Brent Rosenstein is a graduate student in the UIUC European Union Center’s interdisciplinary Master of Arts in EU Studies program. He composed this blog entry in the ‘Language and Minorities in Europe’ (PS 418) course in the spring of 2013. by Brent Rosenstein “Latin is a dead language, it’s dead as dead can be. First it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me!” This schoolyard rhyme has rung true for many students of the Latin language over the years, often wondering why they subject themselves to the intricacies of a language that no one really speaks anymore. However, Latin is not really as dead as it may seem. Certainly, the language suffers from a distinct lack of native speakers, a necessary trait for a language to be “living” in the traditional sense. However, that is not to say that no one speaks Latin anymore. In fact, it is still widely used by people all around the world everyday. The two primary uses of the language come from the two sectors that most people tend t...