16 September 2013 | Solomon's Island, Md.
Tripped up by a throwaway line
When you write something for publication, you can sometimes anticipate what's likely to bring challenges from readers (assuming you have any). I was always surprised that you are likely to get much more outraged, sarcastic responses about a misspelled word ("compentency" for "competency"), a misused word ("between" when you mean "among" or "underway" when you mean "under way"), a homophone ("threadbear" for "threadbare" or "right" for "rite") or a mislaid comma (using "Her mother Mrs. Jones" instead of "Her mother, Mrs. Jones,") than about the most banal or controversial content.
And yes, I have been castigated for all those atrocities and I have deep emotional scars to prove it. There was no spell check when I wrote "compentency" in a headline. Fortunately the typesetter caught it (I never lived it down) so it never saw the light of day. But spell check won't catch any of those other abuses of the King's English.
If you are an opinion writer, which I was for a while, you must develop a thick skin about such things. Aside from the inevitable grammar screw ups, which are just plain humiliating, your every faulty turn of phrase, careless thought or slapdash argument leaves the little masterpiece you created vulnerable. And, of course, no matter what position you take on wars, economic policies, city water rates, state budgets, the price of gas or the Christmas Parade, there will be a large number of people who disagree with you and you will hear from a fair percentage of them. There may be a few folks who agree with you as well, but you probably won't hear from them.
Aside from bad grammar or inferior reasoning, another category that occasionally trips up the unwary writer is the throwaway comment that has little to do with the subject at hand and could just as easily have been left off.
It is just such a phrase that this whole lengthy preamble is meant to address.
The T-shirt says it all
First, let me introduce my cousin Grady, the history teacher and debate coach. Grady and I have been having "debates" practically since our parents made us stop settling disputes by throwing punches. For years they were mostly political arguments, er, debates, but as we've grown older and more disillusioned with politicians in general, we've come to agree to the point that the debates are no longer fun. We're mostly just commiserating.
But Grady is a debater at heart. He loves a good point/counter-point. He's one of those people who picks books on tape about philosophical discourse when he has to drive to Raleigh for a meeting of community college board chairs. And he's a stickler for rules, which, as anyone who's ever played board games with him will attest, he can recite from memory when they're to his advantage but has been known not to mention when they're not. In fact, he has a rich store of little known historical facts, theories, dates and other minutia at hand, not to mention training in debate.
I, on the other hand, can't remember what I did yesterday unless I write it down (main reason for keeping a blog) and I'm prone to winging it, reading the rules only as a last resort, which means I have always been at a disadvantage in these debates.
So, imagine my chagrin when I got an email from him regarding one of my blog posts. It sounded sympathetic at first - a classic debate technique, I'm sure - commiserating with my inability to remember the scientific names of plants in Latin. After he established that he is a sympathetic, reasonable guy, he then took exception to what was little more than a throwaway line: 'a dead foreign language at that.'
The Mark Twain argument
Here's what Grady had to say:
... You referred to Latin as a '... dead foreign language ...' without providing any support for this assertion. ...
'I challenge two of the words in your phrase, starting with "dead." According to the Oxford American Dictionary to be dead is to be "no longer alive." Considering the function of a language I think a dead language is one that is no longer used. With this as a working definition, you would be hard pressed to defend your position. In fact, your own description provides evidence in my favor. You point out that in the world of science not only is Latin used every day, but new names are added on a regular basis. Consider that the use of Latin is not limited to the scientific community, but is also utilized by the legal community. How many U.S. Marines use Latin on a regular basis? Semper Fi, Always Faithful. As a native of North Carolina you should be familiar with Esse Quam Videri, To Be Rather Than To Seem. If you have a one dollar bill on you there is Novus Ordo Seclorum, Out of Many One. To be dead, Latin sure does show up in a lot of places. Of course you could argue that a few phrases here and there does not a language make. I mean it's not that there are people writing and reading whole books either about or in Latin. Oh wait, there are a few. I keyed in "Latin" in the Amazon search engine and got over 1,600,000 hits. Turns out there are lots of books both about and written in Latin. I even found a copy of The Hobbit written in Latin. Did I mention that there are high schools and colleges throughout the U.S. that teach the Latin language? Perhaps the Latin language should borrow a quip from Mark Twain and say that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
My second challenge concerns the word "foreign." Now I grant that this is a reasonable position since English is generally recognized as the primary language of Americans. However, I point out that so much of English and Spanish and numerous other languages spoken in our country have their origin in Latin words. At the very least Latin should be considered a first cousin and be welcomed at any family reunion of U.S. languages.
I hope you have enjoyed my little discussion about language. At the very least, you know I am reading your blog :-)
Such vulgar language
I've had several days to mull it over since I received this email, so here's where I take up the gauntlet.
First, Grady, I am honored that you are reading my blog. Thank you for taking time to keep up with our travels. As to your challenge regarding whether Latin is a "dead foreign language," it never occurred to me that I would need to support that assertion.
You do make some interesting points. I can't, however, agree with the conclusions you draw from them.
Evidence, logic and a host of dictionaries support the position that Latin dropped from its perch a millennia or so ago along with the Classical Romans who spoke it. Let's look at a few definitions of a "dead
language."
From The Free Dictionary: "A language, such as Latin, that is no longer learned as a native language by a speech community."
From Cambridge Dictionaries Online: "a language that is no longer used for ordinary communications. Latin is a dead language."
From Oxford Dictionaries online: "a language no longer in everyday spoken use,
such as Latin." (Emphasis is mine.)
Given that a "dead language" is one that is "no longer in everyday spoken use," the number of books written in that language is pretty much irrelevant. It's still dead unless it is in ordinary spoken use, which Latin is not. A few phrases like Semper Fi and Esse Quam Videri do not ordinary spoken use make.
You will get no argument from me regarding the importance of Latin to a well-rounded education. And it may be true, as classical educator Terrence Moore argues, that to say Latin is dead is not a particularly helpful observation when it comes to education. But not being helpful and not being correct are different things.
Moore also points out that Latin remained the language of learning until the end of the 17th Century. You might have been able to make an argument that it wasn't dead then. But this is the 21st Century and by commonly agreed upon definitions, it is dead now. So is Mark Twain, by the way. Even though we still read books he wrote - there are probably millions of copies in circulation - sadly,
he is "no longer alive."
As to whether it's a foreign language, a prima facie case (granted, though dead, Latin can be useful) can be made that I have only one "native" language: English. Some fortunate people grow up bi-lingual, but I am not among them. Therefore all other languages are "foreign" to me. To argue that Latin is not foreign because English borrowed some structure and words from it is like arguing that English is not foreign to Spanish speakers because both English and Spanish borrowed so much from Latin and Spanish adopts English words from time to time.
As a matter of fact, isn't it true that the Vulgar Latin that influenced the Romance Languages isn't even the Classical Latin scholars teach and botanists use to name plants today?
Consider these comments from the Wikipedia entry on Latin:
"Although it is considered a dead language, modern Romance languages are continuations of dialectal forms (vulgar Latin) of the language....
"By the arrival of the late Roman Republic, a standard, literate form had arisen from the speech of the educated, now referred to as Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin, by contrast, is the name given to the more rapidly changing colloquial language, which was spoken throughout the empire."
Not only is Classical Latin foreign to me - it sounds to me as though it's pretty much foreign to English too.
I know my three minutes are up and I'm sitting down now. Remember, rebuttals must be brief.
Oxford Dictionaries defines "dead language"
Terrence Moore on the joys of Latin
Wikipedia on Latin