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The Vatican's Website in Latin

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Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#71

Post by TonyStr »

riffraff wrote: post #57
DeathArrow wrote: post #56

I imagine a parallel universe where Latin is used as lingua franca instead of English. If you squint enough you can see English as a barbarised form of Latin.

It'd be more a return to the past, we still had a lot of latin in science a couple hundred years ago. One very fun thing I discovered recently is that Dante (and presumably other people in the middle ages) thought that Latin was a constructed language designed to go over linguistic differences, and that's why it had a proper grammar, unlike romance languages :)

That is very fascinating. Do you have some source on this that you could share? IIRC Dante wrote in vernacular Italian which was uncommon at the time, presumably to make his texts more approachable by common people?

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#72

Post by watwut »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #61
efskap wrote: 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.

Unrelated to Latin. I speak four languages, each learned in a totally different way. The fastest that I've learned a language was by buying a grammar and spending hours on end doing grammar exercises. It doesn't just work by "traditional academic metrics", it works and fast. That's because it's faster to learn something if you're explicitly shown the pattern and then you do repetition, than if you just do the repetit…

As someone who also learned multiple languages, the most typical result if grammar focused classes is that you cant use the language at all for years. And yes it is consistent outcome for majority of the students.

Like, outcome of language classes you describe are people who cant watch movies, cant listen to podcasts, cant talk with natives ... but are decent in solving grammar exercises. And to add insult to injury, the whole process so massively sux, that you are likely to conclude that learning languages is not for you.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#73

Post by mananaysiempre »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #22
mcookly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources. We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.

Duolingo has a Latin course.

Duolingo Latin is not useful as your only course. I would say it’s not useful at all, except perhaps if your normal Latin class is on break and you want something, anything at all, to jog your memory a bit.

On one hand, it is really short. There are very few words assembled into very few phrases, and they are not even particularly popular words. (New Latin for “New York”? I mean, I guess, but was that really the best you could do?..)

On the other hand, for how short it is, it confronts you with quite a bit of grammar. As is customary for Duolingo, you’ll have to infer that grammar from the examples—except, per the previous point, you won’t get nearly enough examples. (It’s cute that some usages of the Latin verb “studeo” correspond to the English verb “study”, but the Latin one governs an unusual case, which depending on declension looks exactly like one of the other cases, so perhaps having it be one of the first verbs is unwise, especially when a lot of your target audience ostensibly has no concept of “govern”, “case”, or “declension”.)

On the gripping hand, because of how short it is, there is a lot of grammar that it does not even hint at. Including parts that any classical text will hit you in the face with within the first paragraph, and that will completely befuddle you unless you’re aware of them. (Like the quaint custom of plopping the preposition in the middle of its complement, as in “qua de causa” lit. “which for reason” i.e. “for which reason” i.e. “therefore”, or for that matter “magna cum laude” lit. “great with praise” i.e. “with great praise”.)

By comparison, Ørberg excels at this to a downright supernatural extent. It’s like La Disparition except instead of writing a (pretty natural-sounding) novel without using the most popular letter of the language he wrote a third of a (pretty natural-sounding) textbook without using the most popular category of nouns and adjectives in the language, and his version is actually useful. And it’s like this for any grammar concept he wants to defer. His way does take quite a bit of time, though, I’ll give you that.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#74

Post by bandie91 »

Jakob wrote: post #38

My partner and I are from two different European countries that speak different languages. When we wanted to marry in the country of my partner, both our (catholic) churches needed to sync. They did so in their common language: Latin. That was a fun surprise.

similar experience led me to start learning Latin: once travelled to an other country within Europe and the priest in the companion asked directions from a local in Latin.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#75

Post by watwut »

satvikpendem wrote: post #55
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo has a Latin course.

Duolingo simply does not work for actually learning a language. It's better to use something where you practice immersion learning, preferably with other people and there are apps for this online too.

Duolingo does work for those A1-B1 levels it has courses for. At minimum, it got me where I was able to switch to netflix.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#76

Post by dyauspitr »

zdragnar wrote: post #2

I'm somewhat surprised it's still up, given the rather firm refusal by Francis to allow the Latin mass at churches that wanted it in the States.

It very quickly turns mass into just repeating sounds without any way to internalize any of what you’re saying. There’s a bunch of stuff about humility, contrition, gratefulness etc that they want people to internalize.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#78

Post by jll29 »

Jakob wrote: post #38

My partner and I are from two different European countries that speak different languages. When we wanted to marry in the country of my partner, both our (catholic) churches needed to sync. They did so in their common language: Latin. That was a fun surprise.

My spouse and I lived in London, but we both come from (other) European countries, so for our wedding, three countries and four languages were involved: the church's forms are all both in the local language as well as in Latin.

This is no different than hundreds of years ago, and it works well. Thanks to Latin, the church's _lingua franca_.

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#79

Post by jll29 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #46
sebmellen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pretty cool. What kind of things were your respective churches communicating about?

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…

Solution: Latin block chain

Re: The Vatican's Website in Latin

#80

Post by gattilorenz »

TonyStr wrote: post #71
riffraff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be more a return to the past, we still had a lot of latin in science a couple hundred years ago. One very fun thing I discovered recently is that Dante (and presumably other people in the middle ages) thought that Latin was a constructed language designed to go over linguistic differences, and that's why it had a proper grammar, unlike romance languages :)

That is very fascinating. Do you have some source on this that you could share? IIRC Dante wrote in vernacular Italian which was uncommon at the time, presumably to make his texts more approachable by common people?

If I had to take a guess, I would say he heard it in a lecture by Prof. Alessandro Barbero, same as I did :)

But I think the source is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_vulgari_eloquentia In the Italian Wiki page, the "constructed nature" of latin is hinted at; it doesn't seem to be present in the English wiki.

Update: It's indeed in the book, at the end of the 1st chapter of the 1st book:

3 There also exists another kind of language, at one remove from us, which the Romans called gramatica [grammar]. The Greeks and some - but not all - other peoples also have this secondary kind of language. Few, however, achieve complete fluency in it, since knowledge of its rules and theory can only be developed through dedication to a lengthy course of study

4 Of these two kinds of language, the more noble is the vernacular: first, because it was the language originally used by the human race; second, because the whole world employs it, though with different pro­nunciations and using different words; and third because it is natural to us, while the other is, in contrast, artificial.

Here, vernacular refers to "italian" or whatever dialect, while "gramatica" is latin - the artificial one :)

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