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Polyglot popes

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beano
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 Message 1 of 15
26 June 2012 at 5:12pm | IP Logged 
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.
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 2 of 15
26 June 2012 at 6:15pm | IP Logged 
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.
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Gorgoll2
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 Message 3 of 15
26 June 2012 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
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.
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montmorency
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 Message 4 of 15
27 June 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged 
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)


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Iversen
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 Message 5 of 15
27 June 2012 at 10:37am | IP Logged 
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

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montmorency
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 Message 6 of 15
28 June 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged 
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.




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Gorgoll2
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 Message 7 of 15
29 June 2012 at 3:04am | IP Logged 
@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

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kanewai
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 Message 8 of 15
29 June 2012 at 4:29am | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
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.

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.


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