Like many children growing up in a North American Protestant Church, often my Sunday School classes featured cartoons meant to inspire us with a dramatic presentation of biblical narratives. The one I most remember, "The Greatest Adventure," told the story of two archaeologists and a young boy that get magically transported back to Bible times and become first hand witnesses to the great stories of scripture. If you don't recall the series or have never seen it, here is a link to one episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gPN9nyQ0-4.
While I loved (and still love) cartoons, even at a young age I was bothered by the fact that everyone in the past spoke English! I knew instinctively that this wasn't the case, and it caused my mind to ponder the possibility of accidental time travel. Would I be able to live in the distant past? Could I adapt to the culture? Could I even learn how to communicate and speak the language?
And so, at the age of 12-ish, I resolved to learn an ancient language out of fear of accidental, involuntary time travel.
In high school, I had my first opportunity to follow this resolve with the aid of my internet browser of choice -- Webcrawler. I looked up a number of words and phrases in Latin, wrote them on large pieces of bristol board, and taped them to my bedroom walls. Soon, however, I grew tired of learning disjointed words and phrases. I wanted to learn the language not just a handle of "useful" phrases.
By grade 11, I petitioned the high school administration to grant me permission to teach myself Latin for credit... and it worked! As it happened, there was a student teacher that majored in classics due to arrive and he was all too happy to guide a student through Wheelock's introductory Latin textbook.
As I discovered, however, the more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know. Learning the beginning elements of Latin just made me realize that Latin as a world language would only get me so far in the case of accidental, involuntary time travel.
That is how it happened. Almost twelve years later, and my hobby is still reading and researching the ancient world.
What a lovely and interesting way to start a blog. It opens up many possibilities for future posts. I hope that someday we will hear more about what accidental, involuntary time travel might look like. Some fiction or perhaps some insight into this from your science background? Only good can come of this.
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