
Latin Lives - diodorus
http://www.thenation.com/article/196177/latin-lives
======
schoen
I was at Reggie's class in 2008 where he got sidelined for medical reasons and
which turned out to be the last summer session in Rome, but somehow I didn't
know the story of how Paideia had picked up the torch. What a delight.
Gratulor his qui tantum honorem magistro fecerunt et faciunt.

------
tomwalker
I have a friend that is a historian. He was visiting a monastery in Macau to
view some very old texts brought by the first Portuguese priests. They were
under the care of a very old priest who spoke Cantonese and some Portuguese.
My friend spoke Portuguese but they were not getting very far so he tried
Latin. They conversed in Latin fluently for the rest of his time there.

------
mathattack
I am a natural skeptic of much of the whining in the humanities. (It sounds
too elitist and unmeasurable to my ears) That said, this seems like a very
interesting way to connect both modern and ancient culture.

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guard-of-terra
To complement, here is a [parody] metal song in Latin. Press "Play".

[http://iramen.ru/spisok/stramosljabi_alba-
potentia.html](http://iramen.ru/spisok/stramosljabi_alba-potentia.html)

(can't comment on the quality of language tho)

~~~
pluma
There's actually a number of bands in Germany that uses various old/dead
languages including Latin. In most cases they are just musical adaptations of
historic texts, though, not novel works entirely.

As far as rap music goes, I particularly enjoy this[0] interpretation of the
"love" song "Ich was ein chint so wolgetan" (it's actually about rape, from
the perspective of the victim[1]). It's alternating between Middle High German
and Latin.

[0]: [http://mp3.pm/song/13460415/Schelmish_-
_Ich_Was_Ein_Chint/](http://mp3.pm/song/13460415/Schelmish_-
_Ich_Was_Ein_Chint/)

[1]:
[http://lyrics.wikia.com/Helium_Vola:Ich_Was_Ein_Chint_So_Wol...](http://lyrics.wikia.com/Helium_Vola:Ich_Was_Ein_Chint_So_Wolgetan/en)

~~~
schoen
This kind of verse is called macaronic verse (or makkaronische Dichtung in
German).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaronic_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaronic_language)

I think the Wikipedia article's coverage of the German/Latin macaronic verse
tradition could use some more detail.

------
amelius
I took Latin in high-school but I always wondered what Latin would have
sounded like.

~~~
kylebgorman
We can deduce facts about how the Romans pronounced Latin sounds by:

* descriptions of the sounds by the Roman grammarians

* wordplay, onomatopoeia, spelling errors in graffiti, etc.

* the way in which sounds from other languages (particularly Greek) were adapted into Latin

* the way in which sounds of Latin were adapted into other languages

* comparative reconstruction of the Romance languages

* evidence from metrical poetry, which provides particular clues about consonant and vowel length

A very readable book on is W. Sidney Allen's _Vox Latina_.

[edit: meant to reply to immediately following sister of this post.]

~~~
mattlutze
I'd never thought of using misspellings from graffiti as a pronunciation clue,
but it seems so obvious.

I wonder how anthropological linguists would someday treat modern rap and hip-
hop. In German, for example, it's not uncommon for the artist to slightly or
not-so-slightly mispronounce words to make them fit a rhyme. Would that help
or hinder a study?

~~~
schoen
I see some hand-written signs by native Spanish speakers in my neighborhood
that interchange b and v (and sometimes k and c, and sometimes c and s), which
would make for good evidence for a future historical linguist that these were
homophones or near homophones in certain contexts.

For example, I think I've seen "besino" written by a native speaker for
"vecino" 'neighbor'.

------
jacquesm
The article doesn't seem to mention this at all, but Latin definitely lives:
it's called modern day Romanian. There are many differences but if Latin
survived anywhere into modern times it would have to be Romania. I had some
Latin in high school and that came in surprisingly handy, much more so than in
other Latin derived languages.

~~~
Leszek
Sardinian is considered to be closer to Latin than Romanian, and arguably
Italian and Spanish are closer to Latin too.

According to a book that I haven't read[1], but is cited by Wikipedia[2], "A
1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of
difference from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages)
by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation,
indicated the following percentages (the higher the percentage, the greater
the distance from Latin): Sardinian 8%, Italian 12%, Spanish 20%, Romanian
23.5%, Occitan 25%, Portuguese 31%, and French 44%."

[1] Pei, Mario (1949). Story of Language. ISBN 03-9700-400-1 [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language)

~~~
mathattack
I have heard similar anecdotal evidence on Italian, and it's linguistic
similarity to Spanish would support that. I'm a little surprised that
Portuguese strayed so far.

~~~
pjmlp
Portuguese has some influence from French in terms of character set as the
first King was of French origin.

At the time of the country origin, Galician, Catalan, Spanish, Asturian, Arab
were all spoken in the penisula, which might have contributed to such
deviation.

At its roots Portuguese came from Galician mixed with some Arab.

