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Steve_O_Brien
Guest
Teach chant in both Latin and English! It’s wonderful in either language.
Keep and spread the Faith.
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Keep and spread the Faith.
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brotherhrolf
Guest
NOOOOOOO!!! Anything but that!!! Sing my tongue the savior’s glory or Pange lingua. This cathedral chorister knows only too well that Latin is the only proper language to sing chant. Been there. Done that. Now we sing chant only in Latin. Deo gratias ite Deo gratias!
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tee_eff_em
Guest
I would disagree with that definition, as would many linguists of my acquaintance. A dead language is one that no longer develops. Latin does still develop, via several sources. But because there are no native speakers (ie there is no Latin baby-talk), the language is only spoken, and by extension its development is controlled, by those who can read and write it.
I have heard Latin described rather as an *orthographic *or *chirographic *language.
:twocents:
tee
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JimG
Guest
When I was taking Latin in high school, the saying went like this:
Latin is a dead language;
As dead as it can be.
First it killed the Romans,
And now it’s killing me.
Latin is a dead language;
As dead as it can be.
First it killed the Romans,
And now it’s killing me.
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chicago
Guest
Ever read Dr. Suess in Latin?
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tee_eff_em
Guest
Why, yes, I have. But I’m pretty sure Dr Tunberg is no baby.
“Virent ova! Viret perna!”
tee
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Contarini
Guest
Facta negare non possumus; facienda autem facere possumus maximeque debemus.I’m studying Latin and I love it…it’s so sad to read that it’s dying, but I guess there’s no denying the facts…
Linguam Latinam studiendo nova facta facis. Benedictus sis, Francisce, et benedicti omnes sodales tui!
Edwin
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Catholic_Dude
Guest
That sounds funny, do you have a few famous quotes.
Actually now that I think about it, it only rhymes and makes sense it English right?
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brotherhrolf
Guest
‘Ior mi,’ dixit sollemniter, ‘egomet, Winnie ille Pu, caudam tuam reperiam.’
Winnie ille Pu.
Winnie ille Pu.
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tee_eff_em
Guest
There, you would be mistaken. In fact, I am often tempted to sing *Cattus Petasatus *(The Cat in the Hat) to the tune of a classical hymn (Stabat Mater? Pange Lingua? Something else? I can’t lay my hands on the book at the moment, but it’s one of them…).
tee
Who suspects it is easier to rhyme an inflected language, like Latin, than in English, which is why classical Roman poetry was more about meter than rhyme
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chicago
Guest
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tee_eff_em
Guest
At least Fr Z, of WDTPRS has respect for Fr Foster:Fr. Reggie an eccentric? NOOOOOOOOO!
Ever listen to the radio show, The Latin Lover? It’s wild! Hilarious and entertaining as can be with the straight woman host trying to reign him in and he just being blunt.
tee
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mgy100
Guest
Latin is alive and well…
It’s modern forms are being spoken as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, French…
It’s modern forms are being spoken as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, French…
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Fuerza
Guest
If you want to get technical, historically Classical Latin (CL) was never (at least not for very long) a living language as it was strictly used in writing. The spoken language, called Vulgar Latin (VL), was lexically and syntactically different enough from CL to be considered a different language. It is from VL that the modern Romance Languages (of which there are actually several dozen, rather than just the five with which most people are familiar) descend.
It is also incorrect that Latin is currently a dead language. Aside from the over 700,000,000 speakers of Romance languages, there are thousands of native speakers of CL worldwide. I’m not going to explain it right now as I don’t have time and I’ve explained it before on these boards, but I studied several of these people while earning my MA in Romance Linguistics (which required study of Latin, even though technically not a Romance language). Perhaps later I’ll have more time.
Eric
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
IOW, it is in pretty much the same state as Sumerian, Akkadian, and several other ancient languages.
Yet this has not stopped them being studied or their literary remains edited: Sumerian has been dead for at least 1700 years, probably for over 1900; it was discovered for the first time only in the late 19th century - no one had so much as heard of it. Yet that has not stopped it being studied - & there are some excellent sites devoted to it, including one at Pennsylvania University, and another at Oxford.If that is true of Sumerian, despite its having vanished of the face of the face of the earth for so long - why worry about Latin, which is much easier to learn, has been in unbroken literary use for about 2400 years, is very widely attested, and is not even defunct ? Sumerian, unlike Latin, is unrelated to any other language: despite the best efforts of linguists to connect it with languages ranging from Turkish to Gaelic. Latin, by contrast, has a family tree & descendants.
IOW - it is not a fatal weakness, if Latin is dying. There is no reason why that should kill Classics, or stop texts being edited, or Church documents being written.
And in any case, anyone who wants the news in Latin, can find it here:
… Generalis (YLE), quod de rebus internationalibus hodiernis breves nuntios in lingua latina continet, qui per interrete et audiri et legi possunt. …
http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii
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Spirithound
Guest
From a linguistic point of view, Latin is alive and well. Due to the nature of linguistic evolution, Latin evolved into Spanish, Catalan, French, Romanch, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese, and countless dialects therein, very very gradually, on a continuum. Therefore, any native speaker of Latin, or evolution thereof, which i will call L1, L2, L3, and so on, would be able to understand anybody 200-300 years before or after him. It is therefore incorrect to say that Latin died, because there is a continuous chain of mutually intelligible speakers.
Labelling a language based on the area where it is spoken is at best a convenient convention, and does not mean in any way that those languages listed above are not in actuality L426.
To further illustrate my point, Gothic is a dead language. The tribe was wiped out, and the language went with them.
Now, that being said, I’ve heard that St. Isidore of Seville was the last speaker of Latin.
And really, the title of this thread is incorrect. Since there are still some priests who know Latin, it cannot even be considered dead. At most, somebody should give it last rites…
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Fuerza
Guest
Bingo. Saying that Latin is dead is about as accurate as saying that Anglo-Saxon is dead because we changed its name.From a linguistic point of view, Latin is alive and well. Due to the nature of linguistic evolution, Latin evolved into Spanish, Catalan, French, Romanch, Rumanian, Italian, Portuguese, and countless dialects therein, very very gradually, on a continuum. Therefore, any native speaker of Latin, or evolution thereof, which i will call L1, L2, L3, and so on, would be able to understand anybody 200-300 years before or after him. It is therefore incorrect to say that Latin died, because there is a continuous chain of mutually intelligible speakers.
Labelling a language based on the area where it is spoken is at best a convenient convention, and does not mean in any way that those languages listed above are not in actuality L426.
To further illustrate my point, Gothic is a dead language. The tribe was wiped out, and the language went with them.
Now, that being said, I’ve heard that St. Isidore of Seville was the last speaker of Latin.
And really, the title of this thread is incorrect. Since there are still some priests who know Latin, it cannot even be considered dead. At most, somebody should give it last rites…
I realize that you also sent me a pm, but I may as well answer it here. The native speakers of CL to which I refer are not in a centralized location, although a large percentage seem to live in Finland. These speakers have not preserved the language, but have revived it. It started with “Latinists” who had learned the language through study and went on to form “Latin Clubs” where they could interact with others who shared their passion for the language. As these people came from all over the world to participate in the meetings, often the only language that they had in common with others was Latin. Many marriages resulted from these get togethers, and again, as Latin was the only common language, it was the one used in the home. Therefore, the children of these couples grew up speaking Latin and could be considered native speakers.
There is admittedly not much information on these people because, to be honest, the majority of the world isn’t interested. If you look though, you could probably find something.
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tee_eff_em
Guest
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Le_Cracquere
Guest
The author of a recent book on classical education put it nicely indeed: in surveying Latin’s vigorous post-Empire career up to the present, he said than rather than “dying,” Latin long ago simply “ceased to be mortal.”
Sic semper!
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willy
Guest
Unfortunately , a majority of seminaries don’t teach latin. Alot of the orthodox young people ( myself included) would like to learn latin but its not made available. Although the seminary i plan on going to this september teachs latin. And i learned some myself.I’m studying Latin and I love it…it’s so sad to read that it’s dying, but I guess there’s no denying the facts…
I’m a little surprised, though. Don’t we keep on hearing that the new generation of JPII priests are more orthodox than their predecessors? Why aren’t they taking Latin then!?
Although I am not sure about what he says about the TLM…when he says “it is a useless mass and the whole mentality is stupid” he makes himself sound a little crazy. I don’t understand how the Tridentine Mass that was celebrated for hundreds of years can be described as “useless.”
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