Dialog

A hundred and twenty-four weeks ago when we started “The Friday Letter,” our main goal was to elicit response, to stimulate dialog.

More than any other topic, “Latin” has done that. As a beneficial byproduct, we’ve read nostalgic testimony about the late great language teacher Lucille Rockne.

Some of those responses have already been seen as comments on the “blog.” For others, here is Friday Letter #123.

From Ralph

Perhaps English isn’t considered a Romance language. But in 1066 when William the Conqueror took over the country, French was made the language of the English courts.

Thus did French words become amalgamated into our language. I have always considered English to be a "half and half" language. Thanks to the French we have one of the most difficult languages to speak and spell.

Ask any ESL (English as a Second Language) student to explain this sentence: "The fair man paid a fair fare at the fair." I forced my high school students to learn the rules of pronunciation, because when they did that their spelling improved 100 percent.

Lucille Rockne was my favorite teacher in high school. I can still remember her classroom right across from the teachers' lounge. She would exit the lounge waving the smoke away as if to say none of us knew that she smoked.

She lived in a basement apartment across from the high school. I would often visit her there. I continued to correspond with her after I moved to California. Whenever I came back to Brighton I would always call and stop by.

After Donna and I got married, we would play bridge with her. She was a bridge fanatic and would play at the drop of a hat. Then my military commitments took charge, and we didn't get to Brighton for many years.

While I was in Vietnam I heard that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and she died not long after that.

Do you remember when she took us to the Latin convention in Denver? We took tests in mythology and had a great time. You will never see that again.

Her training during my three years of Latin instilled in me such a strong sense of English that I have never had trouble spelling, and my grammar has been exemplary. I waived by examination every English class at my university.

I was the chief wordsmith and proofreader on military performance reports, and I taught high school English.

Among the other English teachers I had a reputation as the person to come to whenever there was a syntax disagreement. All this is solely due to Lucille Rockne.

A terrific amount of success in my life is due to this one lady, her love of the Latin language, and her ability to instill that love in her students.

From Jules

Due to my disbelief in your statement that Latin is no longer taught in high schools, I searched the web. It is still being taught, worldwide.

Disappointingly, however, I found my own high school no longer teaches it. It’s preposterous that my old high school, which claims to be top notch, no longer teaches Latin as a basis to learning any sciences (such as pre-med, biology, etc).

However, the faux-Latin motto on your truck is quite belligerent and throws any sincerity about the language out the window -- or out the windshield in this case. My Latin teacher would have you burned.

From Brother Richard

I've frequently been the tour guide for 50th-year reunions of Brighton High School graduates.

The most common topic during the tours is Mrs. Rockne, her life and her car. Seldom does anyone ask about the overlay project of 1958 or the new sewer plant.

They talk about school activities and sometimes school buildings. Discussion of interaction with police abounds. But the most common topic is Mrs. Rockne.

(Editor’s note: To our best recollection, Mrs. Rockne’s car was a 1950 Chevrolet two-door-hardtop, black over canary yellow, lowered in the back and featuring a grotesque chrome swan on the hood. She steadfastly refused to sell it.)

From Frau Rinard

Latin is called a "dead language" only because it is not spoken anymore and therefore, does not change. A live language changes because human beings are using it.

Since Old English does indeed come from Low German, how do we explain the plethora of Latin vocabulary in English, and the comparable paucity of Latin sources in German?

Remember, Caesar's troops did get into England. Conquerors, or would-be conquerors who stay a while, certainly leave their imprint on the local speech.

Also, during the Middles Ages that followed, the Catholic Church had many scholars who spent their days with language, translating, embellishing the words into artistic designs (what we call Gothic style), and just collecting and studying whatever came their way.

Then England had French conquerors or intruders for a while (The Norman Conquest). So English picked up a lot of French, which was derived from the Latin.

Whereas England had "pig" and "hog, "the French gave us "pork," actually adding niceties to the English language. The English had "last will" and the French gave us "testament." So now we use "Last Will and Testament."

English adopted these new words and kept the old ones too. Our language is still growing. Think of all the new technical terms and new meanings for old words (mouse, icon) during just a few years. I understand the French don't want to add to their language -- while we thrive on adding to ours. No wonder English is so difficult for foreigners.

Wherever we had new nouns and verbs added to our language from any language, we made adjectives and adverbs from those.

Our greatest gift from the Latin is not so much the complete words, but prefixes (ad-, con-, inter-, pre-, anti-, de-, and numerous others) and suffixes (-a, -ae, -ment, -us, -is, -os, -um, -i, etc.). “Et cetera” is pure Latin, of course.] And then there are the root words (libre, ego, duo, bellum, ars, and many more).

When we read a complex word which is new to us, if it has a Latin prefix, a Latin root and a Latin suffix, we can know exactly what it means -- if we know Latin.

Languages don't do things on their own. It takes the human element. I give a great deal of credit to Caesar but perhaps more to the monks.

Populations everywhere change any language currently spoken. Latin stays the same, for it's not spoken by any country, but I think one little island somewhere.

Populations may introduce a new word into their own language by merely misusing one already established. That happens all the time. It has to be recorded in use for ten years before it goes into a Webster.

One more thing to remember: English is from German in structure. The grammar is much the same. But English is full of cognates with German. A cognate is a word that is spelled the same and means the same in both languages, though pronounced differently, such as hand (English) and Hand (German). But milk and Milch are not cognates. (All nouns in German are capitalized.) Much of our vocabulary is from the German.

Hitler did make the German language sound guttural, harsh, ugly, and all the other nasty words one can think of. But if he had been speaking in English he would have sounded just as bad.

I've known Germans, and Americans who have studied in Germany for years, who speak a beautiful German with no harshness whatsoever.

I think the problem lies in two different areas. Hitler probably used many military and technical terms that in themselves were much more guttural and harsh than the language of the ordinary German.

Then the emotion with which he spoke -- hatred, vengeance, nihilism, anger, whatever -- was deep-rooted and uncontrolled, giving opportunity for harsh sounds. The human element always has to be factored in, even though it may be inhuman.

Latin went more easily into English than into German because Germany had no English monks! Seriously, have you ever heard of the equivalent to England's cloistered monks working on language in Germany? Germany had barbarians.

The barbarians kept busy routing the Romans from their land and if I remember correctly, the barbarians won!

From Tom

When a student enters a class to learn Latin, the very first word he learns is “amo.” Amo, amas, amat, amamos, amais, aman, goes the beginner’s conjugation.

The word “amo” means “love.” The first word a student learns in Latin means “love.” I think that’s significant.

Secondarily, when Harvard University was founded a couple of centuries ago, one requirement for people applying to study there was that they already have a working knowledge of Latin and Greek. This was so that they could better understand the scriptures. I think that’s significant.

And there you have it! Our thanks to my high school chum Ralph, our friend Jules, my brother Dick. But mostly, thanks to our dedicated teachers, Mrs. Rockne and Frau Rinard.

Word of the week: Plethora. From Greek, plethore, to become full, or fullness. We use it to mean the state of being too full, or overabundance or excess.

Next week’s word: Paucity.

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