Magister, te saluto
I am one of the fortunate generation that received an education which was based on a a mature curriculum. Yes, I studied Latin. Over a five year period, I mentally wrestled, in the finest Greco-Roman sense, with five (six!) noun declensions and four verb conjugations, plus irregularities, while carrying on my real career of adolescence. Just for the sake of it: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative (let’s pretend the locative doesn’t exist)
My contact with Latin started very early, when a priest poured water on my head while praying softly for my soul. I learned my prayers in two languages, so that Vatican II did not mark me indelibly, as had baptism (’tis the truth; the nuns told us so) . By the time I arrived in Grade Nine, Latin was as familiar as …
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