Jul 27th 2013
\nWHEN Pope Benedict XVI resigned in February he used Latin, giving a scoop to Giovanna Chirri, the only journalist present who understood his words. That was a timely reminder of Latin\u2019s unlikely survival\u2014and revival\u2014as a living language.
\nRadio Bremen, a German station, has broadcast a weekly news roundup called Nuntii Latini Septimanales since 2001. Finland\u2019s YLE Radio 1 has run a similar show since 1989, with listeners in over 80 countries.
\nTwitter\u2019s 140-character epigraphs and aphorisms are ideal for Latin: five words can often say more than ten English ones, notes David Butterfield, a Latinist at the University of Cambridge. Tweets also leave no room for troublesome long subordinate clauses. The Pontifex Latin account has gained 132,000 followers since Benedict XVI started it in January. It is run by the Vatican\u2019s Office of Latin Letters\u2014perhaps the only modern workplace where the language of Virgil is still the lingua franca.
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Monsignor Daniel Gallagher, one of its seven Secretaries, speaks of the \u201cfun\u201d of writing tweets such as \u201cPlures hodie comparent rerum species falsae. Verum fideles si videri ipsi cupiunt christiani, dubitare haud debent contra aquam remigare.\u201d (\u201cMany false idols are held up today. For Christians to be faithful, they can\u2019t be afraid to row against the current\u201d.) The English version, he says, loses a neat allusion to one of Seneca\u2019s letters.<\/p>\n
But stretching ancient vocabulary to describe modern phenomena requires ingenuity (see table). Radio Bremen\u2019s coinages include autocinetum electricum for electric car. The Latin Wikipedia takes a strict \u201cNoli fingere\u201d (don\u2019t coin) attitude towards neologisms for its 94,000 articles, which range from iPods to volleyball; it relies on the Vatican dictionary as one of its sources. Google Translate is of limited help. Launched with a blog post (in Latin) in 2010, the software draws on translations of classical texts: good for stories of the Gallic Wars, less so for newscasts. Google says traffic for Latin translations is higher than for Esperanto.
\nLike Google, Facebook offers users a Latin-language setting, replete with \u201cMihi placet\u201d for \u201clike\u201d and \u201cQuid in animo tuo est?\u201d for \u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind?\u201d Farther up the slopes of Parnassus is Schola, a Latin-only social-networking site created in 2008; Ephemeris, an online Latin newspaper started by a Polish journalist in 2004, has contributors in Colombia, Germany, Chile and America. Floreat!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jul 27th 2013 WHEN Pope Benedict XVI resigned in February he used Latin, giving a scoop to Giovanna Chirri, the only journalist present who understood his words. That was a timely reminder of Latin\u2019s unlikely survival\u2014and revival\u2014as a living language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,13],"tags":[172,46],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}