Is Latin a Dead Language?
In this opinion released today, Judge Boyce Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declares that Latin is a "dead language" (in footnote 5). Judge Alice Batchelder begs to differ. Her opinion concurring in the judgment reads:
I concur in Judge Martin’s opinion. I write separately only to express my suspicion that, like the reports of Mark Twain’s death, see The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third Edition, 2002), the report of the death of Latin in the majority opinion’s footnote 5 is greatly exaggerated.
[Majority opinion]
5. [2" x 3" picture] Isn't Mr. Whiskers cute?
Batchelder, J., dissenting in part:
I concur in Judge Martin's opinion. I write separately to express my view that Mr. Whiskers is not, in fact, cute, and that Judge Martin should have recused himself from consideration of that question in light of his ownership of Mr. Whiskers. Below is a picture of my dog, but I will reserve comment on the question of his cuteness.
With appologies to Tacitus.
(I think you use dative of indirect object there.. it's been so long...)
It takes special legal training to think that "res judicata" is in a dead language, but "collateral estoppel" isn't.
Res judicata is sometimes used in the narrow sense of claim preclusion and sometimes more loosely to refer to both claim preclusion and issue preclusion (i.e. collateral estoppel) hence the state was being imprecise with its terminology.
First it killed the Romans and now its killing me.
-Theme Song of Latin 101.
How about the Status Civitatis Vaticanae?
Sure, they often speak Italian in daily life, but still ...
(And note: this is meant to be an explanation of disapproval, not a call for any response, censure, etc. What Judge Batchelder did was perfectly acceptable behavior, I just would prefer judges not indulge themselves like that).
Cerebraaaaa!
It's not dead.
Their clerks couldn't figure out how to write "Im in ur futnotes, waistin ur time" in Latin.
--PtM
To quote my old Latin teacher, "Latin is not dead; it has merely ceased to be mortal."
It's a stripper suing for the right to ply her trade in an establishment that serves liquor, something (tragically) prohibited in Michigan. While I understand that the case is important to her as a commercial matter, she won the appeal, so I doubt she's offended. I certainly hope the State of Michigan's feelings won't be too injured by the inappropriate aside.
If this were a capital case or something, I'd share your concern, but it's not. And I don't often see the appellate courts joking around on life or death matters, to tell the truth.
Also, since nudity isn't expressive but nude dancing is, does that mean that the dancers are only protected so long as they keep gyrating? Do they have to keep dancing while putting their clothes back on?
The "latin roots" theory is to linguistics what "evolving from apes" is to anthropology.
People called Romani, they go the 'ouse? What's that mean?
When I was in the Army Security Agency, many years ago, I knew a sergeant who had been stationed at a base I won't name that was in the business of listening to overseas telephone calls. (WHAT??!?) He said that one of the folks listening -- folks trained to recognize various languages -- shouted out, "Anybody recognize this?" The sarge, who had been an alterboy in his youth, listened in. The call (as he remembered it when he recounted the story) was from a cardinal in New York City to somebody in the Vatican, to discuss the finer points of a recently-released papal document of some sort. After exchanging pleasantries in English they switched into Latin and carried on the rest of the conversation in that not-yet-dead language.
Any linguists here who can comment on this? Of course French, Spanish and Italian are all derived from Latin but I had always understood French to be much more of a divergence than the other two, certainly well beyond "little more than [a] bastard dialect of Latin."
And English is an entirely different story altogether, a sort of buffet vocabulary overlaying a simplified Germanic grammar. The history of English is a fascinating story all by itself.
But "dialects" have to be mutually intelligible. The /grammar/ of all three languages has diverged tremendously from the Vulgar Latin (which is close the type of Latin spoken by the Catholic Church when it speaks officially). For instance, nearly all inflection of nouns for case has disappeared. All three of these thus require an analytical syntax and a lot more usage of prepositions. (In Classical Latin, word order was pretty much a matter of style. "Cartago delenda est"; "Delenda est Cartago"; I've even seen "Est delenda Cartago.")
And English . . . really fascinating. The only major Indo-European language without construct gender (except for ships and, sometimes, nations I guess . . .); that alone makes English cool.
Michigan's State Supreme Court has ordered the use of the terms in their proper meaning and has banned the use of the terms 'issue preclusion' and 'claim preclusion'
Interesting. Colorado's Supreme Court nearly does the opposite: it insists on using "issue preclusion" and "claim preclusion" and chides parties for using collateral estoppel or res judicata.
I can't think of any grammatical differences between Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin. I think Vulgar Latin would be spotted by features such as nominative absolutes, datives showing up in all sorts of places, redundant prepositions, and replacement of certain verb inflections by auxiliary verbs. Plus bad spelling, of course. These would all be as out of place in a contemporary papal bull or Latin missal as they would have been in Cicero's letters or Horace's poetry.
Ecclesiastical Latin is effectively the grammar of Cicero (particularly) applied to a directed vocabulary and pronounced pretty much like Italian.
"A monument, more durable than brass
And higher than the pyramids that stand
Laid out for kings, I’ve built with pen in hand,
Which neither greedy rain nor frantic thrash
Of wind can overthrow, nor flights of years
Unnumbered, nor the seasons’ gyring gears.
I shall not wholly die, but cheat the lash
Of Death in greater part: for future tongues
Shall cultivate my praise,..."
The Perseus Library translation, which is rather literal, or a somewhat more readable translation (from which I quoted) here.
As for 'random' word order: Yeah. It's amazing that second year HS Latin students seem always to read Caesar. He was just plain weird when it comes to writing style.
"Latin loves me, yes I know/
For my teacher tells me so . . "
or the always-catchy "Agricola, agricolae, agricolae/agricolae, agricolam/agricola in singular/ -ae, -arum, -is, -as, -is!" ?
If so, WHY?
--PtM
The number of Schmucks cited should not be surprising; Schmuck means "Jewel" in German. Only when it was imported into Yiddish did it become pejorative (Family(?) jewel = prick, essentially, I'm guessing.) Jewell is a common enough English name: the news reports Atlanta's Richard Jewell died on Wednesday.
A bit more recent. By the 8th century, the three Romance languages had diverged to be mutually incomprehensible, but were still considered the same language. By the 12th century, it had been forgotten that they ever were the same language and scholars had to figure out that they must have a common root in Latin. (I think I have my dates vaguely accurate).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh
I have seen it claimed that the purely spoken dialects of the Romance lanmguages (except Romanian which is isolated by Slavic speakers) gradually phase into one another as one travels from, say, Lisbon to Madrid to Barcelona, then north through France, then back south again into and through Italy; so there is never a abrupt border where the people cannot understand the speakers in the next village. Though this may be less true now that broadcast media and public schooling forces people into the straitjacket of the formal, official language (usually what is spoken in the nieghborhood of the capital)
I believe it was under Charlemagne that the attempt to teach "Latin" as a language began. In the process, and as a consequence, Latin was segregated and distinguished from the many Romantic languages into which it had evolved.
So that "Latin" is dead, just as Old English is dead. But both live on, evolved to be currently useful.
She was beautiful, Catholic, Italian. Spoke no English.
I was handsome, atheist, Amerikan. Spoke no Italian.
What we had in common were Latin and the passions of youth. Wow! How my language prof mother would have been proud of my ability to make hay out of a "dead language."
Now much older, having studied law, I have wild dreams of making love while exchanging phrases such as "consensus facit legem" et "contraceptiva duces tecum?".
Che cosa è questo 'Amerikan'?
I took two years of Latin decades ago, and have always wondered about word order. I know word order has no grammatical consequence, but I've always assumed that in actual use it wasn't entirely arbitrary. Was there some "normal" way to put a sentence together?
In like fashion, Latin sired more languages and dialects than I could hope to name. But the existence of French is not the existence of Latin. Latin is dead.
The Catholic Church does still use it as an administrative language, but anything published in Latin is alos published in English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and probably a dozen other languages. Which one gets read? Is Latin alive because one religion writes treatises in it that no one reads?
That's a difference without a distinction. There's no rule in either case, just a preference. Caesar could understand one of John Paul II's encyclicals (except for neologisms) and John Paul II could, of course, understand Caesar's works.
The point is that the vast heap of simplifications we would call Vulgar Latin were not carried into Ecclesiastical Latin but instead into the Romance languages.
I believe it was under Charlemagne that the attempt to teach "Latin" as a language began. In the process, and as a consequence, Latin was segregated and distinguished from the many Romantic languages into which it had evolved.
Exactly so! Latin had been developing organically but Charlemagne's ecclesiastical reformers insisted on returning to classical standards.
Caesar would probably regard the encyclical as artlessly composed, although gramatically sound.
"In principio erat Verbum": I think the word "Vulgate" is the problem here, Bama.
You write about what "we would call Vulgar Latin". But I don't think that you and I are using the term in the same way. I'm speaking of the language of the Biblia Sacra Vulgata, which indeed is close to Church Latin.
You are speaking of the theoretical language that is the root of modern Romance Languages. This would have come quite a bit later, and, one assumes, would have contained the "heap of simplifications" that you mention. But Vulgar Latin has multiple meanings. And the Common Latin of the Biblia is still heavilly inflected. I assume this is one of the major simplifications you allude to when writing of the later Common (spoken) Latin.
Cornellian, I know I'm coming to the party late, so someone may have already answered this, but . . .
While I'm not a professional linguist, I did have training in Latin and French in high school and college and have specifically discussed the divergence of French with a scholar who knows a lot more about the subject than your average layman, so I may be able to address your question. (I'm sure if I'm wrong, someone will correct me.)
My understanding regarding the divergence (and there certainly is a marked divergence, especially when you compare it to the divergence with Italian or Spanish) is that it can be chalked up to heavy contact with and adoption from the Celtic language spoken in Gaul, and more importantly, by the early inhabitants of Brittany. I don't recall off the top of my head whether the Celtic language in question was a P-Celtic or Q-Celtic language, so I have no idea if the flavor of the divergence would feel more Welsh or Gaelic, but there you have it.
Yes, you identified the problem perfectly. I wouldn't consider the Vulgate an example of Vulgar Latin. But if we do, then certainly what you argue follows.
I think he was trying to soften the blow of pointing out that the AG confused the elements of RJ and CE.
Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine GRINCHUS Christi natalem Abrogaverit
The Vatican constantly adds new words to the Latin language. Otherwise, they'd have no way to issue official documents referring to nuclear weapons, television, or the Internet.
(groan)
I hate you. That was horrible.
(and by hate you, I mean I wish I thought of this first)