Last week, the Chamber of Deputies approved the Law on Pre-University Education, adopting a number of amendments, but No and proposed by us, namely the correction of the anomaly of the absence of the Latin language among the optional tests of the philological profile in the bachelor’s exam.

We sent our amendment to the representatives of all parliamentary parties on the education committees, and some of them (including the ruling parties) gave us an encouraging response.

It is difficult to understand what makes our elected representatives repeatedly reject for more than a decade an act of return to European normality that costs NOTHING to the Romanian state, but benefits students and society equally. In any EU country, it is possible to take the Latin language exam as part of the external examination. Even Bulgaria offers such an opportunity in the famous classical gymnasium in Sofia (by the way, there is no classical gymnasium in Romania).

Officially, I have not heard a debate on this topic in parliament. There were no answers to the requests of supporters of the Latin language. We would like to have counter-arguments with which to fight and build a discussion. But we get nothing but silence – and perhaps an exasperated expectation that we abandon our legitimate but politically inconvenient demands. Well, we won’t give up.

A suggested but not clearly stated argument would be that Latin is still a language dying. Let’s leave aside the fact that Latin is studied all over the world, and PISA leading countries like Poland and Estonia want to introduce it in schools as a second foreign language starting in the 7th grade. Let’s leave aside the fact that there are Latin-language schools in Italy, such as Academia Vivarium Novum.

Let’s take, however, at random one of the latest titles published on Contributorsarticle by Mr. Mihai Matsi:

“When nobody knows what school is anymore, it can be anything.”

If we take a closer look at this gnomic name, we will notice that each word has a Latin origin: “when” comes from when“no one” from Do not worry (accusative no needwhich comes in turn from us–fagotno man), “not” from not“can” from magicians“know” from Scirea“what” with what“e” from East“school” p school (used in Latin as such, but originally Greek, meaning quiet, rest, rest, relaxation), “she” from fig“maybe” from may“to be” from prepare“any” of veil and what.

From this small example, we can conclude that the Romanian language is actually a Latin language in its historical development in the Carpatho-Danube geographical space. Just as a mature fifty-year-old woman was once a fifteen-year-old girl without changing her identity, the ancient Latin language of this space was gradually transformed, during two millennia of continuous use, into modern Romanian. The Latin language is not dead at all, but simply “hidden” in the basis of our everyday language. What prevents us from saying today IMO instead of people or times instead of times? The fact is that the plural fagot in classical Latin it was hominesand his tempus, time. Why do we say “be good” and “don’t be good”, “go” and “don’t go”? Because we keep the Latin rule of constructing the negative imperative with the infinitive. So, the Latin language with its rules lives well, thank you, every time we open our mouths to express our opinion about anything, in Romanian.

Of course we can believe that Latin is dead, we can pretend it doesn’t exist, and that the language we use today was invented yesterday, and all its rules are random and meaningless. In the same way, why not, we can memorize thousands of technical terms in medicine and other sciences without knowing their Latin or Greek etymon, which would suddenly make them intelligible, from strings of meaningless letters. Students can learn Papgali without problems, even though they did not learn any poetry for school when they were children for pedagogical reasons, as it is barbaric to force students to repeat what they do not understand.

But the truth remains there, even if few can see it. We speak Latin, Latin morphology and syntax are an integral part of our language, culture and classical literature are key to understanding European history. In addition, the old languages ​​represent a kind for the youth practice stories: it is direct contact with ancient authors that can truly convince them of the authenticity of a story.

In the first century, Petronius sharply observed how students left school in May stupid than entered: adulescentulos in scholis stultissimos fieri. Undoubtedly, the school can turn its purpose – to impart knowledge – into the opposite. School cannot be neutral: it is either good or bad, it either transmits knowledge or blocks it. We cannot stand aside, neither as parents nor as ordinary responsible citizens, when, without any explanationstudents interested in Latin do not have the opportunity to study it as a baccalaureate exam in Romanian schools. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro