This “blog” is really a place where you can learn Latin. I will, as often as I can, post new lessons on this blog, and all you have to do is read it, memorize the vocab, learn the grammar, and ask any questions you have.
So why would you want to learn Latin in the first place? Well, that’s a question I deal with a lot, and it turns out that Latin doesn’t really have any practical day-to-day use (but please read on!). You can say that it enriches your life, more than anything else. The Latin you’ll be learning is the same language that Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus spoke 2,000 years ago. It is the language of the Romans and the Latins (the people living around Rome), the race that conquered the Mediterranean and then some. Their empire extended from Britain to Egypt and from Morocco to Romania. The power the Romans had over their subjects is evident even now – Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and countless dialects are based off of Latin (and, of course, many European countries are still criss-crossed by Roman roads and walls, and their judiciary systems owe many attributes to Roman law). In its heyday (0-200ish AD), Rome contained up to 1 million people, a figure that would only be rivaled again by London a millennium and a half later.
The Latin language itself still has surprising relevance in today’s world. It is the language of law and science (fine, I might be exaggerating. But Latin is still used a lot in those disciplines), as well as the Catholic church. A lot of more obscure words are also direct relatives of (somewhat obscure) Latin words! For example, I recently read an article on a spelling bee, and one of the killer words they mentioned was umbones, which is the plural of umbo and means the knob or boss on a shield or anything similar to a knob or boss. Now, that word might be tricky for the average English speaker, but it is instantly evident to anyone who has translated the Aeneid, where umbo makes a star appearance (when Priam throws a spear at Neoptolemus in Book 2)! Another example of where Latin could have helped me out was when I took the SAT before I knew much about the language. One of the vocab words was unctuous, and my young mind decided that the word meant earthy or something like that. If only I had learned the verb unguere (more on why I bolded the e later) in Latin, which means “to anoint.” The adjective unctuous comes almost directly from that verb and means oily or, um, excessively pious.
So please read on! Latin is very rewarding to learn and not as boring as I might have just sounded!
Update: I just realized that people may wonder what “Adlocutor” means – it means “one who addresses or talks to (someone else).” It’s kind of clunky in English, I guess. A shorter translation would be “addresser,” but that sounds like someone who writes addresses on mail… And “vitarkamudra,” my username, is named after the vitarka mudra, a Buddhist hand symbol for debate. I at first intended for this blog to be more debate on world issues, but like 10 minutes after I made it I changed my mind. And I couldn’t change my username… Not to mention that all the usernames I wanted were already taken.
