It's All French (or Latin) To Me

Mom may not remember what day of the week or season of the year it is, but she can still conjugate Latin verbs.

The other day I heard her murmur a word as she worked her acrostic puzzle.  Then she said, “I can conjugate that!” and proceeded to do so.  Intrigued, I asked her what the word meant.  She looked a little surprised and said, “Oh, you know, phooey, like when you don’t like something.”  She went on to tell me that back in her school days she used to get a kick out of “conjugating” random English words.  They didn’t even have to be verbs.

Boy, she sure fooled me.  Of course, my Latin background is not as extensive as hers:  I just did one year of high school Latin to her two years.  I didn’t want to take Latin at all; however, I wanted to take French less.  Those were the only options at my small high school, so I had to put off my first language love, German, until I got to college.

My Latin teacher (who also taught French) was from the South and nearing retirement.  On a fairly regular basis, she got confused about which class we were.  I remember her asking us in her unmistakable Southern accent:  “Par—lay—voo—frawn--say?!”  

Thus, I have never been sure of the Latin pronunciation I learned.  What if I spoke Latin with a Southern accent?  It’s a little embarrassing to admit that even as a high school freshman, I was naïve enough to wonder how we could speak a dead language in the first place.  I guess I thought “dead” meant it was unpronounceable.  It doesn’t matter much, anyway, because I only remember two sentences:  “Paulus est puer.  Paula est puella.”  (Translation:  Paul is a boy.  Paula is a girl.)

So now you have the sum of my Latin and French learning.  I leave it to Mom to do the conjugating around here.