Arrividerci, Latin 

Italian, I discovered, was Latin with all the difficulty removed. Much as a skilled chef fillets the whole skeleton out of a fish, some friendly folks somewhere had lifted all that grammar (at least, most of it) out of Latin and called the remainder Italian!

There was no nominative-genitive-dative-accusative in Italian. Not a trace, except in a few pronouns which I knew I could easily take prisoner because we had the same thing in English (me is the accusative of I). Italian verbs did misbehave a little, but not to the psychedelic extent of Latin verbs. And Italian verbs were a lot easier to look at.

I bought Hugo's book and went through it like a hot knife through butter. I could have conversed in Italian within a month if there'd been anybody around who could have understood – a learning aid which the Greensboro of that day, alas, could not provide.

I was clearly a beaten boxer on the comeback trail. Why was I all of a sudden doing so well in Italian after having done so poorly in Latin?

Was it my almost abnormal motivation? No. I'd had that in Latin, too. Was it that Italian was a living language you could go someplace some day and actually speak, whereas Latin was something you could only hope to go on studying? That's a little closer to the mark, but far from the real answer.

My blitz through Italian, after my unsuccessful siege of Latin, owed much to the fact that in Italian I didn't miss day four! I'm convinced that it was day four in ninth grade Latin that did me in. No other day's absence would have derailed me. When I left on day three we were bathing in a warm sea of pleasant words. If only I'd been there on day four when Miss Leslie explained the importance of grammar, I might have felt a bit dampened, but I'd have put my head into the book, clapped my hands over my ears, and mastered it.

 

After Italian I surged simultaneously into Spanish and French with self study books. Though by no means fluent in either Spanish or French by summer's end, I had amassed an impressive payload of each. I was ready to stage my come from behind coup.

Regulations in my high school demanded that a student complete two years of Latin with good grades before continuing with another language. After that, one could choose Spanish or French. I had completed only one year of Latin with poor grades, and I wanted to take both Spanish and French!

I had not yet learned the apt Spanish proverb that tells us "regulations are for your enemies." I learned the concept, however, by living it.

Miss Mitchell was the sole foreign language authority of the high school. She taught Spanish and French. She was considered unbendable — in fact, unapproachable — in matters of regulation fudging. I didn't know that on the first day as classes were forming. I'm glad I didn't.

I went to her classroom and asked if I might talk something over with her. I told her I was particularly interested in foreign languages, and even though I'd only had one year of Latin and didn't do well in it at all, I'd really like to move into Spanish and French. If she could only see her way clear to let me, I'd appreciate it forever and try awfully hard.

She asked if I had a transcript of my grades from Miss Leslie's Latin class. No, I didn't, I explained, but I had something more to the point. I'd bought books in Spanish and French over the summer and gotten a good head start. I hoped a demonstration of my zeal would win her favour.

Like a tough agent softening sufficiently to let a persistent unknown comic do part of his routine, Miss Mitchell invited me to do my stuff.

I conversed, I read, I wrote, I recited, I conjugated, I even sang — first in Spanish, then in French. Miss Mitchell gave no outward sign of emotion, but I knew the magic had worked.

"I'll have to talk it over with the principal," she said, "but I don't think there will be a problem. We've never had a case anything like this before. If I can get approval, which language, Spanish or French, would you like to take?"

In a fit of negotiatory skill I wish would visit me more often, I said, "Please, Miss Mitchell, let me take both!"

She frowned, but then relented. I got to take both.

From the ambitious boxer floored early in round one by Latin grammar, I was all of a sudden the heavyweight language champ of the whole high school!