Okay, I’ll admit it … I wrote a scathing commentary on learning the Latin language.
Yeah, it’s not really all that scathing; it’s just seems that way because sometimes a few people get emotional about their choices and think that because Latin is good for them, then it must be good for everyone else and anyone who isn’t learning Latin is, therefore, offensive, incompetent, and ignorant. Those folks don’t like my little composition.
So in that little essay I mention that Latin is good for those entering the clergy or going into linguistics or something like that. And now, I’ve found another job that sometimes employs the use of the Latin language!
Here’s a quote from The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece:
Wait, I have to set up the story first. Two art history students in Rome are part of a team working on finding out which of two paintings is the original Caravaggio (a painter) painting of John. These two ladies are researching the old inventories of a certain family to see if they can find mention of an old painting because they are trying to find out when it was acquired by the family. They are reading inventories all the way back into the 1600s. Now I’ll try again with the quote:
It took them hours to check the pages of a single inventory. Some of the old volumes had held up well over the years, but in others the ink had turned feathery brown on the brittle pages. They bent over the documents, trying to decipher the handwriting of notaries and bookkeepers, which was, it seemed, invariably small and difficult ot puzzle out, with some entries in Latin and others in old Italian, full of abbreviations and curious spellings.
Cool, huh? So, there’s an additional practical use of the Latin language.
