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Polyglot popes | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4624 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 15 26 June 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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The current pope, Joseph Ratzinger, is a native German speaker. He speaks fluent Italian and French, his English is fine and apparently he also has a working knowledge of Spanish. I presume he also has an extensive knowlege of Latin.
The previous pope used 9 languages in an official papal capacity and apparently knew 12 languages in total. Even though popes are lifetime scholars, these are impressive findings. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 15 26 June 2012 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, they do have ample time and access to language learning materials. On the other hand they do not
have access to the very best way of learning a language: Having a native girlfriend or boyfriend. I am not so sure the Italian popes have been polyglots, though. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5148 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 3 of 15 26 June 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It´s interesting. Despite being catholic myself, I only heard about John Paul II and
Benedict XVI. While notorious cardinals like Rafael Merry del Val ou Eugene Tisserant - Discounting Mezzofanti - were hyperpolyglots, thers´s few material about the Popes. @Solfrid Cristin: Before the Italian unification, many regions were under foreign influence. I guess an Venetian Pope like St. Pius X was bilingual in Italian and German and a Piemontese pope probably knew French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 15 27 June 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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While reading around the subject, I found this, which might be tangentially interesting:
http://arltblog.wordpress.com/2005/05/27/popes-linguist-teac hes-latin-as-a-living- language (seems to be too long to make into a clickable link) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 5 of 15 27 June 2012 at 10:37am | IP Logged | ||
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There are several Youtube clips with Reginald Foster (the 'hero' of montmorency's link). The most polyglotish is a clip in German with Portuguese subtitles and mr. Foster speaking Latin. Edited by Iversen on 27 June 2012 at 11:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 15 28 June 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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That was fun. He got his point over, even to those us whose Latin has almost rusted
away, by being a good communicator. My wife studied Latin at school, as did I (with about as much success, i.e. not much), but she remembers her teacher (who had apparently studied at Cambridge), coming into the class and saying "Salvete Puellae" [it was an all-girls school at this point], to which they had to reply "Salvete Magistra". And they pronounced that "v" as an English "w". It would be the same with the famous phrase "veni, vidi, vici", which I definitely pronounce with an English "v" sound. And they pronounced the "ci" as an English "kee", whereas I would make it sound like English "chee" (as in "cheese"). (I learned my Latin (such as it was), at a school run by Catholic priests, and I suppose we used the pronunciation of the (English) Catholic Church of the time. We certainly didn't pronounce our "v"s as "w"s, and "c"s as "k"s. I wonder where the good patre stands on that issue. Although I am no longer a practising Catholic, I get the impression that (perhaps partly thanks to Pope Benedict), Latin has made a modest comeback in the RC Church. My local RC church always retained its Latin sung mass on Sunday morning, although it used the modern rite in other respects. Apparently the old rite is now "legal" again, thanks to Benedict, although it's still not the usual thing. Ironically, thanks to a lot of Anglican priests converting to Roman Catholicism, as a special concession, they were allowed to bring with them certain aspects of the Anglican ritual, one of which included the lovely service of Evensong. I'd attended (more by chance than anything) quite a few Evensongs in Anglican Cathedrals and churches, but in recent times, have noticed that certain RC churches are also now advertising it (the small print makes it clear that this is part of this concession I mentioned ... it's certainly not every church). Now, the (almost) relevant thing here is that, although one of the most important aspects of the English Reformation was the abolition of Latin, and use of English in services, the modern Anglican church seems to go out of its way to use Latin titles of psalms, etc. I am not sure whether it doesn't also even sing some of them in Latin. I managed to attend a couple of these new RC-type Evensongs, and everything was in English, which I thought was slightly odd, as you'd think a bit of Latin would be quite natural. My research here is still a "work in progress". I hope this doesn't count as a religious post; my reason for attending Evensong is not religious, but musical, but I'm also intrigued by whether, either the Anglican, or the RC church (now) ever uses Latin properly, in Evensong. Perhaps fellow Englishmen or women, whether Anglican, RC, or ex- of either, or none, might have some knowledge of this subject. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5148 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 7 of 15 29 June 2012 at 3:04am | IP Logged | ||
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@montmorency: As a Traditionalist Catholic, I think Latin is better than 20 years ago.
Recently, the First allowed Catholic Mass in the York Cathedral was a Tridentine - Old Rite - Mass. The Latin Mass is quite rich in Hebraisms and Hellenisms, like "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabbaoth", "Hosana in Excelsis" or "Kyrie eleison". Therefore, it´s often incomprehensible. Edited by Gorgoll2 on 29 June 2012 at 3:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4891 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 8 of 15 29 June 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
I'm even more impressed now that I see just how much on-going work it takes Prof Arguelles and our HTLAL polyglots just to maintain their languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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