Lately I’ve been teaching myself Latin.
I don’t know why. It’s a daunting task, because there’s so much to memorize. The problem isn’t the vocabulary — many Latin words have English-language cognates, so they’re not hard to remember; the problem is the fricking grammar. Latin is an inflected language, which means that there are numerous endings for nouns and verbs, depending on their function in the sentence. The verbs aren’t particularly hard — it’s the noun endings, the declensions, that are killer. They seem impossible to memorize. And some of the endings are identical in some instances but not in others. There is no logic to it at all.
No wonder it’s a dead language.
Why am I doing this? It’s not like I need to. I’m not in school, I’m not preparing for the SAT, and if I want to read the great works of Roman literature, there are plenty of translations. But I’ve always been curious about Latin and how it works. I’ve sung many pieces in Latin; I like the way it looks and sounds; it’s the basis for so many English words; and it just seems elegantly put together, with so much information packed into one word.
A few years ago I decided to study ancient Greek. I decided that I wanted to learn the two classical languages, and I figured I’d be really ambitious and start with the one that came first, because perhaps it would inform my eventual study of Latin. (I like to get to the bottom of things.) I bought this book and began working my way through it, but it got harder and harder, and there was more and more to memorize, and eventually I wondered why I was doing it, and I gave up.
But the other weekend I read a review of a new book, Reading the OED. I took a look at it, because the OED has always fascinated me. But instead of that book, I decided to read The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester. Thus my interest in language was rekindled, and I decided it was time to study Latin. So I took this book out of the library the other day and have started going through it.
I’ve always felt that I missed something in my formal education. I never took a survey course in Western civilization, never read many of the so-called “great books,” never studied Greece and Rome, never learned about Western philosophy. Occasionally over the last few years I’ve tried to rectify this. I’ve read an introductory survey of Western philosophy, I’ve read about the great books and I’ve read some of the works themselves. The idea of the “Western canon” is passé these days, but it’s still the foundation of our culture. And I like to see the big picture, the connections among things. I think that’s why I enjoy history so much — because it tells us how we got from there to here.
And part of me thinks that in some way, studying all of this stuff — especially the ancient Greeks and Romans — can make me a better person, by making me a clearer thinker and a better writer. I envy people who did study all of this. I really envy those who went to St. John’s College, where you get immersed in the canon.
But can it really make you better or smarter? I think I’m already a clear thinker, and perhaps my writing would benefit less from classical languages and literature and more from actual writing, and courage, and discipline. But maybe I’m wrong? Perhaps it really can help?
I don’t know.
But I do love language.
