I’m learning Latin in my spare time. I’m not sure how useful Duolingo really is but it’s fun to learn some phrases. Perhaps in future, I can study the Open university’s course on Latin and Roman culture. I find studying Latin actually helps me understand the origin of many English words in the same way that it’s useful to learn Hanja if you want to know Korean. They are the foundations of our modern languages and although many people see Latin as elitist, I think it is valuable.
In one of my novels in progress, the main villain has a Latin name. She is, I hope, very unpleasant. It got me thinking though, how unlikeable can we make people? Should they have some sort of redeeming feature? Another of my main characters is I hope likeable, despite being rather uncultured and having gross habits, but I hope the reader would like him anyway. Humans have a need to be liked and perhaps our characters are the same.
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