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The Vatican's Website in Latin

vatican.va

101–110 of 144 posts

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#101

lorem ipsum

My thoughts too, however, has that fad not passed?

I always found designs worked better without lorem ipsum, for example, if building a website for a T-shirt company, you might as well use their existing descriptions to see if the content actually fits the layout. Plus you can model real world things, I remember many a lorem ipsum design just falling apart because things like product names were longer than 'lorem ipsum'. Yes I get the idea of lorem ipsum but I always found we wasted time, insulted the client and just created problems for ourselves, just to accomodate a designer that only ever saw text as shapes on a page.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#102
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the perspective! I guess it depends on the outcomes in question If they're measured by traditional academic metrics (parsing, recalling declension tables, translating into English), then Wheelock's grammar-first approach really does optimize for that. On the other hand Ørberg optimizes more for reading fluency and intuitive comprehension, which is harder to measure on a standard Latin exam.

Intuitive comprehension works much better for Medieval Latin, like that used in the scientific publications of the 16th/17th/18th/19th centuries, i.e. the kind of Latin that would be used by people like Newton or Gauss. Medieval Latin is influenced by the modern European languages, so it uses a similar word order and similar methods for expressing various things. On the other hand for Classic Latin, e.g. for works wr…

Perseus has a couple of Latin-English dictionaries[1,2] along with a large number of texts and translations and tools to go between all three; Wiktionary is also often quite decent. Incidentally, the TEI XML files underlying the Perseus website are downloadable[3,4].

[1] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext...

[2] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext...

[3] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/opensource/download

[4] https://github.com/PerseusDL

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#103
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming they're Roman Catholic, to get married in the Church at least one of the couple needs to be Catholic and records of their baptism, confirmation, etc. would be shared between the individual's church and wherever they're getting married. You also run into this if you move around a lot, not just for marriage. If you want to be confirmed, you need to be baptised. Your baptismal records may be in another state or…

In fact, the baptismal parish is the official keeper of your sacramental records, so when you’re married, the marriage is communicated to that parish and added to your sacramental record (likewise for confirmation if it doesn’t happen at your baptismal church, and, less commonly ordination will also be communicated there). When parishes are closed or consolidated, the bishop will indicate what parish becomes the new…

When my mother retired, she volunteered at the local church to transcribe and prepare 100 years of sacramental records to prepare them for digitization by the archdiocese. There were records in filing cabinets in offices, some in chests stored in the basement of the church, some with water damage.

The Catholic Church keeps pretty good records, for the most part. In New England, Quebec, and maritime Canada, many people can trace their ancestry back to at least the 1500s based on these records.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#104
post #44
post #11

If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.

As a former Latin instructor with literally decades of experience, I strongly recommend not relying solely on Ørberg. The outcomes of those who refused to supplement it with a proper grammar and dictionary were far, far behind those who used Wheelock alone. It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.

In which case, I’ll drop the books of the late Reginald Foster who taught at the Gregorian University, Teresianum and Urbanianum and worked in the Latin Letters section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State: Ossa Latinitatis Sola, Ossium Carnes Multae, and Os Praesens Reginaldi Docentis.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#105
post #47
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifehack: Latin is much easier if you already know a Slavic or a Baltic language (except Bulgarian). While declension patterns are different, the case structures are very similar. Not identical, but close enough that you actually just need to learn the differences. Most other grammatical structures are also directly comparable. So you can make your life easier by studying a Slavic (or a Baltic) language first. (mwaha…

Or you can find learning a Slavic (or a Baltic) language easier if you learn Latin first. The bonus being that there are more useful cognates in Latin than in Slavic languages (although while learning Czech, I was a bit amused to discover that many of my childhood friends’¹ surnames were just Czech words for colors). Latin has fewer cases than Czech (five³ versus seven) and fewer declension patterns (there are five d…

> The Poles, having a still-active immigration pipeline

That pipeline has since dried up as well, especially since 2004 when immigration began to shift toward the EU. And since then, we see the reversal of that process, with far more Poles returning home from abroad.

So, Polish immigration has effectively ended. Old Polish neighborhoods are in the process of being displaced by new immigrant groups and yuppies.

(Curiously, even under foreign occupation, a good deal of Polish immigration was intended to be short-term. Poles would move to places like the US to earn some money and return home. Naturally, immigration is “sticky”, so a good number stayed behind and assimilated.)

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#106
post #44
post #11

If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.

As a former Latin instructor with literally decades of experience, I strongly recommend not relying solely on Ørberg. The outcomes of those who refused to supplement it with a proper grammar and dictionary were far, far behind those who used Wheelock alone. It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.

As an aside, do you still teach Latin? If not, any online recommendations for Latin tutors? Thanks in advance.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#107
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Arabic and Chinese speakers are not Catholic either. The Vatican has shown a persistent interest in Russia, and yes, there is a significant Russian speaking Catholic minority, as well as a potential convert base. If I remember rightly, Russia (or the USSR) gets a prominent mention in the Fatima narrative. Russian has declined a lot in importance over the past thirty years, but it is still a major world language…

Egyptian copts and XuJiaHui cathedral attendants would like to have a word with you.

I'm already aware of them. They are minorities, as are the Marionites. The Copts are not Roman Catholic. They are long established minorities as are Russophone Catholics who date back over two hundred hers.

The Vatican cannot operate officially within the PRC, but I appreciate the real situation is more complex.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#108
post #106
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Latin instructor with literally decades of experience, I strongly recommend not relying solely on Ørberg. The outcomes of those who refused to supplement it with a proper grammar and dictionary were far, far behind those who used Wheelock alone. It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.

As an aside, do you still teach Latin? If not, any online recommendations for Latin tutors? Thanks in advance.

I've considered picking up a class here or there, but no, I left academia years ago. I have tutored in Latin afterwards, and I also answer questions on StackExchange's Latin site.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#109
post #49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Latin instructor with literally decades of experience, I strongly recommend not relying solely on Ørberg. The outcomes of those who refused to supplement it with a proper grammar and dictionary were far, far behind those who used Wheelock alone. It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.

Thanks for the perspective! I guess it depends on the outcomes in question If they're measured by traditional academic metrics (parsing, recalling declension tables, translating into English), then Wheelock's grammar-first approach really does optimize for that. On the other hand Ørberg optimizes more for reading fluency and intuitive comprehension, which is harder to measure on a standard Latin exam.

For all other languages, that is, naturally spoken languages, I would totally agree. You learn them by imersing yourself in the language, culture, country.

But latin is a dead language. What you describe is what it is used for. It is a grammar exercise.

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