Littera scripta manet but, alas, not in Latin

I harbour fond memories of Latin classes and my chalk-dusted, tweedjacketed teacher (magister).

Ilament the looming loss of Latin. Our education minister has announced that Latin will be an NCEA non-starter by 2023. I harbour fond memories of Latin classes and my chalk-dusted, tweedjacketed teacher (magister). I could reel off conjugations and declensions at the drop of a hat. Still can. Amo, amas, amat…

Our textbook “Latin for Today” was a friend. I had the verb “to be” off pat in the very early stages. I enjoyed the rigours involved so must have been quite the nerd.

Thanks to this new language, I knew, within weeks, that the girl was carrying a dove and that Spain was a peninsula. As the course progressed we were offered texts which involved, I think, ravaging maidens in ditches though what that meant I shuddered to think from the comfort of my navy shorts.

I felt the textbook writers must have had a sense of humour when, as their example of the vocative, they used “mensa” (“O table!”). Of course, even at age 13 my fancy was tickled by the notion of people in togas wandering around personally addressing items of furniture.

And one of the memorable bellyache laugh sessions of my life was thanks to Latin. Three Kiwis, all schooled in Latin, were together in Melbourne for a wedding. We were taking a drive in the Victorian countryside when we spotted, not girls carrying doves, but a flock of ibises in an area of marshland.

We couldn’t help it. Our education came flooding back and we started to decline ibis. It seemed that the same button had been pressed in all of us at the same time.

It quickly morphed into a verb and we made stuff up – “Ibimamis: we would have ibised,” (please don’t write in) said one of us. And it grew and grew until three grown, classicsschooled men had stopped the car and were rolling on the roadside in painful laughter. Agony and ecstasy.

Without Latin, that moment would not have happened. Without Latin, bystanders would have said, the world might be a saner place. The ibises are probably still wondering why we were allowed out unsupervised.

But my more important reason for valuing Latin is that it showed me why English grammar is as it is, why it’s incorrect to say “Between you and I” or, as I heard on tonight’s TV news, “the criteria is difficult”. It taught me, for example, about subjects and objects (both direct and indirect), singular and plural verb agreement.

And, of course, dove-bearing and dubious ditch activities.

You don’t only learn a language so you can go to its native country and speak it. My first visit to France revealed the pitfalls of that. Six years of French study enabled me to order a sandwich but when the vendor replied I was a goner.

No, you also study it to learn about a culture and the way language works, to better understand your own culture, your own language.

Though the language is no longer spoken, it certainly lives on – in law, in medicine, in zoology, for example. Education surely has to be more than learning things which “get you a job” which seems to be a key criterion for many people.

The grasp I have of English, imperfect as it still may be, I owe to my study of Latin.

That – and the fond memories – is why I lament the looming loss of Latin, the mother tongue of Western civilisation.

As I close, I’m growing nervous. If my final farewell words to Latin are not absolutely correct – remember I am relying on distant memories – you will probably hear the sound of the teacher’s cane whacking me across the knuckles.

Forma bonum fragile est. Vale.