"Latin is easy if it's taught right"- A priest determined to keep Latin alive;

[Agorima]

I'm saddened by the parting of Father Reginald Foster. Damn the virus.

any effort of "keeping Latin alive" is futile, it's not a utilitarian language.

Any language that is or can be used is by definition useful.

You are not going to socialize with people in Latin or to send a CV written in this language to find a job, assuming you have some knowledge of the written language (real spoken language is already dead). I am not denying the importance it had in the past, but leave it to the past.

[lichtrausch]

Any language that is or can be used is by definition useful.

A use can be contrived for any object of consideration, so when people talk about usefulness, it's usually in relative terms.

Among the 6000 plus existing and/or documented languages, I would argue that Latin doesn't fare too poorly in terms of usefulness, considering its considerable usefulness for history, religion, philosophy, linguistics, etc. As far as keeping Latin alive as a spoken language, I don't see it ever going beyond being an eccentric hobby. Nothing wrong with eccentric hobbies though!

[nooj]

Usefulness is always relative! There's no language that's universally useful after all.

Are there very few contexts and domains today where spoken Latin is useful? Certainly! I don't think anyone denies that.

Latin in general is still useful today. For a medieval historian or for a classicist, Latin can be indispensable and far more useful than a living language with millions of speakers.

For example if your ability to put food on the table is predicated on the analisis of Latin texts found in Egyptian papyri (I have a friend who does just that), then for you, Latin is clearly more useful than Chinese or Portuguese or Finnish.

For someone like Reginald Foster, Latin was critical to his career. Arguably he would never have been so successful in his life (the right hand of the Pope sounds pretty snazzy) if he had focused his career around a living language spoken by millions.

The argument from those who want to restore the use of Latin as an oral language is also that spoken Latin would improve fluency and reading/writing ability in Latin in general. So not just for eccentricity's sake. This would make spoken Latin actually a supremely useful facet of learning Latin in general.

[tungemål]

...
There were no recordings made in the ancient Empire (not just Rome itself) with the real pronunciation.
In today's Italy, Latin phrases are spoken with just the Italian pronunciation at school.

There are no recordings, but isn't it true that we know more or less how it was pronounced in Roman times? For instance, Caesar was pronounced /kaisar/ giving the germanic word Kaiser, meaning emperor.

[Iversen]

My impression is that nobody speaks Latin, except probably the priest mentioned by the OP.
As a matter of fact, in the Vatican, Italian is the language, not Latin.

I tried to find a youtube video of people speaking Latin to each other, and I could not find one.

I have seen several Youtube videos of people speaking Latin, but till now not one where several people spoke it in a free informal discussion (sed videte infra) . However in real life I remember that Tesco Reale from the gatherings mentioned that he had been at a boarding school where Latin was mandatory, and I also remember that he exchanged remarks in Latin with other members there. I also attended a lecture totally in Latin (by a Swedish speaker, as far as I remember), and I have even done a 5 minut speed talk on tardigrades myself during one of the gatherings in Berlin. So Latin can actually be used as any other language - just not with as many other people as for instance German or Italian.

In Novi Sad (during a polyglot conference) somebody wanted to have a discussion with me in Latin, but unfortunately my Latin was quite rusty at that point. In Thessaloniki I had prepared myself sufficiently for having that conversation, but there I didn't see the person in question. For the moment I keep it at a level where I can write in it (as I do in my New Years messages in my log thread), but not without looking a few words up and checking one or two endings.

As for the classical pronunciation of Latin it is described in treatises from Roman times (written by people like Tertullian), and you can also draw inferences from spelling errors in the graffitti at Pompei and things like that.


EDIT: Hic colloquium latinum auscultandum est. Apud Googlem situm indagationem verborum "sermonem Latinam" semplice feci et inveni..

[Querneus]

You are not going to socialize with people in Latin

Incorrect. The pool of people just happens to be small, comparable to many modern minority languages. I don't deny you'd very often speak another language you have in common too, likely English, Italian or German (but this is also true when you learn small modern minority languages... these days it'd be hard to socialize in Ojibwe without using some English).

One advantage is that Latin speakers tend to live in rich countries, are fairly avid readers in one way or another, and these days are typically pretty present Internet users (unlike speakers of small modern minority languages). (These three characteristics are also disadvantages in their own way admittedly, but at least not in terms of contacting people.)

or to send a CV written in this language to find a job,

Correct. Also true of most minority languages of today.

I am not denying the importance it had in the past, but leave it to the past.

Latin is so much more fun to learn when you use it actively though! It's no cure-all to the difficulties of learning it and dealing with it, but a lot of people who try it find it makes the weight lighter. Plus this combination of oral and written skills is how most non-natives learned it until pretty recently (as mentioned before).

Also, since this post is probably prone to some misreading: I'm not calling Latin a minority language; I'm just saying the problems of people who actively use dead languages are somewhat similar to those of minority speakers.

As far as keeping Latin alive as a spoken language, I don't see it ever going beyond being an eccentric hobby. Nothing wrong with eccentric hobbies though!

Yes, eccentric hobbyists. That's Latin today, pretty much. (no sarcasm)

[Ezra]

You are not going to socialize with people in Latin or to send a CV written in this language to find a job, assuming you have some knowledge of the written language (real spoken language is already dead). I am not denying the importance it had in the past, but leave it to the past.

It is a quite peculiar thing that for a lot of modern people an ability to use a language for a «career» is a very strong argument even if real prospects to use a language are not necessary realistic. On the other side, Latin, which gives access to immense troves of literary treasure and allows one to educate and sofisticate one's mind, is somehow has to be "left to the past". I wonder, could it be due to abolition of God and family from the central position in the life of an average modern (wo)man who now tries to maintain his or her identity by making a "career" as a cornerstone?

Now, "career" is just a job. And job, after all, is not necessarily one's mission. Oftentimes, it is just a tool to bring money in the house. One well-learned foreign language is usually enough, maybe two. A lot of people can get by without any foreign languages in their careers. If we were really to use "career" as a criterion, we very rarely would try to learn more than one or two foreign language.

Learning a language does not need a "career" to be vindicated though sometimes one's career might require a language. Now, learning a language by itself adds to one's identity and, in fact, might make it stronger to life obstacles and hardships.

[AcademiaNut]

But obviously with the Romance languages taking over, there is just no need for it to be revived so aside from classical and religious studies, I don't see it ever gaining a big increase in followers.

There *is* a need for Latin, especially in scientific nomenclature, especially in taxonomy. Taxonomy is why I was motivated to study Latin on my own, even when I was 11 years old, and is the same reason a girlfriend of mine also started studying Latin on her own. We both wanted to understand the scientific names of various plants and animals better. Admittedly there is a lot of Greek mixed with the Latin in taxonomy, but Greek is cool, too. I estimate that Latin was one of the first five languages with which I came into contact when I was a child, so to say that Latin is dead (a common but false claim) strikes me as ridiculous. More accurate would be to say you can't get away from Latin, whether you see it from science, math, anatomy, legal terminology, inscriptions on buildings, root words, mottos, ad infinitum.

I never got good at Latin, but I still study it in the background. I might even ask some questions about it in this forum one day.

The real problem with Latin nowadays is the available learning material, especially with an up-to-date dictionary for modern concepts. Supposedly Latin has been updated that way in huge Catholic dictionaries of Latin, but such texts are not readily available to the general public, and are certainly not online. Until one can easily look up the days of the week, computer terminology, motor vehicle terms, and other modern concepts in a convenient way, it won't be practical to speak Latin, only to study it to create various official terminology as I mentioned earlier.

[AcademiaNut]

You are not going to socialize with people in Latin or to send a CV written in this language to find a job, assuming you have some knowledge of the written language (real spoken language is already dead).

You do know what "CV" stands for, right? "Curriculum vitae," which is Latin. Just checking, in case you weren't joking.

[gvinesc]

"It truly is a dead language."

I'm a little late to the party but not everybody thinks the purpose of studying Latin is to be able to use it as a modern language.

To me, the purpose is to read the ancients. They come alive every time you translate them into modern parlance, and the process is incredibly exciting.

They are worth reading and there are more of them to be read than a lifetime allows.

In that way they live. There are plenty of other languages to converse in.

My 2 cents.