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The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

newcriterion.com

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Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#31

Post by vintermann »

spudlyo wrote: post #6

If you find this article fascinating, and are intrigued by the possibility of learning to speak a dead language like Latin, I'm here to tell you that it's probably a lot easier than you think. To start off, there is a textbook that I think really resonates with hackers. It's called "Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata" (The Latin Language Illustrated through itself) and it teaches Latin in a fun and mind-altering way. Th…

Don't know about hackers, but that method of teaching, "the direct method", is how I learned English back in the day. Our English teacher was an Esperantist, which was probably how he came in contact with this idea, "la rekta metodo" has strong connections with the Esperanto movement.

I've read the criticisms of it, and it could well be it works worse for others, but for me it worked very well - and I utterly failed to learn German to anything like the same level, despite ~8 years of classes in it. My German teachers were hardly consistent in their methods (some were very classicist-latin-grammarian types), but none of them used the direct method.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#32

Post by adrian_b »

philsnow wrote: post #10
mmooss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. That's hard to believe. A friend was a Latin teacher; high school students read actual Roman Latin in their second year. I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all wr…

> I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. Because Latin has died out as a spoken language, it doesn't really change over time like modern languages do. If you find a sentence written 2000 years ago and another elsewhere written 1500 years ago, it's likely they mean the exact same thing. "Latin is a dead la…

While Latin has indeed evolved very little after it stopped being a native language, its vocabulary had continuously expanded until 2 centuries ago.

Until around the beginning of the 19th century, Latin had remained the most important language for the publication of scientific works and for international correspondence between well-educated people, and during this time many words have been added for naming things unknown to the Romans.

Also the preference for various grammatical variants or for certain word orders has been strongly influenced by some features common to the evolution of European languages, so a Latin text written during the Middle Ages feels quite different from a text written during the Roman Empire.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#34

Post by unit149 »

spudlyo wrote: post #13
schoen wrote: post #11

I've mentioned here that I got to study with him in his summer course the very last year it was held in Rome (when he got sick and ultimately came back to the U.S.). He was a really cool guy and teacher of some really cool students, many of whom are still teaching Latin with their own spins on it. This article was published in 2017, so it doesn't mention that Foster subsequently died in 2020.

He's quite a character! I found a great video[0] of him speaking for over an hour to a classroom filled with former students. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZLcWl_NCMY

"You don't study Liszt, you don't study Wagner, and come out hating music." [17:21]

Foster's work is based in the classical and English schooling tradition. When a boy was sent to school he would typically be introduced to the paradigms of Latin. Only having mastered it would Greek forms be introduced.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#35

Post by mmooss »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #24
mmooss wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you not gain that fluency after years? Every human naturally learns languages; you don't need a Ph.D. at all.

>Foster was basically the rallying point for people opposed to the grammarian methods of teaching languages that started in Classics but ended up taking over how foreign language is taught in most schools and contexts Humans naturally learn languages when they are immersed in the language. It sounds like Latin instruction was more focused on rules, and didn't provide that immersion before Foster. I can attest that ma…

Ph.D.'s are rather immersed. Imagine how much time you spend staring at Latin texts over many years.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#36

Post by mmooss »

adrian_b wrote: post #32
philsnow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. Because Latin has died out as a spoken language, it doesn't really change over time like modern languages do. If you find a sentence written 2000 years ago and another elsewhere written 1500 years ago, it's likely they mean the exact same thing. "Latin is a dead la…

While Latin has indeed evolved very little after it stopped being a native language, its vocabulary had continuously expanded until 2 centuries ago. Until around the beginning of the 19th century, Latin had remained the most important language for the publication of scientific works and for international correspondence between well-educated people, and during this time many words have been added for naming things unk…

> Latin had remained the most important language for the publication of scientific works and for international correspondence between well-educated people

... and important to the Catholic Church.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#38

Post by graemep »

wisty wrote: post #23
mmooss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. That's hard to believe. A friend was a Latin teacher; high school students read actual Roman Latin in their second year. I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all wr…

I think it's a bit out of context. I think they are referring to Mary Beard, who is a classicist / historian who said her Latin wasn't that good, but may have been exaggerating because she was IIRC arguing against gatekeeping in history (like saying physicists don't need advanced math, because Einstein wasn't the best at math compared to a few other top theoretical physicists).

and her standard of "good" is probably quite high.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#39

Post by felipeerias »

slyall wrote: post #37

When Pope Benedict resigned he announced it in Latin unexpectedly. Many present did not understand what he was saying. https://insidethevatican.com/magazine/pope-benedicts-resigna...

Time will tell, but after more than two millennia this might have been the last significant announcement made in Latin.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist (2017)

#40

Post by adrian_b »

mmooss wrote: post #36
adrian_b wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Latin has indeed evolved very little after it stopped being a native language, its vocabulary had continuously expanded until 2 centuries ago. Until around the beginning of the 19th century, Latin had remained the most important language for the publication of scientific works and for international correspondence between well-educated people, and during this time many words have been added for naming things unk…

> Latin had remained the most important language for the publication of scientific works and for international correspondence between well-educated people ... and important to the Catholic Church.

That is right, but while I have found it very useful even today to read in original the works of Georg Bauer, Newton, von Linné, Gauss and the like, there is much less interest in reading the many ecclesiastic documents that treated subjects with only a limited temporal relevance (unless you are a historian of that time period).

In general, I strongly recommend to read carefully in original the scientific literature of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, even if that requires the ability to read at least Latin, German, French and English, because by reading the original sources you can find frequently that the authors have said things quite different (and wiser) than what it is claimed that they have said in many university textbooks or popular science books.

In science and technology, there is very little that becomes truly obsolete, because the optimal solutions for solving practical problems often cycle through the space of solutions during the years, depending on how the balance between various advantages and disadvantages changes with the evolution of the available technologies. So those who believe that it is enough to read the up-to-date literature are typically wrong, because the miracle new solution of tomorrow is frequently again the same that was best 50 years ago, or even earlier, but which had become forgotten in recent years.

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