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Language brought back to life | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4770 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 9 of 27 04 December 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
My friend that lives in Dublin knows Irish, but I think he was taught it in school...I think he uses it in daily life too as there plenty of signs and stuff in the language over there. However I bet if he left Dublin he would never use it at all. That was a very interesting clip too and it was nice to see she was rewarded for her efforts! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4714 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 10 of 27 06 December 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Keeping languages like Irish Gaelic, Latin, Sanskrit are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo important to us as cultures. It's mere laziness to let rich, deep and important aspects of our collective culture to die.
Latin is still spoken, and if Terentius has any kids (or has already) they will surely be raised in Latin, and his many, many students are fluent in Latin and could part that as well. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4681 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 11 of 27 06 December 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Cotidie apud my. Every day at my house. On a more on-topic note, Wampanoag has an interesting nugget of American history tied to it: the first Bibles printed in what would become the United States were in a language related to Wampanoag (or even maybe Wampanoag itself--but I don't know enough about it to say anything certain). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5155 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 12 of 27 09 December 2011 at 7:42am | IP Logged | |||||
You can't really be "fluent" in Latin in social situations due to it not using modern words. D: It's a pitty that Latin never managed to survive as a daily spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 13 of 27 09 December 2011 at 8:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Of course it does. There are plenty of people who have been making up words in Latin for modern concepts.
If Latin didn't manage to survive as a daily spoken language, then neither did English, Chinese, or any other language. Latin survived as a daily spoken language in Italy, France, Spain, Romania and other places. It changed, of course, but so did every other language ever, so you can't really hold that against it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 27 09 December 2011 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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I regularly write in Latin and would also be able to keep a simple conversation in the language, but I have really had no chances to use it (except in a couple Youtube videos). However the problem is not really the lack of words for modern things because they can and will be created if you need them. Some dictionaries and wordlists have proposals for most things you might need, and there are internet pages which do manage to discuss modern science, culture and politics in Latin. The problem is at nobody really needs Latin - everybody has another native language, and learning Latin on top of that will essentially be something you do as a hobby (maybe as a challenge to prove that it can be done).
It is true that Latin gives you access to an immense literature spanning several thousand years and comprising both fiction and non fiction. But it will not be easy to convince the average couch potato or Justin Bieber fan about the values of classical Roman poetry or agricultural methods in ancient Rome. And let's not be sentimental: Latin gained its position through slaughtering and suppressing other language communities - the moral difference between the Aeneid and Mein Kampf is not as big as some might think. But those atrocities happened long ago, and you can't turn the wheels back. What you have now is an immensely interesting cultural and lingustic Latin sphere which can be a fine hobby for those who can find the time to spend on it. And this is actually the same situation as Esperantists face. But the Latin community could maybe learn something from the organization around Esperanto. Hebrew reappeared in a community under pressure and became the main language of a country because of some specific historical circumstances. There is nothing that suggests that any other language will be resurrected soon because of similar circumstances. And the other resurrection projects, like those of Manx and Cornish are doomed to be movements which operate under the same kind of constraints as for instance minor sports or other specialty interests. In some cases they will receive public support because they reinforce the historical sense in a community, and in some cases there will be academical posts available, but I don't see any of these movements becoming a mass movement soon. So those who really are interested in the languages involved would do well to organize themselves in non-localized communities based on modern electronical media and easy transport instead of expecting that their neighbours will turn off Xfactor and start studying Latin or Irish.. Edited by Iversen on 21 December 2011 at 1:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4714 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 15 of 27 09 December 2011 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
classical Latin lives today because of this very reason, or at least, to the degree it does. I love when people say "Latin's dead" ; no it's not, it's living everywhere, just under different social, political, historical and other conditions. The living dialects of Latin became languages of their own, with their own histories and peculariaties. The 'pure' (classical) form of Latin was artificially, hermetically sealed to not change as the linguistic environment changes as it does.
How so? I am interested in Latin revival movements, and the surge in the past few decades of Latinaphiles, there are probably more Latin speakers and writers (i'm not talking Newton's here, just literate) today than since the 18th century. Vicipedia, entire oral courses, communities, Romae Novae, etc. The University of Kentucky has Latin intensive courses which have been quite, quite successful. The desire for us to get in contact with our common linguistic past IS there, but the means and methods for the past century had effectively killed Latin as anything more than a pedantic, philogical or classicist task. New pedagogical treatments of Latin as more than a math system or however dry, lifeless method it was taught in the, let's say German Gymnasiums, have been thrown on the way side. And your comment on "justin bieber couch potatoes" really applies to everything that requires motivation and work, not just something as 'esoteric' as classical Latin. Edited by fomalhaut on 09 December 2011 at 1:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4583 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 16 of 27 09 December 2011 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edit: After I finished typing that post I started doubting what I wrote from memory, so I did some googling. Looks like my definitions are a bit off - the consensus seems to be that languages are dead, rather than extinct, if they are not used for everyday oral communication, but are still known and have uses in specific contexts, usually in written form. In this sense Latin, Sanskrit, Coptic and Hebrew before Ben-Yehuda all qualify as dead languages, while Old English is arguably extinct. But my point was that the continued existence and evolution of the Romance languages does not make Latin a living language, since all modern Romance languages are so different from Classical Latin that they can be considered separate languages. Edited by vonPeterhof on 09 December 2011 at 2:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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