470-479: Lingua Latina. Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life, by Harry Mount

I decided to major in French in college because of Baudelaire:

"Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes."

-From L'invitation au voyage

*Swoon*. What adolescent could resist that?

I almost changed to Classics, but I can't remember why exactly. It might have been my first instructor, who was only a few years older than me. It might have been Catullus or Virgil. It might even have been the time we went around campus at Christmastime singing "Gaudete"-- despite the fact that my instructor was a Bhuddist. 

I can't imagine it was the declension charts... but those are what I remember best. "Hic, haec, hoc, hunc, hanc, hoc, huius, huius, huius, huic, huic, huic, hoc, hac, hoc"... I recited it on the way to classes and in the shower. I made these pig noises so many times I still pretty much remember this chant, the way you could rattle off: "I say, you say, he, she or it says, we say, you say, they say." 

Latin conjugates its verbs, declines its nouns, and goes into moods that are barely remembered in English, like the subjunctive. Our closest equivalent is the almost prissy-sounding "If I were..." (but I'm not) or "I wish you would..." (but you never will). And if you spend the first semester of your freshman year memorizing all these tenses and cases and moods, by winter of your sophomore year you will be able to sing medieval Christmas carols, and by spring of your sophomore year you will be reading Virgil. The Aeneid. In the original. And understanding it! Take that, fourth semester French or Spanish! We sure didn't read Victor Hugo or Don Quixote in fourth semester! I suppose the fact that we did not need to spend any time learning to actually speak the language (or write original sentences) saved a lot of time.

All of this to say that Carpe Diem brought back fond memories of those college days. Even the (rather too lengthy) list of commonly used phrases, which felt more like a dictionary than I would have preferred, contained some old friends it was nice to see again... as well as some rather dated references to celebrities from John McEnroe to Juvenal. Well, what do you expect from a book about a dead language? Highly recommended, if your goal is to brush up your rusty Latin-- and why wouldn't it be?