Opsimaths

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A few years ago, Anne Patti retired from her job as a book editor in New York City and moved to the country.

And she found herself trying to figure out how she was going to fill her time.

She’d always, of course, had a fascination with words, and eventually this led her to take classes in, of all things, college-level Latin.

She writes about this in her new book called Living with a Dead Language, My Romance with Latin.

Grant, it’s a charming introduction to Latin itself and to the orderliness and beauty of the language.

And the way that the real masters of Latin poetry, once you get past all the stuff in Caesar,

And they’re able to take those big clunky Latin words and just make them dance.

So it’s a lovely memoir in those terms.

But what struck me is that the book is also about learning later in life.

And that brings me to one of my favorite words that I love.

It comes from the ancient Greek.

It’s opsimath.

Opsomath?

Opsomath.

O-P-S-I-M-A-T-H.

It comes from Greek words that mean learn late in life.

And it got me to thinking about the question that I have for you, Grant, which is what is on your optomathic bucket list, your realistic bucket list?

Not like, you know, maybe I’ll do this something.

But what’s on your agenda?

I don’t think of myself as late in life yet.

Well, no.

But it’s a good question.

And I wonder what it was about that author.

What is her name again?

Anne Patti.

I wonder what it was about Ann Patty and me and people like us that makes us want to work on a language late in life because I constantly want to improve my French and Spanish.

I do minimal things.

I subscribe to a lot of Facebook pages and groups and those languages and topics that I care about and in that way see some French and Spanish every day.

But I wonder about that.

What is it about having the time now that makes you want to work on a language?

I also want Spanish so I can go to Mexico and enjoy myself.

Well, I was going to say, exactly.

I mean, if you’re going to start on an ancient language late in life.

Not much utility except for reading.

Yeah, or talking to other Latins.

But yeah, it’s not going to help you when you want to go to a foreign country and ask where the bathroom is, right?

There’s a lot of wisdom and beauty in the ancient literature, and that’s what she was going after.

But what are you going after?

On my realistic Opsimathic bucket list, I definitely have ASL.

I want to learn American Sign Language.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Just because it’s such a different way of handling, literally, language.

Communicating differently.

Yeah.

And so I’m very curious to learn that.

Other than that, in terms of skills, I think of skills that I have that I want to continue.

I would love to get back to sculling.

I used to do a lot of rowing and juggling.

I am a lapsed member of the International Jugglers Association.

I always want to be learning something new.

I always want to be a beginner at something.

That’s important.

Martha, that book again was?

It’s called Living with a Dead Language, My Romance with Latin by Ann Patti.

Great.

Well, we’d love to hear what you are doing to learn now.

You don’t have to be late in life.

Let us know with a big project in your life, the one thing that you’re really working on

That you’re actually going to sign up for so that you can learn and move forward

And become something new or something better.

Yeah, or maybe you’ve done it.

Maybe you’ve done it and had the experience and you can tell us how amazing it was.

877-929-9673.

Or if it’s really long, throw out an email to words@waywordradio.org.