talk about this famous travel at Rome which is supposed to take place the year after but which never takes place.
Reasons to STUDY latin:
- It brings culture By studying always the same texts by Ovide, Tite-Live, Suetone or Homere you become a expert in greek and roman mythology but also in the Antiquity in general.
- If you want to do medicine studies A whole part of the complex vocabulary you will study in medecine is in latin.
- Understand Harry Potter's magic formulas A lot of magic formulas in Harry Potter are in latin but there are also others puns in latin, like the names of the Black family.
- Discover another aspect of literature The latin literature is very rich and it may be interesting to compare elegy with lyric poetry in an essay for example.
- Have good marks To be honest, it is (I think) one of the most important reasons which can influence someone to study latin. Latin teatchers are very happy to work with us : courageaous students who choosed to study latin, so they are in general very nice on the notation. In addition, the new baccalauréat advantages the latinists, there is any latin test, we just have added points at the continuous control like for the DNB.
Good holidays everyone, hope you enjoy them (if you do not have too much homework ;-) )
Inès LOUCIF (aka ILRDM for those who understand)
PS: here is the first declination if it interests someone
SG PL
NOM rosa rosae
NOM rosa rosae
VOC rosa rosae
ACC rosam rosas
GEN rosae rosarum
DAT rosae rosis
ABL rosa rosis
