latin, polyglots and conlangs

[mercutio]

recently I have been really interested in latin, partly due to latin over dubs on youtube, it sounds such a wonderful magical language, almost a fantasy mystical language like elvish or something but it obviously has such a rich and varied history, I then noticed the statistics on latin speakers is really really massively low, in the church apparently only 100 fluent speakers (using the church as example because it has the history with latin via vatican etc), it makes me wonder why more polyglots are not interested in learning it, many learn conlangs for the intellectual stimulation and challenge but why not latin? to be able to speak conversational latin sounds a lot of fun.

I then had a look around the polyglot community online and found very little interest or mention of latin, any ideas why? many polyglots will spend ages learning obscure languages or challenging ones or conning but I have rarely seen anyone talk about conversation latin.

thoughts?

time for a revival?

[MCK74]

There are some people who are interested in reviving Latin. There is a summer school class at the University of Kentucky and Father Reginald Foster (one of the pope's Latinists) in, I think, Milwaukee, also teaches conversational Latin. There is also a Catholic university out west, I think in Montana, where everyone needs to study Latin. Faith comes by Hearing, a ministry that distributes audio Bibles, offers an audio Bible in Latin.

Evan der Millner from London makes YouTube videos in Latin because he was frustrated with the lack of Latin audio.

Polyglots may be interested in Esperanto and not Latin because Esperantists market it as being an easy to learn language that you can speak with people all over the world. Latin's main selling point is the literature and the fact that Latin students usually have higher standardized test scores. Also people probably have experience with Latin in school and found it a slog while most people probably don't have any experience with learning Esperanto in school.

[mercutio]

There are some people who are interested in reviving Latin. There is a summer school class at the University of Kentucky and Father Reginald Foster (one of the pope's Latinists) in, I think, Milwaukee, also teaches conversational Latin. There is also a Catholic university out west, I think in Montana, where everyone needs to study Latin. Faith comes by Hearing, a ministry that distributes audio Bibles, offers an audio Bible in Latin.

Evan der Millner from London makes YouTube videos in Latin because he was frustrated with the lack of Latin audio.

Polyglots may be interested in Esperanto and not Latin because Esperantists market it as being an easy to learn language that you can speak with people all over the world. Latin's main selling point is the literature and the fact that Latin students usually have higher standardized test scores. Also people probably have experience with Latin in school and found it a slog while most people probably don't have any experience with learning Esperanto in school.

I found this cool distance learning course which takes you to somewhere around b1 level which surely must be good enough for conversation, see the cambridge course listed
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... Latin.html

[DangerDave2010]

Where are the Latin dubs? I can't find them in the ocean of Latin Spanish dubs.

I always fancied learning Latin, but then, I would not learn a language that does not have an abundance of quality media available. Reading is just not my thing.

[Elexi]

Here are some of my favourite overdubs from the amazing ThePrinceSterling youtube channel:

Lord of the Rings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoQP5mtO-iA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFn77S1abBk

Star Trek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzgriVTzj9A

[Josquin]

You usually don't study Latin in order to become fluent in it, but to read classical Roman literature. I had five years of Latin at school, we didn't even once string together a Latin sentence on our own. Instead, we read Caesar, Ovid, and Pliny the Younger in the original, which meant sentence-by-sentence or even word-by-word translation of the texts.

Most polyglots are mostly interested in the speaking aspect of languages, so dead languages aren't very attractive to them. There's simply no one to talk to, which isn't the case with conlangs.

[mercutio]

Here are some of my favourite overdubs from the amazing ThePrinceSterling youtube channel:

Lord of the Rings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoQP5mtO-iA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFn77S1abBk

Star Trek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzgriVTzj9A

This dub guy was the guy I was referring to

Is he a Latin scholar or something? I hope he continues doing this

It was his videos that made me post this thread

[mercutio]

You usually don't study Latin in order to become fluent in it, but to read classical Roman literature. I had five years of Latin at school, we didn't even once string together a Latin sentence on our own. Instead, we read Caesar, Ovid, and Pliny the Younger in the original, which meant sentence-by-sentence or even word-by-word translation of the texts.

Most polyglots are mostly interested in the speaking aspect of languages, so dead languages aren't very attractive to them. There's simply no one to talk to, which isn't the case with conlangs.

But there COULD be more people to chat to if people embraced it. It would be amazing to have Latin conversations like a wizard or something!

[Serpent]

Counter-examples: Prof. Argüelles, Iversen, Sprachprofi.
I don't think it's common for polyglots to have a bad experience with Latin Obviously some did, but many find it useful for mastering the modern Romance languages.
As the Catholic university, do people need to reach a high level? In some study fields, pretty much everyone has to learn Latin (medicine) or this depends on the country (law, linguistics...). The thing is that generally a low level will do. Plus high school Latin seems to be a mostly North American experience? (especially without a modern language alongside it)

One more reason why you don't normally see it on polyglots' lists is that it's hard to determine your level.

[Ani]

Fluency is a funny thing with a dead language. I went to church all in Latin for years, can read the missal and understand the spoken Latin used in the Catholic Church & can recite tons of hymns and prayers off the top of my head. I had three years in highschool and doubt my memory of actual grammar bit I think it's mostly in there somewhere. I do have interest in Latin but I wouldn't list it as a spoken language, just some knowledge. I just can't imagine wanting to bring Latin into the present though -- needing to figure out vocabulary for the internet and airplanes and machinery. It would feel like such a fabrication and if we are going to make things up, it might ad well be a conlang.

I did have an acquaintance who's husband was trying to raise their children bilingual English/Latin. She used to have some videos posted of her little kids speaking Latin but I don't know if thru still exist.