Why Ecclesiastical Latin?

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That Latin was used in all manner of vulgar things regularly no doubt, if it was the vernacular.

Ecclesiastical Latin is the language of the Church, it’s own special language used in holy affairs.
 
Latin pronunciation varied greatly throughout Europe. Those variations eventually became dialects, and then new languages altogether. Think of all the Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Provençal, Italian, Romanian… the list goes on. Why don’t we replace all of those with Classical Latin? Same principle. The Church is a living body, and although the West has a “dead language” as it’s mother tongue, it keeps the pronunciation and vocabulary updated. Yes, modern Ecclesiastical Latin sounds more like Italian (I’d argue it’s closer to Spanish IMHO) than whatever kind Julius Caesar spoke, but who cares? Things evolve.
 
Why don’t we switch back to Middle English pronunciation and drop all of the Romantic influences? I propose the adoption of Anglish - a wholly Germanic, and thus more accurate, version of the English language.
 
We already do that to some degree. We call the letter w as double-u not double-v. Somewhere along the way we changed u and v and/ or their pronunciation.

In Polish w is pronounced as a v and there is no v. They use the symbol ł to pronounce w.
 
My Spanish teacher in undergrad was Castilan. My fellow parishoners were TexMex. Their Spanish didn’t match each other, either. Heck, even my Peruvian neighbors didn’t speak the same Spanish as my Nicaraguan coworkers.

When I lived in Louisiana, you could listen to Cajun-language radio stations. It was the standard anecdote that your Parisian-French people would have a terrible time trying to understand what the heck they were saying. I don’t know if French-Canadians had better luck.

I don’t even speak English the same as someone from New York or Tennessee. I was aghast when I heard myself saying “ha-yund” for “hand”. I have no clue when that happened. But I remember my east coast relatives saying “dawg” for “dog” and my Californian friends having bizarre slang of their own.

They say that Thomas Jefferson (or his daughters?) pronounced “windows” as “win-ders”. Speaking of which-- I pronounce his home as “Montichello”, but others will say it’s “Montisello”. How do you pronounce Monticello?

Languages change with time and with geography. Don’t think of Church Latin necessarily as Church Latin, because remember, it was also the language of science and scientists up until the late 19th c. Think of it as “Medieval Latin”, in contrast to “Classical Latin.”
 
In some places, like London or New York City, you used to be able to p(name removed by moderator)oint where a person lived within a few blocks. TV and radio really did a lot to wipe out regional accents. Likewise, people are so mobile nowadays— you don’t have generations of people growing up in the same place and staying there their whole lives. But when I first moved to my (poor, rural) part of Texas, it wasn’t difficult to p(name removed by moderator)oint those people around me who had been born/raised/never left the area. I couldn’t really write down what made their speech so different from people’s speech 100 miles down the road… but it definitely had a very unique quality of its own. So those regional accents definitely still exist… you’re not going to mistake a Bostoner for a Minnesotan, and people from certain parts of New Orleans sound more Brooklyn/Bronixsh than they do Southern or Creole. 🙂
 
We Aussies can barely understand you Americans…your accents!
 
I have been there, more then once , 🐨. Your accents can be like a foreign language. As can all accents. Which is more the issue the op will encounter if meeting an ancient Roman and attempting to speak to them.
 
Curious11 said:
Why doesn’t the Church switch to Classical Latin? Veni Vidi Vici was pronounced Weni Widi Wiki by Julius Caesar
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Whenever he had occasion to say those words, he probably did pronounce the frivcative V – The classical pronunciation you refer to would have been the vogue ~150~200 years prior to his time.

As others have noted, languages change over time, and there is no reason the Church should not have her own lingua franca.

Carthago delenda est
 
AIPM1615 said:
Why don’t we switch back to Middle English pronunciation and drop all of the Romantic influences? I propose the adoption of Anglish - a wholly Germanic, and thus more accurate, version of the English language.
Click to expand...
What a coincidence! As I was reading your post, I was hearing someone read “Beowulf” in the original Old English on a TV program about the history of the English language.

Back on topic:

Latin is a language,
As dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans;
Now it’s killing me.

D
 
Why is the police oblivious to its crimes? Does it have influence among the elite?
 
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