Tigna bina sesquipedalia paulum ab imo praeacuta dimensa ad altitudinem fluminis intervallo pedum dourum inter se iungebat. As a fun exercise, see if you can identify any word roots or vocabulary in the Latin before you read the translation. To see this in action, take a look at the following excerpt from Commentarii de Bello Gallico, rendered first in the original Latin, and then translated by Gardini. Gardini notes that “distance, breadth, depth, and all variety of record-keeping-of space and time alike-are distinctive traits throughout his work.” For Caesar, language is “an account of something that occurs in a particular moment, for a particular reason, in view of a particular aim, and with particular consequences.” Gardini elaborates that “his is a language under pressure: in the fewest words possible he must lay out how the structure develops, how its various parts interact, and how they correspond to form a whole.” Gardini considers as his primary example Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Caesar’s account of the Roman conquest of Gaul. In a chapter on Caesar, Gardini considers how Latin can lend itself to precision in structure. Gardini’s book is also an exploration of how language itself works, and how grammar supports us in our efforts to communicate with each other. This passionate book explores the literary power of Latin and invites all readers-regardless of their level of familiarity with the language-to celebrate how this esteemed language helped to shape our civilization. I’ve recently enjoyed reading Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language by novelist and translator Nicola Gardini. But we can also write long, sprawling sentences that move in one direction-only to then sharply turn to another direction-all before slowly reaching a gradual end. With our toolkit, we can write short, pithy sentences. Grammar is a toolkit in our construction, and it gives us opportunities to build all kinds of different sentences. But when we write, we have the opportunity to be literary-that is, to consciously reflect on the structure of language, and to make specific choices to enhance the beauty, effectiveness, or clarity of our language.
In everyday speech, we largely draw on our intuitive understanding of language to communicate.
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