Many people are taking the positive opportunity to learn a language during the COVID 19 enforced self isolation and quarantine.

Nicla Gardini’s book, LONG LIVE LATIN invites and entices you to delve into the devalued language, to come face to face with the language of civilisation.

Subtitled The Pleasures of a Useless Language, LONG LIVE LATIN argues that ‘inscribed in Latin are the secrets that demand to be read.’

Gardini puts paid to the noxious cliché that Latin is a dead language, charging that it lives in literature, which is more enduring than oral practice.

“Literature is life, and it lives because it generates more writing and because readers exist and because interpretation exists, which is a dialogue between thought and the written word, a dialogue between centuries, which halts time on its ruthless march and continually renews our potential for permanence.”

A formidable mix of history, memoir and criticism, LONG LIVE LATIN contains such alluring and tantalising chapters as The Meaning of Sex, Syntactic Goosebumps and Deviances and Dental Care.

Gardini communicates passionately the beauty of Latin and why this ancient language is still essential to our lives today. He illustrates how much Latin you use when you speak English and how much of who you are linguistically you owe to this ‘useless language’.

The fundamental message is: Latin is Fun.

“Through studying, reading, writing and loving Latin, we step into the river of history, and there we find a deeper understanding of where we began and where we want to go.”

Veni, vidi, vici.

LONG LIVE LATIN by Nicola Gardini is published by Profile Books.