Time transcripts of TriciaResized

[00:00:00:01]	[Tricia] My name is Tricia Ryan, 

[00:00:01:12]	I am a junior at The Ohio State University studying Classics and English. 

[00:00:05:22]	I'm 21, from Gahanna, Ohio, and that's about it. 

[00:00:09:24]	[Interviewer] Okay, so let's hear your narrative.

[00:00:12:13]	[T] So, I first became interested in the Classics--Greek and Latin--

[00:00:17:10]	when I was a very little girl. My father bought me these huge books

[00:00:23:08]	of Roman and Greek mythology that he used to read to me 

[00:00:26:11]	and I became attached to them as a child and

[00:00:30:05]	I decided that I would like to learn the languages for myself. 

[00:00:33:04]	So when I got to high school... I was fortunate enough

[00:00:38:11]	to go to a Catholic high school that offered Latin as a language alternative.

[00:00:43:10]	I began my study my freshman year of high school, 

[00:00:46:10]	and I still remember the first line of Latin that I ever translated, 

[00:00:51:01]	which was "Roma est in Italia," which just means "Rome is in Italy." 

[00:00:56:00]	But little did I know then that [chuckle] 

[00:00:59:23]	it was actually not even proper Latin at all. 

[00:01:02:26]	I mean, I thought that it was gonna be cake,

[00:01:05:17]	so simple to learn this language, but, you know, years later I find out...

[00:01:10:18]	I mean, not YEARS later, but... [laughter]

[00:01:12:28]	Throughout my course of study I realized that there's so much more intricacies 

[00:01:19:13]	to that language than any other I've ever studied. 

[00:01:24:20]	Because, you know, the verb is supposed to come at the end of the sentence in Latin, 

[00:01:28:20]	so technically it should have been "Roma in Italia est" 

[00:01:31:16]	but because we were just learning the language they tried to make it

[00:01:35:28]	as basic as possible and as close to the language that we already knew.

[00:01:41:23]	So that was my first foray into Latin. And, you know, over the years, 

[00:01:48:19]	I've learned that there's so many different conjugations and declensions and noun cases 

[00:01:54:11]	that it's just ridiculous trying to keep it all straight. 

[00:01:59:12]	But through my studies, I've been able to translate Cicero, Virgil, Caesar, Catullus...

[00:02:12:00]	I mean, just all these big names that, I mean...

[00:02:15:23]	these geniuses who lived so long ago 

[00:02:18:14]	and just the fact that I can read what they wrote and think

[00:02:22:02]	that I'm maybe at the same level as they are is pretty exciting.

[00:02:27:28]	But, yeah, even my study in Latin has helped me to understand 

[00:02:33:15]	the English grammar more, which is something I thought was interesting, 

[00:02:37:03]	and has also helped me in my studies of other languages. 

[00:02:41:14]	So, I...shortly after coming to Ohio State, 

[00:02:46:02]	I decided that I wanted to try German, 

[00:02:48:03]	and that was the only language that Latin did not help me with, 

[00:02:51:20]	and it was so hard for me to try to learn German, 

[00:02:53:15]	even though they say it's the closest to English, 

[00:02:55:07]	because I was so used to the way Latin works, that it was so hard

[00:02:59:25]	to break the habit and get into that language. 

[00:03:03:09]	I just stopped. Couldn't do it. [Laughter] 

[00:03:05:21]	But Italian was so much more simple just because I knew Latin, 

[00:03:09:26]	and even learning Ancient Greek was made more simple 

[00:03:13:18]	because the way that the sentence structure works 

[00:03:16:03]	and word placement within the sentence is very, very much similar to Latin

[00:03:23:23]	as is the different conjugations and the declensions. 

[00:03:27:29]	All of that is very much similar to Latin. And...

[00:03:35:09]	I mean, of course, Greek is a lot more intricate 

[00:03:37:10]	in the fact that it's a completely different alphabet, 

[00:03:40:17]	and the characters are very strange, and there's so many different...

[00:03:46:28]	you have to know the exact place to put an accent in the sentence, 

[00:03:50:14]	which is something I STILL can't understand. [Laughter] 

[00:03:54:16]	But I have loved what I've been doing, and I do it for my enjoyment. 

[00:04:03:19]	It's something that has meant so much to me over the past four years,

[00:04:10:10]	and I fully intend to delve deeper into the mysteries of the languages 

[00:04:15:09]	until I can maybe fully understand them.

[00:04:18:18]	And that's my story.