Precerpt from My 20th Language: L2 Latin

Into Adult Years

Latin did not end with high school. It simply changed shape and followed me into adulthood, showing up in places I never expected and proving itself useful in ways no guidance counselor could have predicted.

During my international consulting years, I found myself needing French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian—even a bit of Moldovan. All those Romance languages, all those verb systems and noun patterns, were instantly familiar because Latin had already laid the tracks. Once you’ve internalized conjugation and declension, the rest of the Romance family feels like meeting cousins: different personalities, same bones.

And it wasn’t just the Romance languages. When I later encountered German and Russian—languages that left many of my college classmates bewildered—their case systems made sense to me. Declension wasn’t foreign; it was simply another variation on a theme I had learned at nine. Latin had quietly prepared me for linguistic terrains far beyond its own borders.

Then came medicine. With two disabled children, both with rare diseases, I found myself navigating a world where Greek and Latin form the backbone of every diagnosis, every test, every anatomical term. Understanding those roots didn’t make me a doctor, but it made me a far more effective communicator with doctors. It gave me shorthand. It gave me speed.

One physician, after listening to me interpret a string of medical terminology, said, “You have a medical background.”

“No,” I told him. “I have a Greek and Latin background.”

He laughed—and then invited me into the echocardiogram backroom while he examined my infant son. As he pointed out structures and anomalies on the screen, I was mentally grabbing for every scrap of Latin and Greek I had ever learned. But I followed. And following mattered.

Latin also found me in the pews. The Catholic Mass still exists in Latin, and I am one of the few who can follow it without a missal or translation. More than once I’ve thought about offering a class for parishioners—something simple, something to make the liturgy feel less distant and more alive. Perhaps someday, when time allows.

Looking back, I realize Latin never really left. It threaded itself through my languages, my work, my children’s medical journeys, my faith life. It has been a quiet companion, a structural support, a lens through which the world has often made more sense.

It seems, in the end, that Latin has followed me all the days of my life.

For more precerpts from My 20th Language, click HERE.

For more posts about language learning, click HERE.

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