For a supposedly dead language, Latin exerts an enduring appeal. You can even make love in it
That a journalist’s knowledge of Latin enabled her to break the news of the pope’s resignation suggests reports of its death may have been exaggerated. A BBC article, Who speaks Latin these days?, quickly returned to the default position, however. The phrase “most of the reporters present had to wait for the Vatican’s official translations into Italian, English and languages that people actually speak” ignored the fact that Latin had just been spoken.
Before categorising the language as dead or alive, Latinists might argue the need to define your terms. University College London’s centre for languages and international education says: “It could be argued that the native Latin tongue lasted for ever, inasmuch as modern Romance languages are the contemporary stages of an uninterrupted native usage of Latin … If, on the other hand, we prefer to understand Latin as the language whose grammatical structure has been preserved in the works of the classics, it cannot be denied that, as a native tongue, it existed for just a few generations.”
Classical Latin, however, continued to act as a lingua franca and formed part of education across the world from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond. (Although not at my school, which is possibly what gave it its romantic appeal.) Then there’s etymology: Latin’s influence on the English lexicon means an interest in one often leads to an interest in the other. In addition, Latin can uncover cultural assumptions such as that lying behind the to-do about the use of “literally”. In his book on translation, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, David Bellos suggests that as “literally” descends from littera (Latin for letter), it probably originated with events being considered worthy of being written down and reveals a society that valued writing more highly than oral culture.
A desire to learn more about etymology and grammar was what led to my turning up one September night for my first Latin class. And it was great! The tutor mixed Latin as a living language (each lesson we’d introduce ourselves with a cheery Salve!) with textual translation. Instead of a fixed sentence structure, Latin relies on declensions to identify the subject and direct/indirect object, and the feeling as the meaning slotted into place was similar to the pleasure of completing a particularly difficult crossword. It felt like taking my brain to the gym for an hour.
When I mentioned I was learning Latin, a surprising number of friends launched into amo, amas, amat, and one surpassed himself with fero, ferre, tuli, latum (although he spoiled the effect a little by adding: “I have no idea what that means”). Their reactions were illuminating on two counts. First, I hadn’t realised Latin was so widely taught outside private schools (investigation revealed this was due to the survival of small pockets of grammar schools). Second, the fact that amo, amas, amat was invariably said with a smile suggested an affection for Latin that wasn’t revealed when I mentioned other languages.
For a supposedly dead language Latin exerts an enduring appeal. From films such as Tombstone (where Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday trades insults in Latin with Michael Biehn’s Johnny Ringo, until halted by the marshal with: “Come on boys. We don’t want any trouble in here. Not in any language”) to Roxy Music’s A Song For Europe. Or, a particularly fine example, Sabbatum: 12 Black Sabbath songs played on early instruments and sung in Latin by the Estonian group Rondellus.
Then there’s the use of Latin for mottoes. On being knighted Christopher Frayling chose Perge scelus mihi diem perficias for his coat of arms, which Wikipedia translates as: “Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit.” Or more colloquially: “Go ahead, punk, make my day.” And that’s before I mention the football clubs, from Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur to Kilmarnock and Queens Park.
Although these examples could be dismissed as the remnants of a dying language, a quick Google search reveals that Latin is alive and kicking. Resources from the serious – such as Nuntii Latini, a weekly news bulletin in Latin broadcast by the Finnish Company YLE – to the fun, such as Latin e-postcards (37,000 sent and counting), are easily available, and small groups meet regularly to promote and maintain Latin as a living, spoken language. To quote A Gratius Avitus, founder of the free online Latin courses at the Schola Latína Európæa et Úniversális and of the London conversation group Circulus Latinus Londiniensis: “I have friends with whom I’ve only ever spoken in Latin, and I’ve made love in Latin more than once.”
To summarise why I think Latin – indeed any language, endangered or otherwise – is important, I’ll end with David Bellos: “To expand our minds and to become more fully civilised members of the human race, we should learn as many different languages as we can. The diversity of tongues is a treasure and a resource for thinking new thoughts.”
Twitter: @LaSoeur_Lumiere
via Media: Mind your language | theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2013/mar/08/mind-your-language-latin
