Latin a dead language?

It is true, nowadays Latin is not used as a spoken language any more. But, then again, Latin is very much still "alive", because many people still learn to know the Latin language and, at the same time, the Roman world and its culture (even, through this, they learn about your their own "modern" culture).


1. Argumentation: Latin as a specially designed language.

Latin is not a language of communication, but of reflection: you do not talk in a language, but about it.
That means, in Latin lessons language and its rules are reflected upon (grammar).
Pupils are introduced into the system and the structure of language in general.
So, in understanding language as a system, several questions are dealt with:
- what is the functioning of language
- what determines a language and its functioning
- what relations are there between words in a sentence so that there can be formed an
expressive sentence with a meaning through them.

Several elementary theses concerning this context:
Latin is very clear and logical, because its meaning depends on the ending of words
(e.g. Petrus Sabinam amat) and is therefore very unequivocal.Each sentence is a puzzle of words held together through grammatic rules.
Latin increases education towards precise and accurate reading, "microscopic reading" (Maier)
Latin is, so to say, "Body Building Training" for your brain.
Latin conveys elementary equipment for learning languages.
Through Latin, you learn to know your own language better,native language's competence,
precision in expression; "competence of one's mother tongue".
Endeavour, keep on trying how to translate a Latin sentence into one's mother tongue most appropriately. So: school lessons are not held in Latin, but in mother tongues.
Training of expressional competence (constructing of sentences, defining right endings.)
The pronunciation of Latin is extraordinary simple(e.g. rusticus, amare, turris, consul, forum, mensa, aula).
Relation to many foreign words, due to Latin as the "mother" of all Roman languages.


2. Argumentation: Antiquity/world of the Romans

Latin is the key to the understanding of the ancient times and the occidental culture.

So: classical education as enlargement of the understanding of our modern world as well;
you get to know the roots and sources of our own today's world, as you learn about the roots and the sources of the world today.
Antiquity itself holds in store much"familiar", but also much "unknown" (then it is a "counterpart")


Familiar: scripture, school, jurisdiction, administration, architecture, remnants in modern cities reminding of antiquity

Unfamiliar: ancient world of Gods (Religion), slavery, structure of everyday's live.

Classical literature with its themes cocerns us "modern humans" still existentially, for example: