I figured it all out today. I was talking to a fellow in the library, and I got onto my little speech (which I’ve given in this space before) about the big difference between English and German.
German is famous for long, long words. But those words can be broken down into their constituent parts and analyzed by any moderately educated German speaker. This gives the language tremendous precision.
In English, our long words tend to be borrowed from Latin. And hardly any of us speak Latin anymore. So most of us don’t know what our long words mean.
This has contributed tremendously to the obfuscation of our discourse.
It makes it possible to sound very intelligent in English without making any sense whatever.
In other words, it has given us modernism.
So all we have to do to reclaim the culture is to start teaching Latin again.
There, I’ve figured it out. I leave it to you to work out the details.
Hmmm . . . but has Germany been spared modernism?
I took Latin in High School and college, and that wasn’t very long ago. I’m pleased to say that even at a small university there was a decent number of us Latin students.
Vivat Lingua Latin!
Kelsey, you are the hope we’ve been looking for.
I am using Lingua Latina, the Familia Romana edition, to teach Latin at our little school this year. It’s sort of an immersion, teaching-language- via-a-reader, method. The students love it!
One of my favorite aspects of teaching Latin involves teaching the Our Father, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, etc. Seeing words like sanctificetur and learning them in Latin class makes a non-issue out of teaching the meaning of “sanctification.” Etc.