It was time for the big decision. I had to pick a foreign language to take in high school. My choices were French, Spanish, German, or Latin. I was truly disappointed that Canadian wasn’t offered because I really wanted to talk like a hockey player.
I quickly eliminated French because I discovered that my name in that language would be pronounced as “Michelle”… not exactly the powerhouse nom de plume I wished to carry down the gauntlet of hallways in between classes.
Spanish wouldn’t be bad, only I had heard you had to roll your “R”s and I couldn’t even roll my tongue. German was out of the question because my mom made us eat sauerkraut, which to me was fractionally better than getting bilious fever.
Thus, I was left with Latin, the language of dead toga-toting scholars lacking proper surnames … the syntactical equivalent of non-rhyming cheerleader chants … the dialectal expression of anything that ends with a vowel and the letter “m.”
So I reluctantly resigned myself to becoming a non-tongue-rolling, sauerkraut-eating teenaged Latin linguist. But when I told my high school counselor about my worries, she told me something that totally changed my mind about my new language. She said that 73 percent of English words come from Latin. That meant even if I didn’t learn a single Latin word, I’d still get at least a C on my report card. Geesh, this was almost better than when I realized that toasters were like tanning beds for bread.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in Mr. Margola’s Latin I class. All I had to do was pay attention to 27 percent of what he said, because I already knew 73 percent. I figured I’d pick up a word here and there and easily break 80 percent. I had everything all figured out. Then Mr. Margola started speaking some kind of foreign language.
“Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem,” he said chuckling to himself. (Loosely translated, it means, “In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.”)
We stared blankly at him as he continued …
“Nemo me impune lacessit,” he stated with hardened eyes. (“No one provokes me with impunity.”)
Then he smiled and said, “Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitir.” (“Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it sort of slips out.”)
Boy, was I in trouble. I was supposed to understand 73 percent of what he said, and I was at 0 percent! If I could have said it, I would have told him, “Veni, vidi, volo in domun redire.” (“I came, I saw, I want to go home.”)
But I was speechless. Mr. Margola launched into a dissertation about declensions and locative tenses and before we knew it we were chanting, “Bo, bis, bit, bimus, bitus, bunt!” Was this a language or some kind of Circus Maximus chariot race cheer?
In the end, I actually wound up learning enough to qualify for the 73rd percentile. And, believe it or not, I still remember some important Latin phrases that still to this day come in handy …
Hannibal ad portas. (“Hannibal is at the gates.”)
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris. (“If Caesar was alive, you’d be chained to an oar.”)
Non sum pisces. (“I am not a fish.”)
Machine improba! Vel mihi ede potum vel mihi redde nummos meos! (“You infernal machine! Give me a beverage or give me my money back!”)
Musa sapientum fixa est in aure. (“I have a banana in my ear”… see the column title)
So, thanks, Mr. Margola, it’s just like you said: “Sola lingua bona est lingua mortua!”… The only good language is a dead language!
• Michael Penkava is a retired teacher who taught for 35 years at West Elementary School in Crystal Lake. He is working on Latin subtitles for “Star Wars.” His favorite line is when Yoda says, “Sit vis nobiscum.” He can be reached at mikepenkava@comcast.net.