Complete: Take a beginning Latin language class

Janet found that an 8-week "Introduction to Latin" course was being held via Des Moines Community Education this fall.  I very much enjoyed the class; I'm not sure that had I tried to begin to learn Latin on my own that I would have gotten very far.

We used a very well-known Latin text, Wheelock's Latin, and covered 6 chapters which included the first 2 conjugations and 2 noun declensions.  Toward the end of the class, we moved beyond the present tense to include the imperfect past and future.

I am continually fascinated by Latin:  it is so compact, it is so visually pleasing and logical.  It's interesting that the study of a foreign language has helped me to understand English better (vocabulary and grammar) and made me understand where many tenses and conjugations in French came from.

I was amused by the written structure of Latin with the verb invariably positioned at the end of a phrase:  I joked that it often looked like Yoda-speak.  I was also surprised that certain letters were pronounced differently in the classical period ('v' was like our 'w', 'c' like 'k'). The best examples of this are the words caesar and the name Cicero which should more properly be pronounced 'kaisar' and 'Kikero', and the phrase Veni, Vidi, Vici which is best pronounced 'waynee, weedee, weekee'.

The instructor was very passionate about the language and classics in general.

If there is enough participation, there should be a continuation of the class in February.  I'm looking forward to it.