In my first week of 4 years of HS Latin I learned this:
Latin is a dead language
as dead as it could be.
First it killed the Romans
and now it’s killing me.
Here's the rest of it:
Latin is a dead language,
or so the freshmen say —
yet every doctor, lawyer, priest, and botanist
uses it every day.
If this is death,
it’s doing quite well —
haunting half the dictionary,
running science like a cartel.
So if Latin’s killing you,
take comfort in the fact:
you’re being murdered by a language
with impeccable tact.
Right! Almost all of us had that scribbled in our text books.