Latin Everyday: January 2020

Latin in everyday life

Quid Pro Quo - I have been hearing this one a lot within the last year on the news surrounding the Presidential impeachment trial. The context of this is how Democrats think that Donald Trump made a Quid Pro Quo deal with the Ukrainian PM. The Latin influence on this phrase is very easy to spot, the phrase itself has not changed from it’s Latin roots of meaning “this for that”, representing a barter of sorts. The origins of this phrase in the modern era begin in the 1500s referring to the substitution of one medicine for another, and it undoubtedly had other use cases within actual Roman Culture.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc - This was a phrase that I heard last month on the TV show The West Wing and immediately knew it was latin. The phrase was used in the context of President Bartlet describing a series of events that transpired and caused each other. The latin influence of this is as apparent as the first in that it hasn’t changed from the original Latin it originated from. The origins of this phrase are mostly the way in which Romans told each other “x happened after y, therefore y caused x to happen.”

Imitatio Dei - This was a phrase that I heard about a month ago in World Religions class meaning To be like God. The Latin influence on this word was first, Dei, meaning god. Second, Imitatio is a latin word that means to copy or imitate. The origins of this phrase are mostly from the other similar sounding phrase imago Dei and was most likely created out of it. It mostly started to appear in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible.

Deification - This word was thrown out by Dr. Blue about a month ago going along with Imitiatio Dei, this word however means the act of becoming a God. The latin influence of this word comes from the vocabulary word Dei, meaning God, and when you attach the “fication”, it becomes the act of changing into whatever the prefix is. The origins of this is from the Latin word Dei meaning God and was a very present phrase in Latin culture.

Eucharist - This word was also told to me by Dr. Blue in World Religions last week when we were talking about Christianity. While this specific word doesn’t have any direct connection back to the Latin like the other ones, it does originate from the Greek word Eucharistia meaning “to give thanks”

This phrase was coined by Ignatius of Antioch in the late 1st century, referring to the last supper that Jesus had.

Latin is a truly incredible language to learn in the modern day, both for vocabulary and the origins of a good part of the world. It is also helped me in English, especially in 8th grade when I had learned the roots of some words that could have been derived from Latin. I believe that all people should have exposure to latin to guide them throughout their language journey.

Matthew Wiggans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation_of_God#External_links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist

Latin in Everyday Life

Brian Tierney

I periodically find miscellaneous references to Latin as well as Roman culture. It has actually made experiencing pop culture much more interesting, due to Latin's obscurity when compared to other, not-dead, languages it makes the references I understand feel like a secret and adds some dimension to whatever it is.
The first reference that came to mind happened all the way back in 8th grade, while creating a project on a specific aspect of World War I. During the genesis of the assignment, I got a list of the topics I could cover; and I chose to cover weapons that have now been banned, due to the Geneva Conventions. As a result of my choice the topic of Mustard Gas came up and while researching it I found that the technical name for Mustard Gas is actually Lacrimat Gas, due to causing the exposed to unwilling evacuate their tear ducts. The word Lacrimat comes from the Latin, Lacrimo, which means, "To cry".
As a late I have been occasionally listening to a podcast by the creator of Community and Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon, called Harmontown. When discussing podcasts, especially those that are on Youtube, where I would listen, usually the poster would just put the logo for the podcast on the screen the whole time. This happened to be the case, and while looking at the logo I saw that it actually resembled a crest. The Latin on the crest states, "Scribimus Latinum Sine Intellectum" which translates as, "We Write Latin Without Understanding".
To continue the theme of Dan Harmon, I guess, due to my interest in his podcast I also decided to rewatch a bit of his show, Community, and I remembered the flag of the school in the show, the entiretyof which I can not state; however, I can say that their motto began with the phrase, "E Pluribus" meaning, "Out of many" this is a play on the famous phrase, "E Pluribus Unum" which means, "Out of many, one" commonly seen on U.S currency.
Also fairly recently I was watching a video called: "Real Lawyer Reacts to Better Call Saul" and during this video the reactor, in critiquing Saul and his ability as a lawyer mentions, "Res ipsa loquiter" meaning, "the thing speaks for itself". This is used frequently in law when discussing evidence that no further explanation is required with.

Latin's influences in my everyday life

Jefferson Ratliff

I see many Latin influences in my everyday life

Example 1: A recent example is in my religion class with Dr.Blue there are many influences from Roman history and culture. He will often ask David, Mathew and I about the translations of words in Latin that are often used in academia as well as in the early church. The Romans were the occupying empire of Palestine during the life of Jesus and are talked about heavily in the gospels.

Example 2: Over winter break we traveled to Colorado with my family. For just a couple of days, some of our close friends came into town to stay with us. One day conversation about world langue was stared up especially because out friends have young daughters who were being to think about which languages to take as well as my sister who I am trying to convince to take Latin over French(eww). Someone brought up how Spanish and French share many of the same words and sounds. I was able to answer this question explaining how Latin is the root langue for both French and Spanish.

Example 3: On the plane this summer coming back home from Morrocco I watched a pretty bad movie called the “Ides of March” a political drama starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney. In this movie, a political strangest betrays his cadet by working with the other side of the Democratic Party in the Ohio primary which was going to decide the winner of the primary. The movie’s title is an obvious reference to the date in which Julius Ceasar was betrayed by Brutus his closest ally in the senate when he was assinated. This highlights how even thousands of years later roman culture still has a lot of influence in the world.

Example 4: Right by my house there is both a Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic church all of which have clock towers that all use roman numerals. Roman numbers also make an appearance in the current book we are reading in English “The Violent Bear it Away” to make each chapter. There have also been multiple times in which I have helped others with Roman Numeras especially the larger ones.

Example 5: My Latin education has helped me understand more and more about the vocabulary of scientific words. Elements on the periodic tables’ names were easier to understand last year in my chemistry class this year in Bio understanding the scientific names of many of the organelles and spices that we talk about in class. Latin influenced many of the vocabularies of western science and medicine because of it’s once universal education around most of Western Europe and the educated world.

Latin Is important to learn because it allows you to learn so much about the root of our style of society. You can learn so much about the history of the ancient world and the legacy it left behind on civilization. Latin has impacted my education because it has broadened my grammar and vocabulary skills. I have learned so much about English through Latin and I can’t wait to learn even more.

How Latin has Helped Me

The first time Latin helped me was when I was watching a VSauce called How People Disappear. In the video, he used a legal term that applies to people who have been missing for 8 years and are pronounced dead, "In Absentia". My saucy Lain knowledge helped me to understand it as I knew in meant in, and I took a guess that Absentia was absent or not present since that word is identical to Absentia, and it turned out I was right. In math class a few weeks ago, we were learning how to classify polynomials by their power and number of terms. The word for a polynomial having a power of 4 or 5 is quartic and quintic respectively. My expert knowledge of the numbers in Latin reminded me that Quatuor and Quinque were 4 and 5 respectively. In ninth grade, the grammar I learned in Latin helped me to understand the grammar in English that we were learning. Participles were the main thing I was struggling within English but learning them in Latin and how to translate them helped me to identify them in English. Throughout my life, Latin has helped me understand why words that have a singular ending in -us like octopus and nucleus have a plural ending of -i. This is because of the second declension noun endings of the nominative singular being -us and the nominative plural being -i (yes I know these two endings but not many others). Lastly, in Rocket League which is basically car soccer., there is a car called the dominus. My Latin skills helped me to realize that dominus was a Latin word, mostly by seeing the -us ending. Whether on purpose by the developers or by coincidence, the word Dominus means master and its the main car used by people.

Latin has helped me in even more instances than in these examples throughout my life. It has helped me so much in science classes, allowing me to understand words that I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't taken Latin. I'm probably going to continue taking Latin in college since I want to study meteorology and there's a lot of Latin stuff in that field.

Connor Baldwin.

how latin has helped

Emma Blann

Example 1
Chemistry:
making it easier to find elements on the periodic table. like gold is au. I never would have known if I didn't know it came from the Latin word aurum which means gold.

example 2
Law and order:
I love shows like law and order and on one episode they used pro bono. pro bono is Latin for good. it is used in law to mean "denoting work is undertaken without charge, especially legal work for a client with a low income." so an attorney can represent someone pro bono.

example 3
English:
I used ie in a paper I wrote. ie comes from the Latin phrase id est witch means that is. I used it to make me sound smarter.

example 4
nancy drew:
My newest favorite show on the CW network is nancy drew. they used the phrase Post mortem. this means after death literally translated. she said it while she was sneaking into the morgue to get a DNA sample.

example 5
mom:
My mom used Vice versa in a sentence and I usually didn't notice that that was Latin. it means The position being reversed. I use this so often in order to save words.

How Latin Has Helped in my Everyday Life- Natasha Silverlieb

1. World Olympics
The first Olympics were held in Greece in 776 BC, starting with the Pentathlon, running events, wrestling, boxing and more. We learned all about the different events and when they were done during the World Olympics in the gym after legacy this week. Since I knew this information it was cool to be able to see the different events that have been added over the years.
2. Marine Corps
I was watching a TV show called Shooter with my dad a few weeks ago and it showed the marine corp's logo and their motto (Semper Fidelis), which in English translates to "always faithful. I was able to break down the word and figure out what it meant in Latin. It was interesting to see how Latin plays a role in American society and even American lead organizations.
3. Social Media
I was scrolling through TikTok like I do every night, and it is this new trend to read funny quotes, tweets, etc. and one account read a tweet by someone and it read " I am fairly certain that YOLO is Carpe Diem for stupid people." this was interesting because I knew from Latin that Carpe Diem meant, seize the day and I knew that YOLO meant, you only live once. It was interesting to see that I wasn't the only one that understood the joke because Latin has a spread in some of the quotes that it has.
4. Natatorium
I was talking with the weight lifting coach about how Parish should build a swimming pool so we don't always have to go to Greenhill and borrow theirs. It got me thinking because that sounds like it would be a Latin word and sure enough, after enough thinking, I remembered that natare meant to swim and I then linked that to natatorium which is where someone swims.
5. Penicillin
I had surgery 2 weeks ago and I was prescribed a high dose of penicillin for the pain that I was going to have and that is rooted back to the Latin word of penicillus which means paintbrush and it also connected to the way the mold looks that is used when the medication is poured up.

After taking Latin for a few years I have realized how much of our actual lives envolve Latin roots or even straight-up Latin. I think Latin is nice in the way that is has been able to help me break down complex English words to be able to obtain the definition. Latin is one of the oldest languages and it has so much connected to it.

Natasha Silverlieb

How Latin Impact My Everyday Life

1: Last Wednesday, I was playing a new game called Temtem and decided to work on completing some of the in-game quests. I found one in a town called Deniza where I was tasked with helping a young boy and his father use flight machines they had built to descend to the beach below. The quest was called "The Denizan Icarus" and it was clearly alluding to the popular Roman myth of Icarus and Daedalus, which we learned about last year in Latin III.

2: Although everyone else also experienced this, my second choice is the upper school-wide Language Olympics that happened this Wednesday. Latin was running two stations: arm-wrestling and gladiator fights, and David, Brian, and I were in charge of the arm-wrestling station during the last rotation of the event. The Latin stations were related to combat for spectators (as the names would suggest) and I think overall the event was definitely more fun than a normal school event and more so than I was expecting it to be.

3: Early last month, I was playing a game called Destiny 2, and I was checking out some of the new weapons that were added to the game. There seemed to be a theme around the weapons being named around grammar and English or Latin cases, and the one I found first was a small gun called the Subjunctive. This was evidently a nod to the Latin case of the same name, which we first heard about in Latin II but didn't explore until Latin III and IV.

4: During Christmas Break I had a meeting with one of Parish's old music teachers, Mrs. Grey. She was helping me learn about various colleges and mentioned the one she went to and its motto. She went to University of Miami, whose motto is "Prodesse Quam Conspici" which translates to "to accomplish without being conspicuous".

5: In Latin Class last week, we were coming up with ideas for the blog post and somehow the topic of Duracell batteries came up, which was exactly what we needed. Dura comes from the Latin word of the same name, and means durable or hard. The batteries themselves are marketed as durable and long-lasting, which is why they were given the name Duracell.

Latin has positively impacted me in a multitude of ways that I never even thought it would be helpful for. One example of this would be the PSAT, in which we are tasked with finding out the meaning of words and their derivatives. To be honest, many of those words I only knew because they were from Latin words, and I was able to get the right answer because of what I've learned in class. I always recommend Latin to the 6th graders in Drumline, because it was one of the best choices I made at Parish and still continues to pay off.

Cole Hudson

Benji Purcel

Mock Trial:
In 8th grade humanities, we learned about how to do a mock trial. We reviewed the Senate and Mr. Loveland asked what its motto and what does it mean? I answered that the motto was "E Pluribus Unum" which is Latin for "One for many." This motto makes sense for the Senate as there's only one senate which serves millions of Americans.

Carpe Diem
When I was little, I used to go to preschool at Carpe Diem which means "Seize the Day." This is a perfect name for the school as in preschool, children are being taught basic needs and knowledge like walking and learning the alphabet which is relevant to "seizing the day" if someone mastered their alphabet or walked on two feet for the first time.

SMU Basketball Game
I have never been to a SMU basketball game before and on January 1st, 2020, I went to my first game. Right before the game started and when they were announcing the players, the announcer said "Veritas Liberabit Vos," which is the SMU motto-meaning "the truth shall set you free." I believe this a unique motto to SMU as its a prestigious college that'll teach you information that'll "set you free" in life.
(https://dictionary.babylon-software.com/veritas_vos_liberabit/)

World Language Olympics
A couple days ago, the entire Upper School competed in the very first Parish "World Language Olympics," in which my advisory got 2nd place in. Out of the four language classes in the Olympics, Latin has the most connection with the origin of the Olympics. The Olympics were first created to honor Zeus and they involved events such as chariot racing and pentathlon which still occurs today in forms as car racing and field events. Also, the Olympic motto is "Citius Altius Fortius" which is Latin for "Faster Higher Stronger."
https://blogs.transparent.com/latin/the-olympic-games-in-ancient-rome/
https://www.olympic.org/the-olympic-motto

Impeachment
I'm interested in politics and right now, the impeachment is taking place against President Donald Trump and one of the phrases that is spoken often is "no quid pro quo." Which means "no this for that." Democrats want to believe that President Trump withdrew money from Ukraine while Trump is saying no. This phrase and its Latin terminology is very important to American's as its one of the basis of the impeachment to impeach the President of the United States of America which affects every American and other countries.

Lots of people ask me why I take Latin and "isn't Spanish more useful?" What they don't know is how helpful Latin is to other subjects. For instance, we learn a lot about participles and indirect statements in Latin which also help me with participle quizzes and review in English. Also, lots of prefixes come from Latin words which have helped me on the PSAT and ACT practice which will eventually help me on the SAT and ACT. Lastly, Latin can help me if I go to medical school or law school as lots of medical terms and legal terms come from Latin.

How Latin has helped me in my everyday life

When I looked on the Parish portal on January 30th 2020, I saw something I never realized before. I saw that my class level was represented by roman numerals. For example this class was Latin III. I know this now because we would have things numbered by Roman numerals sometimes.
I realized one of the cards in clash royale was a Latin reference today(January 31st 2020). It is the royal recruits who have shields and spears that sort of represent Roman ones. I understood this reference because our Roman military project.
Today, I noticed in this game based off the Tokyo 2020 Olympics they still have all the original events from the first Olympics. They still had events such as discus throw, boxing, and equestrian. I realized this because our world language Olympics preparation.
Today I remembered a game titled kid Icarus which is a reference to mythology. Icarus is from Greek mythology and the son a Daedalus who is the creator of the Labyrinth. I remembered this character because of our constant references to mythology in our class.
In super smash bros. ultimate there is a spirit named Medusa. This character takes its inspiration and characteristics from the Medusa in mythology. She is from the kid Icarus series and one of the major villains. She is a major character in mythology and I learned most of my mythology knowledge in Latin class.

Latin has showed me so many cool references and helped me in different ways.It has shown me how to read Roman numerals which will reoccur throughout my life. It has made me understand many references to Roman life and culture in different media outlets. It has also made me understand many mythology references from different parts of pop culture. Latin has helped me understand things in my everyday life that I never would before and I am grateful for that.

Latin in Everyday Life

This example is from a popular game called League of Legends. The game itself has 148 characters to pick from and each has its own character background or “lore”. However two of these champions resemble ideas from Greek/Roman mythology. One of the characters, Cassiopeia, resembles Medusa in her character design and abilities. She has a snake’s body as her lower half and snakes for hair much like Medusa. Her main ability is an attack that turns everyone in front of her to stone. However if you don’t look at her then it doesn’t work on you. Knowing the mythology of Medusa and how her “ability” works helped me learn how to play against her ability to turn people to stone. In addition to this, there is a character who resembles a gladiator in the weapons and armor he wears. He has a Pilum for a weapon and a circular greek shield. In chemistry, we’re learning about ions and ionic properties of elements. Recently, he gave us an example of how to classify the different ions of different elements. One of these examples was using roman numerals to identify ions of elements such as titanium. Knowing the Roman numerals helped me when identifying the different ionic properties of the elements. Recently, I saw a meme involving the roman testudo formation. Knowing the context of the formation from my project about roman military helped me understand and relate to the meme more than I would be able to. It helped me find actual humor in the meme instead of not as a non-latin student would have. The meme was a direct reference to the Roman testudo shield formation. The Romans would link their shields to form a shield from all sides including above them. They would also use spears in between the gaps of the shield. During my Christmas break, I had to go to church on Christmas eve. In the service, they hand out a congregation handout where it has everything you’re supposed to say. In the handout, there were several sections that were written in latin. Being able to recognize the vocabulary in the handbook allowed me to read the latin and translate it (even though it was already translated below) I was watching a show called Gravity Falls when I saw that an episode where the name was “Carpet Diem”. The whole premise of the episode was about a body switching carpet that turned you into another person for a day. Knowing the definition of the motto, “seize the day”, helped me recognize a deeper meaning in the show which was to make your day worth the time. The characters had an entire day to live as another person so they had to “seize the day” because they would never be able to do it again. Carpet Diem is a direct reference to the latin motto “Carpe Diem” which means “Seize the day”.

Aside from the normal “Latin helps your vocabulary”, knowing latin vocabulary and greek/roman history lets me see and understand references to both in everyday things. Taking latin helps you learn about Roman and Greek history which had a very big impact on the history of the world. In addition to this, knowing vocabulary and grammar can help you read latin that you would see in church of on a coin for example.

-Jonas Pearson

Five Examples of Latin In Everyday Life

One example of Latin making an appearance outside of Latin class was in eighth-grade vocabulary. A word that we were studying was "ocular" and I had a background of what its definition was due to my knowledge of the Latin word "oculus, oculi". Making this comparison was helpful to me and it aided my studying for and performance on the quiz.

Another example of Latin being present in the world was about a month ago on the popular quiz show, "Jeopardy". One of the questions on the show asked contestants on the show to translate the Latin motto "Veni, Vidi, Vici" and I was able to do so due to my knowledge of Latin words and mottoes. This was a fun use of my Latin knowledge outside of class and it would have gotten me $400.

My Latin knowledge has also come into play when looking at coins. In 7th grade, I was observing the back of a nickel and I noticed that it had a tiny "E Pluribus Unum" inscription on its back. I recognized that it was Latin and asked what it meant the next day in class. My teacher said that its translation was, "Out of many, one". This example of Latin being everywhere fascinated me and I still often look at that little inscription on coins.

Football also has Latin within it. When I was younger, I was watching football and I noticed a team called the Tennessee Titans. I had no idea what a Titan was until middle school Latin when I learned that they were figures in Greek and Roman mythology as opposed to a glorified knight or something of that nature. I still think of this when the Cowboys play the Titans.

Finally, Latin culture is present in the Olympics. Rome (along with Greece) were the first two civilizations to practice the athletic festival happening once every four years. I learned as recently as today that some of the ancient sports such as wrestling, equestrian, and tracks have stood the test of time and are still prevalent in the Olympics today. I love sports and it is crazy to think that some of my favorites were being played by people so long ago.

I have come to appreciate Latin and all the things in the modern world that derive from it. Even though Latin is a dead language and the Roman Empire is a thing of the past, it lives on through various words, phrases, and sports. Paying attention in class has served me well and I expect it to continue doing so in the future.

- Will Schnepf

Latin In Everyday Occurrences

1. The Natatorium:

During my last swim meet, as we approached the building in the car, I looked out the window and saw that scripted on the building was the word "natatorium." At first, I didn't know what this meant but then I remembered back to Latin and realized that this word came from the root "nare" or "to swim" in Latin. This would later be translated into "natator" or "swimmer," hence the swimming pools the building was made for.

2. The name "Endymion:"

My cat is named Endymion, and I knew the myth behind his name before, but recently I was reading a book and his name popped up again but this time in a new myth. This myth was about Zeus and the goddess Selene. Apparently, Endymion was her lover and he was put into an eternal slumber by Zeus, and the reason why I'm writing about this in the first place is that in the story, there are a bunch of references to other gods and goddess I only knew about because of Latin class, so I didn't have to spend the extra thirty minutes looking up all the gods I potentially didn't know. You got to love Saturnalia and the god/goddess project of Latin two!

3. Cleopatra:

When we were researching for our project over Caeser, I stumbled upon an article all about Cleopatra and this article described her life with Caeser and especially her suicide. This spiked interest so I read more into it and I'm glad I did. A couple weeks later in another class, we randomly got on the topic of her and I was the only one who knew how she died in the whole class. Let's just say I got some extra brownie points with my History teacher because of Latin class.

4. "Ad Astra:"

A couple days ago, I was in chem and we were brainstorming different Latin sayings. One of them was "ad astra," and only the Latin students knew what it actually translated to. Everyone else knew it had something to do with the stars but they didn't know the origin or the literal translation for it. So I told them it means "to the stars...," and it was first written by Virgil who had said "sic itur ad astra," meaning, "thus one journies to the stars."

5. "Abolir:"

I'm currently teaching myself french and as I was studying, tonight actually, I came upon a word I had never seen before but I knew what it meant because of Latin. The French word "abolir" means "to abolish" in English, this is also "abolere" in Latin, and I once remember looking up this word in the Latin dictionaries one time for something. Since they look so similar, I put two and two together and got the translation right. I was so proud of myself!

Reflection:

Latin has not only helped me a lot but definitely with learning a romantic language. I can't even count the number of times I have known the definition of a word I had never seen because of Latin. This has helped me tremendously because I have the memory of a swallow, so it's hard for me sometimes when it comes to vocab, Latin has been that extra tool in my toolbox for new words and it makes me happy to know that it will be there for the rest of my life. I believe everyone should take Latin because of the amount of help it gives to someone when they are trying to become bilingual in a romantic language, plus Latin is just a fun class overall, so i just highly recommend the class to anyone (it's way better than Spanish).

By: Cat Grayson