21–30 of 48 posts
If people want a 'lingua franca' not based on languages of large nations, then a quick googling seems to indicate that there are much more esperanto speakers than fluent latin speakers...
Certainly won't happen anytime soon. English is certainly the lingua-franca of the modern world and will probably stay that way for a while. While mastering English is hard, you can get quite far with a modicum of English. Latin is an extremely important language and we should keep teaching it as a large portion of the grammar and vocabulary of Europe's languages derives from it, but it's fraught with complexities th…
I agree with your main point, but you're making an unfair comparison. If Latin were an internationally popular language alive today, then I imagine you could also get quite far with bits of broken Latin. Also, if you think English isn't "fraught with complexities that make it really hard to master", I know an entire nation made (mostly) of people who've been learning English since twelve and still failing miserably a…
I am in favor of using Latin in some circumstances. People miss the fact that the great thing about a dead language is that it doesn't change. However, if you write about science in English, for example, you can guarantee that 50 years from now your text will feel dated -- just try to read papers from the beginning of the 20th century. On the other hand, we still can read the great works of antiquity (from 20 centuri…
Starting as somebody exposed to only modern english, getting off the ground with 17th or 18th century english is going to be much easier than getting off the ground with any latin.
Seriously, I'm not sure what english works you have been reading, but it really doesn't get bad until you get really get back into the mid-17th century or so. Even with 16th century stuff, I would say that most of the difficulty comes from antiquated idioms (and rarely vocabulary). Trouble you had with scientific papers from the early 20th century probably had more to do with your inexperience with the subject matter of the paper, not the language it was written in. Books written in the 19th century are still considered reasonable reading for children today (Twain, Carroll, Dickens, Thoreau, etc.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, most Catholic churches now is celebrated in their region's language, after Jean Paul II's Second Vatican Council.
Jean Paul II did the Second Vatican Council? Right. And Linux Torvalds invented the C programming language.
[1] http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Lingua-Romana-Perligata-0.50...
It's a quixotic dream, but one I think is quite beautiful. In terms of 'revived' languages used today in everyday life, the most successful one that comes to mind is Hebrew (and there was a strong desire for national cohesion for a newly created state that in part drove its revival). I don't think anything remotely similar exists in Europe today to drive the widespread adoption of Latin, especially as the drive for f…
""We have a single money, the euro," Mr. Feye says. "We should have a single language, Latin."" We do. Its called English.
Some of my countrymen feel it is a universal language -- just a matter of volume. If you yell English loudly enough, people will understand.
The EU is not going to add Latin as an official language, and it has nothing to do with financial difficulties; every official language of the EU has that status because it is the national language of a member state. In general, the Union is a (con)federation of national states, and adding Latin as a Union-wide language wouldn't really be compatible with that.
Certainly won't happen anytime soon. English is certainly the lingua-franca of the modern world and will probably stay that way for a while. While mastering English is hard, you can get quite far with a modicum of English. Latin is an extremely important language and we should keep teaching it as a large portion of the grammar and vocabulary of Europe's languages derives from it, but it's fraught with complexities th…
It's a quixotic dream, but one I think is quite beautiful. In terms of 'revived' languages used today in everyday life, the most successful one that comes to mind is Hebrew (and there was a strong desire for national cohesion for a newly created state that in part drove its revival). I don't think anything remotely similar exists in Europe today to drive the widespread adoption of Latin, especially as the drive for f…
I'd share your warm view if it were just adults doing it among themselves. But children rely on the advice of their teachers and aren't yet able to truly make their own choices; I think adults steer them towards these dead languages to satisfy their own nostalgia rather than for the children's benefit. And I think that's wrong.
Latin, literature, algebra, philosophy, history, and geography are all the same. Almost no one will ever use them on the job or for "work" they're almost purely educational.
There's more to life and the world than purely vocational training.