When Malin Moeller SC ’27 steps into the church, she’s hit with a profound wave of sadness. Tracing the Medieval Latin symbols engraved into arches and pillars, Malin feels a unique sort of linguistic exile: she longs to understand these ancient words with her own eyes. Months later, Malin sits in Pearsons Hall twice a week, trudging through Medieval Latin declensions and verb forms.
Continents away, and years ago, 17-year-old Lola Jakob SC ’27 sits in a dusty, closet-sized office, looking up at her philosophy teacher as he methodically draws each Greek letter on the window pane. For months, Lola has been meeting with Mr. Johnson twice a week to learn Ancient Greek. Surrounded by piles of ancient texts, she watches carefully as he spells out the alphabet on the sunlit glass.
There is nothing tangible that Lola will gain from hours spent looking up at that window. There is nothing concrete that Malin will earn from tracing those letters over and over again, searching for meaning. So why do they do it?
I have never studied a dead language, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea. So, I turned to students of Ancient Greek and Latin to simply ask: “Why?”
In these conversations, I found that the crux of the matter often lies not in the “why,” but the “who.”
Malin first began taking Classical Latin in fifth grade. Her teacher was an eccentric, motherly woman with a penchant for dry humor. She laughed easily, and would often recount her adventures from weekends spent at Latin conferences and retreats.
Sitting in Seal Court, Malin smiled as she jokingly referred to her teacher’s influence as a pyramid scheme: her passion was infectious, seeping into Malin’s skin as if by osmosis.
“I ask about rules of grammar, and in answering, Malin hands me a slice of history. “
“It’s like a chain,” she explained to me excitedly. She caught the Latin bug from her teacher, who had once fallen in love with the language herself, and on and on it goes — centuries of keeping this dead language alive through a chain of teachers and students that stretches back to Ancient Rome.
Smiling at the memory, she spoke of how words and phrases from the Latin classroom are constantly sneaking into her thoughts. “You know how people like that Roman Empire joke?” She laughed, “My Roman Empire is the Roman Empire.”
I ask about rules of grammar, and in answering, Malin hands me a slice of history.
The Ancient Romans were often at war, she explains, filling the lexicon of classical Latin with words like “obviam” (“to block”). When the Catholic Church revived Latin 500 years later, what was once a language of war evolved to reflect an ecclesiastical setting, and the word “obviam” became “to meet.” Fast forward to the present day, and we now know “obviam” as “obvious” — an idea that is “met” so often that it is immediately evident.
One day in class Lola came across the word “hippopotamus.” Years later, just the thought of this moment is enough to have her jumping out of her seat with excitement. “Hippos is Ancient Greek for horse,” she explains, “and potamos is river. So, when the Greeks arrived on Egypt’s Nile River for the first time, they saw hippos and declared them water-horses!”
In general, when people talk about why one learns a dead language, they don’t talk about river horses, or the etymology of “obvious.” They speak in tangible terms: the SATS, developing logical skills, general nerdiness, etc.
Sitting in Seal Court listening to Lola and Malin explain their “why,” I didn’t hear any of that. Instead, I felt a deep sense of wonder.
That feeling when you walk into a storied place — a temple, ruins, an old library — and your skin crawls with awe, struck by the weight of how small you are in the face of all the history, language and people that have stood there before you. You feel an urge to reach out into that void, but you’re confined by its distance from the present — from your language.
If there is a word in any language that encapsulates this feeling, I have yet to find it. The closest I have come is “reverence,” traced back to Classical Latin “revereri” — to stand in awe of.
Ironically, talking to Lola and Malin showed me that we simply don’t have the words to explain why anyone would be so passionate about diving into a dead language. To pin down the “why” would be as imperfect as wholly describing the feeling of standing in the Acropolis or the ruins of Angkor Wat, looking out at the hallowed halls of our history.
After a year of sitting in her Medieval Latin classroom, perhaps Malin will return to that same church. This time, however, she’ll trace over the letters with familiarity, and the wrenching sadness that pushed her to learn a dead language will evolve into the wonder of discovery.
Claire Welch SC ’27 has thoughts.
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