O Fortuna!

It's a pity I didn't pay more attention in Latin during the two years I took of it in high school. At the time, I really wasn't much of a language nut yet, and the same unfortunately goes for that one year of Spanish.

Yes, Latin is often a royal b*tch to conjugate and use, but really, what language isn't frustrating or difficult at some point or other? Each has a part you know you'd rightly like to strangle. But at any rate, Latin is so... succinct. Concise yet fully able to express what so many languages might take twice or thrice as much to express.

I think I rather like that about Latin.

For example, take this text from Carmina Burana, a collection of medieval poems. You probably know "O Fortuna" from this collection that Carl Orff set to music as that absurdly famous piece overused in every other dramatic film and its mother that sounds like a choir of hundreds singing on a cliff at the end of the world. (Ruckus, free for all college students, has it).

Cytharizat cantico        In harp-like tones sings
dulcis Philomena,          the sweet nightingale,
flore rident vario         with many flowers
prata iam serena,          the joyous meadows are laughing,
salit cetus avium          a flock of birds rises up
silve per amena,           through the pleasant forests,
chorus promit virgin       the chorus of maidens
iam gaudia millena.        already promises a thousand joys. Ah!

(Thanks Classical Net for the lyrics.)

See? Two- and three-word lines, and they can say all that. I don't know why I find that so fascinating. Latin can be so good at implying stuff with its endings left and right, you don't even realize how much you've just received from it (that is, if you read Latin). Speaking of which, I know it's a dead language, but there must surely be reason why it's still studied and learned today. Dead or not, there's obviously some reason it gains enough respect to remain preserved like that.

Semper ubi sub ubi, you guys! :P