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Fortunately for me, it can bring back friendly memories: ones of events in everyday Latin class itself, forever imbedded in the thin, worn binding of a book. It was in there that I found the great idiom of “make peace.” It was in class one day, when we were converting English sentences into Latin. My group got to a sentence about some general or someone trying to “make peace” with a former enemy. The first conversion that would normally pop into one’s mind is pacem facere, to physically create peace. So, that didn’t go over too well in my mind since that didn’t fully capture the meaning in the sentence. Hearing my pain, the dictionary told me to try pacem parere, to create peace, in an abstract sense (literally to give birth to peace).
The earliest memory that the dictionary brings back to me is how Mr. Johnson would begin class every day. “Salvete, discipulis!” “Salve, Magister Johnson!” “Quid est hodie?” Then, he would choose one of us to read today’s date to him (in the Roman calendar system) which he had written on the board. “Yes, Calliope.” “Ten days till the Kalends of March.” To finish it off, he would translate a short inspirational quotation from Latin into English for us. Boy, did I love that class.
About the first day of school this year, our first encounter with Mr. Chang, some one commented that somehow some activity wasn’t “cool.” He responded, “You’re taking Latin now. When you signed up for this class, you left ‘cool’ at the door.” After that, there were no more comments concerning whether something was “cool” or not.
Then, my fondest memory with my Latin dictionary: tutoring. Roughly half way through this school year, Mr. Chang asked me if I wanted to come tutor some Latin I students after school. After a few days of this, I was having so much fun and doing so well (and he was so pleased with what I was doing) that in one of our email correspondences, he told me, “You’re really kickin’ butt!”
There’s more to Latin than just a bunch of dead Romans and a whole lot of people who attempt to decipher their writing. Latin is more than just translation: it’s the vocabulary that makes the language so great. More than half of all English words are derived from Latin ones (now that’s a real SAT benefit). Words ranging in size from exit to ambidextrous can be traced back to Latin. You don’t need to go memorize all the grammar rules inside out to reap the benefits from the language. Just by learning the vocabulary, you can figure out about half of the English language. Plus, dictionaries like mine that you use to look up those words can hold your dearest memories and secrets for a lifetime.
>Epilogue...
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