Audio, Video, Disco

What a strange title! Three random words splatted together in meaningless abandon. In fact, they are now my favourite words, discovered while researching blog matters. Audio, Video, Disco is actually Latin for 'I hear, I see, I learn'. Very teacherly (although I’m sure we’ve all been familiar with 'Audio, Video, Ignorio' too).

Of course, those of you versed in the ways of Latin didn't need such a patronising translation. And here leads to the subject of my blog: To Latin or Not to Latin? That is the question.

Latin is a dead language. Officially. So it's a language that doesn't sell well in holiday phrasebooks. It's not going to get you out of a hairy situation with a cab driver on the continent. So WHY WHY WHY do people learn it?

One reason for learning Latin, as the linguists among us would say, is that an understanding of Latin gives you an understanding of the foundations of language. Apparently Latin can make you a better language learner.

Whatever. There is only one reason to learn Latin: University Challenge. Now I am a Latin wasteland. I have about 18 words (now 21: audio, video, disco). However, my flatmate, let's call her Isabella Von Curtsenburg (I can't thrust her into the limelight of my readership - well into the single figures - so you may guess I am using a pseudonym) has quite the smattering of Latin. And four out of five times, Isabella wins at University Challenge. This, of course, has nothing to do with intellectual capacity! Rather, when to me it sounds like Jeremy Paxman is doing an impression of Chewbacca, apparently he is saying a Latin term. A translate goes into action. And before I know it Isabella has won. Game over. I lose.

Learning Latin also has the added advantage of effortlessly understanding academic bric-a-brac. In days of yore, when I was at university, I remember my lecturer talking about the ideals of ‘primus inter pares’. I needed this in English, please! To which my lecturer replied ‘First Among Equals’. “Ooooh, that’s a book by that Jeffrey Archer” (read in the style of Barbara Windsor). What a treat it would be to access my linguistic toolkit without thinking of that ex con and moral gymnast.... or of Up Pompeii.

So, readership of nearly ten, learn Latin. And next time you are glued to a difficult and obscure game show it won't be proxima sed non corona (close but no cigar). Now I have to go... P Diddy’s Star Maker is on...