People love to say that Latin is a dead language. Especially when I tell them I teach Latin! What a fun way to start a conversation… But Latin didn’t die, it evolved. Latin blossomed into a range of Romance languages that are spoken around the world today, but was also retained as an important language of religion and scholarship for millennia. As a result of this, and given English’ complicated origins, it’s no surprise that Latin words and phrases permeate our language even now.
Some Latin phrases we use without realising - they have become such a part of our usual vernacular that we pass them off as our own. In the same way that the English people took so many artefacts from other cultures and made them their own, the English language has done so with a range of words from languages the world over. Below are ten phrases you may not even realise were Latin - and then, for fun, I’ve also included some phrases that are extremely painful (for me) to hear pronounced today, for various reasons!
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