Personal Narrative: Julius Caesar

The Only Thing Dead About Latin is Julius Caesar When I was a kid, any time I asked my parents what my ethnicity was, I got the same response. On my father’s side, a concise: Italian and German. My mother, on the other hand, never really could give me a straight answer, preferring to sum it up in a classic example of her southern slang, “I’m Heinz 57. A little bit of everythang.” My family never truly was attached to any cultural traditions, the last of my mostly Italian heritage disappearing with my paternal great grandparents and the traditions along with them. Now that I’m a bit older, I can see myself for what I am: white American. My culture is driving at sixteen and a few hundred years of institutionalized racism. It doesn’t take a genius to see the lacking appeal. Unimpressed with my geographical lot in life, I took to looking toward other countries for a little bit of intrigue.
The year that I turned 14 was the year that I started learning my first foreign language, French, to fulfill my school’s language
It has been a whirlwind of syntax and semantics, but for every new verb tense was a new opportunity for exposure to one of the 60 countries in which French is spoken. By immersing myself in the language in the form of movies, TV programs, news and media, music, and more, I’ve developed an appreciation not only for French culture but also for the American culture that makes me unique. As I move away from studying French and start on my next endeavor of learning Korean, the language is different but the excitement and curiosity is the same. One day, be it my fifth, sixth, or seventh language, I’ll learn Latin, and someone will ask, “Why are you studying Latin? It’s a dead language anyway.” I’ll be able to answer them truthfully, knowing the lessons I’ll learn from the texts and the