Talk:Contemporary Latin

Remove or rewrite "Cambridge Latin Course" Section
The section at the bottom of the article entitled "Cambridge Latin Course" is garbage, especially compared to the rest of the article, in content and tone. It's basically a semi-literate's advertisement for the CLC as a learning tool. It is in no way integrated with any of the rest of the information. I would remove it myself, but I know it will simply be reverted. I strongly advise the author of that section: please, sir or madam, you sound like an imbecile, and your work degrades the quality of the entire article. Please rewrite this section such that it conforms in tone and content with the rest of the article. Sir Huddleston Fuddleston (talk) 02:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Poetry
Can we have a translation of this. My latin is really bad but I do know that some of the feeling has to be lost when it's in english. 75.144.33.177 (talk) 17:19, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

"Recent Latin" Not a Well Accepted Definition - Merge with New Latin
The entire premise of this article is non-standard. The content should be merged with New Latin (which also needs reform). See further comments there.

The Recent Latin content is also somewhat opinionated — "it is primarily used as a form of entertainment" (Church Latin?); "intending to shrink readership, not expand it" (who's given the mandate readership should be expanded?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.147.195 (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Do not merge.
 * There is a stark contrast, in content, style, and even in pronunciation, between the Latin writings of the 20th century and those of the 19th century and earlier. Although any form of chronological classification is ultimately arbitrary, this division has a better claim than most.  The terminology "Recent Latin" is novel, but some title must be used, and if you can think of a better, feel free to move the article.  "New Latin" and "Neo-Latin" are, however, firmly entrenched as terms for the Latin used from the 16th or 17th centuries to the 19th.
 * Roman Catholic Church Latin has its own article, Ecclesiastical Latin. It's not the subject-matter of this article.
 * That Latin was used at the end of the 19th century and in the earlier 20th c. as a means of encoding certain passages considered 'indelicate' or obscene, and thereby protecting the casual reader, is not a matter of opinion but of fact. One may note the following policy entered on in early editions of the Loeb Classical Library:
 * "Offending passages were not always deleted or altered; sometimes they were simply translated into another language. Greek was usually translated into Latin on the facing-page English text, and in the first edition of Martial, the offensive Latin was translated into Italian. This--while not necessarily poor scholarship--makes it difficult for someone without a knowledge of Latin (or Italian) to profit from the translation."
 * Such a policy was by no means restricted to the Loeb books, but was followed by many translators of works from foreign languages, times, and cultures where Edwardian standards of "delicacy" were not observed.

RandomCritic (talk) 03:10, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Why not split, and create new page; 'Living Latinity' for recreational usage?
 * Neo-Latin survives in the fields of botany & within the Catholic Church, where the new pronunciations have no accepted standing, even though such reforms in pronunciation were initiated by such historical figures as Erasmus at the dawn of Neo-Latin. The use of Latin for sensitive subjects surely is a mere, insular remnant of scientific Neo-Latin. The Latin version of this page simply refers to 'latinitas viva' - living latinity.


 * Perhaps this spurious term 'Recent Latin' should be split; the recreational use of Latin, renamed 'Living Latinity' which might be regarded as a movement from the beginning of the 20th Century, attempting to revive Latin or restore its former vehicular applications, within new and entertaining dialogues and publications in the Neo-Latin medium. All surviving, official applications of Latin today, ought to be acknowledged as integral to the Neo-Latin tradition (which is precisely what they are (they clearly did not die in the 19th Century) irrespective of the trends of official establishments largely abandoning Neo-Latin for vehicular publications).

Homoproteus (talk) 14:14, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've attempted to edit the pages in a way that will answer some of the well-founded critiques above. I chose "contemporary Latin" (where "contemporary" is to be understood strictly adjectivally, and not as part of a technical term) as the new name for this article, because it was used by a plurality of the linked articles, and because "Living Latin" seemed a little too narrow in application.  However, the greatest part of the article deals with aspects of this movemment. RandomCritic (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Dispute section
Wow! The new dispute section sure spices up this happy but somewhat humdrum article. I like it, but I have one problem with it. It lacks references. If it is going to stay long it will need references, or the evil classicist assassins will come along and delete it. It could also benefit from accounts of Albino Opus Dei assassins dispatched by Latinitas to attack publishers of Vox Latina or other examples of sectarian violence from the "other side" if such exists. Just my $0.02. Rwflammang (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Any use of Latin in video games?
I wonder if Latin had ever been used in videogames. I wanted to put in the information, that's all. If you know any video game that uses Latin, tell me, OK? Joe9320 of the CUWP |  Contact the Council  06:12, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Conquests of Camelot has a manual which is titled in Latin "Liber ex Doctrina". In Jerusalem the shops have Latin inscriptions (eg. the butchery was "tabulae lanius"). pictureuploader (talk) 12:50, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The Final Fantasy series has a tendency to use bits of Latin in songs (One Winged Angel, Somnus), and the title of the collective current few games (can't think how to put it >_<) is Fabula Novum Crystallis iirc 86.29.29.77 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC).
 * DooM III has latin messages also: "metus, dolor, mors ac formidines". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.83.180.2 (talk) 20:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a historical video game called “Nicolas Eymerich: The Inquisitor” which allows the option of Latin dialogue, and “Minecraft” is available in Latin as well. I don’t know if this counts, but someone has also published fanlations of the ROMs for several Zelda and Final Fantasy games. —Wiki Wikardo 17:45, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Trivia or examples of a particular kind of use of contemporary Latin?
One of the contributors to this article, JonHarder, whose objectivity and good sense has been proven, has deleted a section under the title Other instances that contained the following two examples of contemporary use of Latin in public spaces:


 * The Wallsend Metro station of the Tyne and Wear Metro has signs in Latin.
 * In the Vatican City there is an ATM (bank machine) with instructions in Latin: image.

His edit summary was "Can we just drop this section? It is essentially trivia and undocumented; the quality of the image is so poor."

I agree that the section looked awkward. Originally it contained much more data, but the rest has been relocated to more appropriate places, whereas those two continued to defy classification. Yet, I think they are useful illustrations of a form of contemporary use of Latin which would remain otherwise unrepresented in the article. I am therefore going to restitute them, with your permission, under what I hope will be a more productive heading, which I hope will be enriched in due course: In public spaces. If a more meaningful title can be found, it will of course be more than welcome, but I don't think those two instances should be deleted from the article as they are a specific type which would be otherwise absent from the article.

I'll put the image as a footnote. Its quality would not appear to be an argument for silencing the whole item. Also I understand that the pictures (good or bad) amount to making the information sufficiently documented for the purposes of verification.

Thanks to all. Aggfvavitus (talk) 16:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Latin in academic ceremonies
I removed Harvard and Princeton from the list of schools using Latin in their commencement ceremonies because the subsequent paragraph addressed the issue of the Princeton salutatory address and the Harvard Latin oration. I'm not aware that these schools use Latin in their ceremonies other than these orations. I understand that Brown at least uses Latin citations in awarding degrees, while at Sewanee most of the ceremony is in Latin. Maybe there's a way to combine the two statements, but I can't see a good reason for citing Harvard and Princeton twice. Finn Froding (talk) 02:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for the comment. I am acquainted with academic procedures in a couple of European countries and was really going by this experience and what I read, and nothing else. The person who first wrote that information didn't provide further referencing either, so things might well have been a bit confused. What I read was that Harvard and Princeton had Latin in their commencement ceremonies, and that a number of universities (among which Harvard and Princeton) had Latin also in their graduation ceremonies. Both from the words and from my personal academic experience, I was under the impression that different ceremonies were meant. Indeed, from the word "commencement" originally meaning beginning, I understood that commencement was a ceremony marking the beginning of the academic year, whereas I understood that "graduation" was a different ceremony celebrating obtention of degrees at the end of the academic year. In the Spanish universities I know of, there are formal commencement ceremonies (opening of the academic year by professors and authorities, where gaudeamus igitur is sung), but no graduation ceremonies for the students to celebrate their results at the end of their studies; in the UK university I'm acquainted with on the other hand there are graduation ceremonies at the end of the academic year to celebrate students' achievements, but no formal opening ceremony that I know of or have ever attended. I assumed from what I read that Harvard and Princeton had both kinds of ceremony, and therefore I thought both were to be mentioned, independently. If Harvard and Princeton commencements are just their graduation ceremonies (one and the same event marking the end of one year and beginning of the next at the same time), then of course I would agree that Harvard and Princeton shouldn't be mentioned twice; but then the fact that one and the same ceremony is meant with the word graduation and the word commencement should be made clear through careful wording of the relevant paragraph as well. If you have confirmation that this is the case, please do feel free to edit the article in that respect. If you can also provide confirmatory referencing, so much the better. Aggfvavitus (talk) 23:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I can tell you that in Universities in the United States, commencement is another name for graduation. The ceremony consists of orations by candidates for degrees and other members of the university, followed by the granting of degrees and (usually) the awarding of diplomas.  At Harvard and at Princeton, the Latin oration is one of the speeches by candidates, demonstrating the skills for which their degrees are awarded.  At Harvard, the diplomas are printed in English, as are the individual citations for honorary degrees.  At Brown, I understand, these citations are printed in Latin and read orally at the commencement ceremony.  At Sewanee, a substantial part of the ceremony actually takes place in Latin.  Your description of the Princeton salutatory, along with the cited YouTube clip, closely resembles the Harvard Latin oration, examples of which may also be seen on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=47u6IJ2GVdM  Most American universities do not have a ceremony at the beginning of study, i.e., what you thought was "commencement."  If there is a ceremony at that stage, it is called "matriculation."  I hope this information will help you determine whether Harvard and Princeton ought to be mentioned twice, or how to order the degree and importance of oral Latin at academic ceremonies, as compared with those in Europe. Finn Froding (talk) 01:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this. Indeed it appears that I was then merely confused by the word "commencement". This being the case, and as I said above, it doesn't require much further thinking to confirm that Harvard and Princeton should then not be mentioned twice in that regard of course. You can proceed to edit the section correspondingly if you like, or I'll try and do it myself when I find the time to think about the best wording. Thanks again in any case. Aggfvavitus (talk) 23:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Latin language reform efforts
Should mention (or at least link) Interlingua / Latino sine Flexione, which were some people's ideas of how to revive Latin in a more practical and easier-to-learn form for the 20th-century... AnonMoos (talk) 03:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes. I put it into the See also section. (BTW, the concept is in itself laughable, since all modern usages have to violate the composition rules and borrow heavily to the language to make it work, and then the only point of Latin, it's effective grammar, is removed to produce something most ineffective, sterile and expressionless). Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 09:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Faxt fixup
The article spake of Bayer names as Latin, which is erroneous: I fixed it. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 09:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) the common confusion between names and designations, there were never Bayer names, and the Bayer designations were /greek_letter/ /latin_constellation_name/,
 * 2) star names are generally some kind of badly translated Arabic, sometimes Persian and Greek, and very rarely Latin (a few like Capella, Terebellum, and Palilicium).

On the Internet
Should Pope Francis' Latin Twitter account be mentioned here? (https://twitter.com/Pontifex_ln) It's particularly noteworthy that this account has a greater following than the Polish and German accounts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.59.115.14 (talk) 19:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. Be bold, and add it, especially if you can cite it. Quinto Simmaco (talk) 07:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Duolingo launched its Latin through English course on Wednesday. Culloty82 (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Date of revised pronunciation
I note the statement in the article "The transition between Latin pronunciations was sudden and drastic (the "new pronunciation" was adopted throughout the schools in England in 1907)". This is not credible. The actual text of the cited reference does not seem to be available online. I'd be really grateful if someone could give the full text of this or some other source to clarify. \SamuelTheGhost (talk) 19:58, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * sorted. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:00, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sorted. What you cited seems to be a different source to me, and one that can't/doesn't claim anything about the suddenness of the adoption, because it is in fact from the time when adoption was recommended. In fact, it says:
 * The Council now appeals to all classical teachers in the United Kingdom to adopt the method of pronunciation here set forth (emphasis mine)
 * I've re-added the old citation together with the new with more proper format as well as requested verification using the appropriate tag. LjL (talk) 16:13, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

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Scope
I think it would be useful to specify a more exact scope for this article, rather than specifying a “focus” in the lede (which is pretty irregular). Not to say that we shouldn’t mention the ‘Early Modern’ background, but perhaps a split between Contemporary Latin and Living Latin might be useful. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 01:32, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Classical music in twentieth century
Hi @Wes sideman; you cut the section on Carl Orff and Stravinsky:
 * ==Latin in Classical Music==
 * Some Latin texts were written for specific musical cases, for instance classical music pieces, like as Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. In other cases, such as masses and other liturgical works, it has continued to be used for compositions, perhaps most famously by Carl Orff in his adaptation of medieval poems known as the Carmina Burana.

and noted that this was "unsourced, and also, it's a stretch to call Latin in Classical Music "contemporary". Please note, the scope of this article is Latin in the 20th century (the first line of this article says, Contemporary Latin is the form of the Literary Latin used since the end of the 19th century.. That wasn't my decision but it is what the editors decided, differentiating it from New Latin which they give an end date of 1900 for. If you look through you will find this article contains a lot of information over that period. For sourcing, it will be easy enough to find a source for these pieces of music. Let me know what you think. Jim Killock (talk) 21:57, 29 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I've reverted and made it clearer in the text that these are C20th works, made the general heading clearer and added a ref or two. Jim Killock (talk) 11:33, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Mnemosyne
"Mnemosyne" fell as low as they do not accept Latin articles anymore, and they haven't done so for several years now. This information should be removed. 178.73.63.242 (talk) 15:00, 11 April 2024 (UTC)