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How many people speak Latin? | ||
Tags: Number of speakers | Latin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5431 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes  Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 26 11 March 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the more high-profile uses of Latin is at the commencement ceremonies for Harvard University every year. One of the speeches, given by a student, is always in Latin. When we witnessed this a few years ago, along with several thousand others, the student did a great job with a very humorous speech. I believe the translation was printed in the program, so people could get the jokes. Of course, I'm not claiming that those students are fluent, but that sort of event does give Latin some excellent exposure. (I recently read that there were speeches given at the Harvard commencement in Hebrew until Hebrew got pushed out of the "classical" curriculum by Latin and Greek proponents. Not sure when that happened; 19th century?)
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 10 of 26 11 March 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Fascinating videos, I particularly enjoyed the interview with Don Cleto Pavanetto - you can just see him bubbling over with a deep joy and enthusiasm for everything Latin. Made me smile :) Edited by Teango on 11 March 2010 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5345 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 11 of 26 11 March 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone looked at Evan der Milner's free learning site - http://latinum.mypodcast.com/ - his goal is to get people speaking Latin.
I have been following Evan der Milner's suggestions and audio programme - starting with D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners and Comenius' Orbis Sensualium Pictus and then progressing to Alder and Corderius' Colloquia. Comenius and Corderius are like 16th and 17th century versions of Assimil! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6250 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 12 of 26 11 March 2010 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry to be a pessimist... I highly doubt that more than the mentioned number of people
can speak Latin at any level. The reason is that there are just too few opportunities to practise. I only get to speak Latin once a year, with one Esperantist I know at the alligatorejo. I should also say I don't mind that, because for me belatedly turning Classical Latin into a spoken language (which it never was, in the form that we know it) is a preposterous idea, and we're most probably mispronouncing it all as well. None of the Latin teachers I met were able to speak Latin with any degree of fluency, and I heard that most recently even the Vatican has trouble finding enough Latin speakers among the bishops and cardinals, so that church conferences are now conducted in an Italian-based idiom or interpreted. Edited by Sprachprofi on 11 March 2010 at 11:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6483 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 13 of 26 12 March 2010 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree about the futility of turning Classical Latin into a spoken language - that would be like expecting people who study English to speak like Canterbury Tales or an Elizabethan play. Therefore I also always stress that the kind of Latin I try to use is Neolatin, i.e. a Latin with many neologisms, simplified sentence structure and logic - but within the realm of the grammar that was developed by the old masters.
Likewise there is no hope reviving the true 'Vulgar Latin' as spoken by the populace of the Roman world, or even church Latin from the Medieval Period. But Latin of the kind and at the level represented by Ephemeris, Yle Radio and the clip from 3SAT should be within reach. And I call that language Neolatin just to make this clear. It is a good question how many people actually do learn to speak any kind of Latin. And maybe it is true that just twenty old men in the whole world are fully fluent in spoken Latin, but I don't think you should underestimate the number of weirdos who try to write in broken Latin behind closed doors like me. And the jump from writing to speaking a language (with an accent) isn't too scary, as long as you don't expect perfection. When I write in Latin in my log I do in fact think (mostly) in Latin, and the thing that is slowing me down is not so much finding the 'normal' core words of Latin as searching/checking words for modern phenomena. And apart from the impressions I have gleaned from the aforementioned sources my best help in doing this is the remarkably enlightened "The New College: Latin and English Dictionary" by John C. Traupman, which contain many of the words and expressions I need. In contrast, my "Neues Latein Lexicon" is marred by a tendency to use lengthy circumlocutions instead of simple words. There is one more 'modern' Latin dictionary, but it is more expensive and I haven't bought it. The New College thing, which I bought for a pittance in the Philippines, has filled out the void for me. When I read Latin I prefer the school dictionary from Langenscheidt because of its many annotations. And I regularly read Ephemerides and texts from the internet, so all in all I'm actually quite comfortable with the Latin sources I have got around me. I have tried to listen to Milner's podcast collection, but it sounds like what it is: a language course. And language courses in general give me the creeps. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2010 at 1:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| millnerlondon Tetraglot Newbie United Kingdom latinum.org.uk Joined 5983 days ago 16 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 14 of 26 12 March 2010 at 11:48am | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to speak Latin, you can do so every single day in the audio-visual
locutorium (chatroom) on Schola - having to get to a 'conventiculum' or latin-immersion week is no longer necessary though attending these is very useful, not everyone can either afford to, or is free at the right times - since New Year, the locutorium on Schola has been fully functional. It is used regularly by a pool of around 50 people, with a hard core of regulars. There is no longer an excuse if you want to speak Latin. The reason for becoming fluent as a speaker, is to increase your reading speed, and to get rid of the bad habit of translating into another language as you read. Sometimes up to 20 people are in the locutorium at the same time. Usually there are around 5 or six. As with any language, the key to fluency is consuetidine. The goal is not to 'resurrect' spoken Latin - it never died, there has been a continual progression of second language Latin speakers, from Roman times to the present. The number of speakers now is the lowest it has ever been since the fall of the Roman Empire. http://schola.ning.com There is a short youtube clip which demonstrated how to use the locutorium - you just need to know which buttons to push, to speak, and to be heard, and to have multiple conversation partners - up to 5 at a time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 5898 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 15 of 26 12 March 2010 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
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There is a great reason for learning to speak Latin even if you have no desire to resurrect it or some such thing. Having an active command of a language is the best way to master its subtle nuances.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 16 of 26 12 March 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting site, millnerlondon...something to strive for when I eventually get my skills up to scratch one day :)
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