Not all my attempts to learn a language have been successful. When, at age 11, I left primary school and I had to make a decision what to do in secondary school, my teachers recommended Latin. No one really asked me. It was just what you were supposed to do if your grades were high enough.
At the beginning I was quite enthousiastic, but this changed when I had to start learning vocabulary. When I learned French, our vocabulary was expanded through different themed chapters with texts and a few new words. In our Latin textbook, however, we had to learn entire lists of words. And each word has three forms, so actually it was even more demanding. I tried to memorize them by linking the words to French words I knew or by inventing links, but we had a test at the beginning of each class and I just could not put that much effort in it.
When Latin grammar also proved to be a drag and I could not see the use in learning an extinct language, I quickly bailed. In the middle of my second year, I switched Latin-Greek for Maths and Economics. However, I still remember some of those very first Latin words and sometimes, because of this, I can retrace the origins of a Romanic words. So I suppose the study did help me in some aspect.
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