A few years back, my son Salvador M. Tulalian II (now a Certified Public Accountant) and I co-authored a book titled “De Profundis and Other Latin Terms.” It is a reference book intended primarily for those who have an abiding interest in language—and for the aspiring writers and lawyers everywhere.
Why write a book about Latin, a dead language?
According to Spanish novelist Carlos Ruiz Zafon (author of the international phenomenon “The Shadow of the Wind”), “[T]here is no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.”
Latin is the language of Plautus, Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, St. Augustine, and St. Francis of Assisi.
It is still the official language of the Roman Catholic Church—and was abandoned as her liturgical language only in 1969. Up to the 18th century it was the language of scholars of all disciplines (Newton’s Principia were written in Latin).
Latin (the language of ancient Rome) may technically be dead, but its ghost is still very present and alive; it continues to haunt many facets of our lives. Unarguably, Latin remains a “hitherto seismically significant” language. In the fields of law, medicine, and philosophy, we’ll come across a good amount of Latin terminology.
Prof. Steven H. Gifis, in his “Law Dictionary” (Hauppauge, New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.), wrote that “[T]he earlier cases upon which so much of our law is based are replete with old forms of action and peculiar words. They continue to confound experienced attorneys and judges…But the effect of this new jargon upon beginning law students is more than confounding. It is discouraging, frustrating, and even frightening.”
It is beyond dispute that Latin has been extremely influential on the English language; some Latin comes to English in more than root words as there are many English phrases used wholesale from the original Latin. Thus, a great many Latin words have simply become absorbed into the English language.
One enriches her or his life by enriching her or his vocabulary. For as the Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has put it so well: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
