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How many people speak Latin? | ||
Tags: Number of speakers | Latin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| morganie Newbie United States Joined 5202 days ago 31 posts - 41 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 26 11 March 2010 at 1:18pm | IP Logged |
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Is there a statistics on how many people speak (not just study to translate) Latin as a second language, or maybe even a first language? Just curious.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5334 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 2 of 26 11 March 2010 at 2:04pm | IP Logged |
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This Q&A post "How many Latin Speakers are in the world?" suggests an estimate closer to 3000 people who can currently carry on a decent conversation in Latin, and only a few hundred who can really claim full fluency. I can't confirm this for certain, but am sure one of our many Latin scholars or teachers on the forum will be able to put you better in the picture. I personally imagine the number is actually a lot higher than this. It's also uncertain whether this answer relates to the classical Latin you learn in school, or the Vulgar Latin that the Romans spoke.
As you probably already know, the Vatican City lists Latin as one of its official languages, and even has an ATM machine with a Latin option which I've personally seen. Everyday matters however are generally carried out in Italian or other languages, and I don't know of anyone for whom Latin is a native language. Outside of study and dedicated resources on the web, the only time I've actually heard formal Latin spoken in the real world is on official occasions and during formal meals at university, in church and prayer, and sporadically in medical, scientific, legal and other commonly repeated terminology and maxims. Although not exactly the "real world", you also get the the odd smattering of what I imagine to be Vulgar Latin in period sagas like Gladiator. I was quite impressed on one occasion, when during a graduation ceremony where everything was called out in Latin, a college Master and a Tutor shared a short conversation and a little joke whilst they were waiting between waves of graduands, all in Latin too :) Edited by Teango on 12 March 2010 at 9:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6481 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 3 of 26 11 March 2010 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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It doesn't really count if you write a speech and then read it aloud from a pulpit, -veto! Repeating isolated proverbs or quotes which you have learnt by heart is also irrelevant.
But frankly, how can anyone make a sensible estimate of speaking abilities when nobody ever poses the question to a relevant and decent-sized population? I have read about conferences and formal occasions where at least some participants did their speeches in Latin, so that would be a relevant place to pose the question. Or pose it to those people who write Latin webmagazines or who translate things like Asterix into Latin. My guess is that many of these people either can speak Latin to some degree or could learn to do it in a very short time. Personally I decided at some point to start thinking in Latin, and even though I wouldn't claim even basic fluency right now I'm fairly sure that a week or so in a Latinspeaking community could change that. Latin does not have to be as complicated as in the Aeneid or a speech of Cicero. Edited by Iversen on 11 March 2010 at 9:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5273 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 4 of 26 11 March 2010 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
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The lack of people who "speak" Latin well is probably due to how the language is taught
in a classroom setting. Most people who learn French learn both written and oral skills; both about equally. For Latin on the other hand, students generally learn to translate with less emphasis on conversational skills. This isn't necessarily wrong, but the result is that those who know Latin may not speak it as well. I think it's a shame that Latin is no longer used in academia these days. Sure it's around in various instances, but no one publishes or lectures in the language. I can imagine going to a lecture taught all in Latin. The systematic nature of the language would be great, but even more so I think it would be fun to converse with my buddies after class in the hall in Latin. I guess I didn't answer your question, this was just me thinking out loud. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5181 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 26 11 March 2010 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
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Last month I applied to college and my major will be Latin and Greek. If I get accepted I however believe that for the next five years I won't be learning to speak either and I can only think of supplementing my education with conversations on-line; there are Latin and Greek chat rooms, even voice chat. I do plan to learn both of the languages to at least be able to write works in them (the same I plan with Sanskrit). However, I am not certain if I'll ever achieve enough spoken fluency. No doubt there are more people who can write in Latin or Greek far better than they can speak in them.
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| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5363 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 6 of 26 11 March 2010 at 7:25pm | IP Logged |
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I remember seeing a video on youtube with a fluent latin speaker... I can't seem to find it in school so I'll find it as soon as I get home :)
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| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6999 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 7 of 26 11 March 2010 at 9:04pm | IP Logged |
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I have deleted my previous post here, as there was a re-post by another member on page three of one of the same videos from youtube. No sense in keeping the same information due to repetition. Edited by alang on 15 March 2010 at 6:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6481 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 8 of 26 11 March 2010 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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I do remember an interview in Latin with a leading latinist of the Vatican - it was part of a Latin TV program at 3SAT (se link here)
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