Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

The Latin Revival

I was bemused to discover that the Pope did something I agree with: he advocates the revival of Latin.  (Link courtesy of my partner Doug.)  For centuries, Latin was an auxiliary language of the Church, scholars, and widely traveled people.  That was incredibly useful and I'm disappointed that people ditched it.  It's a great language, with a lot of history and literature to its credit, and any  widespread auxiliary language is really convenient.

In general, I think the guy is a dick, and we disagree on almost everything.  But in this our paths run together, and I'm an oldschool activist capable of swapping out allies on different issues.
Tags: linguistics, news, spirituality
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  • 24 comments
starcat_jewel

starcat_jewel

November 14 2012, 23:24:30 UTC 8 years ago Edited:  November 14 2012, 23:25:17 UTC

This is known as the Stopped Clock Principle, aka "even a stopped clock is right twice a day".

I'm less impressed with the "we need a lingua franca" argument, because English is already filling that role pretty reliably in the modern world. But I do think that some acquaintance with both Latin and Greek would be helpful in producing a populace with better vocabulary and reading comprehension, which we desperately need.

(Note: I never took Latin in school, and my entire knowledge of it has been etymologically derived -- which is rather backwards from what I'm saying above, but the flow goes both ways.)

(edited to fix HTML)
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

November 15 2012, 00:59:05 UTC 8 years ago

>> This is known as the Stopped Clock Principle, aka "even a stopped clock is right twice a day". <<

*laugh* That is actually one of the things I said when I heard about this.