
Latin, as everyone knows, is a dead language. But despite this well-known fact, the Latin language is becoming increasingly important in the twenty-first century workplace. Why? There are three primary reasons:
- Modern digital equipment responds better to Latin than to any other language. If your printer is giving you trouble, and responds to your most tender and patient ministrations with unintelligible error codes, try responding in Latin. Nine times out of ten, your problems will melt away like the morning dew, and your colleagues will look at you with undisguised admiration and envy.
- Using Latin phrases regularly will guarantee you a raise.
- Latin will help you develop a great sense of humor.1
So we encourage you to dig out your Plautus and your Terence, and proudly display your copy of Ovid’s Ars amatoria whenever you have the chance. Dictum sapienti sat est.
Image: L’homme vêtu d’une tunique dit « l’orateur », statue en alliage cuivreux de la période Ier siècle av. J.-C. – Ier siècle ap. J.-C., découverte à Neuvy-en-Sullias en 1861 et exposée au musée historique et archéologique de l’Orléanais, Orléans, Loiret, France. Photo © Croquant / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Although some Ancient
Roman joke books were written in Greek. ↩
Canalosus!