Okay, I'll admit it now. I actually enjoy learning (on the whole). To some, this might make complete sense, but it seems to me that several people about my age think that willingly going to school is about as weird as me having grown a second head - I got some quite interesting looks. I didn't help myself much when I mentioned that one of the subjects I learnt was Latin - apparently even taking Latin makes you posh, which is a complete lie when you look at me or my Latin taking friends.
Admittedly, I spent the last year of my Latin course complaining about how much I hated Latin (a view which changed considerably once I got my results back), but now I no longer do Latin, or any other language based course actually, I've surprisingly come to miss it.
Yes, Latin Literature involved hours of writing the same text over and over again, combined with analysis of every word, its placement and some literary device I never understood. Yes, Latin grammar also took hours of rote learning all the various endings and tiny words or letters that changed the meaning of the whole sentence, and occasionally the story. I don't really miss that aspect at all.
What I miss is the vocabulary. Alright, that also took hours of rote learning. But at least with that, as I scrolled through lists of words, I could pick out the familiar looking ones. Considering English is partly from Latin, you can guess some of the words in English using a bit of Latin (and luck). Some of them are obvious - corpus: corpse, nauta (sailor): nautical - but some of them are bit more obscure. Credo means I believe/trust and if you give someone credit (in the sense of money), you trust they will pay you back. Extra means outside in Latin so extra-ordinary is something outside the ordinary (not something additional on top of the normal). Latin helps with those extra layers of meaning.
And I know I said doing Latin doesn't make you posh, but it can help you fake it. Loads of mottos and stuff are in Latin: Cognito ergo sum - I think therefore I am, Arte et Marte - By skill and by fighting (Also, one of the few grammar points I picked up on, but its in the ablative case which means by!). And at least three commonly used abbreviations are Latin: e.g. - exampli gratia - for the sake of example, i.e - id est - that is (Commonly confused those two: e.g. gives a general example, i.e. gives a specific thing), and etc - et cetera - and others. So yes, you can pretend to be posh as well, which has its benefits.
Clearly Latin language is still very much alive, both mutated into new English words, and as it was. Latin history isn't even dead, considering how much we learnt and are still learning from the Romans (though we didn't study that as much, asides from a few tangents). So, whilst I don't really expect there to be too many fluent Latin speakers out there (though surprisingly, there are quite a few), maybe we should try and bring back at least an awareness of Latin!
Ab hinc, lingua Latina!! (Which, I hope, means 'From here on, the Latin language!', but again, my Latin was never brilliant, so no guarantees :P)
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