Well not really, but for several centuries nobody has been able to claim it as their native language. I go into a fit of head scratching every time I see a sig line in Latin. Since I’m helpless as to the meaning of said sig line, the only thing I can think is “look how clever this guy is; I wonder what it means”. And then I whiz past the next ten or twenty posts where people exchange clever statements/insults/punch lines/recipes/telephone numbers & who knows what else in this defunct language (I could have said lingua defunctus, but for god’s sake why?).
I realize languages don’t really die, so long as anybody is using them for valid communication, but Latin seems to be around purely for “dressing up” an otherwise drab document, speech or just for making an otherwise worthless statement sound impressive. I suppose lawyers & doctors are the notable offenders, with ad hoc committees forming to make a priori judgments. Is there no way to express these thoughts in your native language? It’s as if there are groups of people walking around wringing their hands and saying “I wish I knew some obscure phrase in a long dead language to use instead of just saying to a ridiculous degree. Wait- I know! How about ad nauseam!”.
In the past several centuries, millions of people have learned Latin and used it effectively to write and speak with one another… why? Is there some concept that can’t be expressed properly in your native language? Why would you want to express something in a language that very few people can comprehend?
People use Latin to express ideas for the same reason that people use French for certain reasons. Because quite simply there is no translation. Besides, Latin is the base of the Modern English Language, so keeping it around would be beneficial for people to understand our own language better. You use Latin every day, you just don’t realize it because you are speaking English. Did that make sense? Probably not. Oh well, I tried.
** ***Latin seems to be around purely for “dressing up” an otherwise drab document, speech or just for making an otherwise worthless statement sound impressive. I suppose lawyers & doctors are the notable offenders, who knows what else in this defunct language (I could have said lingua defunctus, but for god’s sake why?). **
My Short List
1 - Secrecy Hey What are those people talking about ??
1A I bet the rabble wish they knew what we were talking about.
1B - Pride / Elitism 2 - Cultural convention * i.e. *(id est … if I remember correctly) e.g convenient short hand.
3- The William (never Bill) F Buckley Syndrome … Hey I am smart … the only reason that you don’t know what I am saying is that obviously you are not…there is no reason for me to lower my standards to communicate with you.
4 - Economics I can’t charge you $100 / hour if I don’t sound / write as if I am worth it.
The reasons are numerous but comparable to what Teens do when they give common words new meanings or spelling ( I am partial to PHAT which I am told is you know like so 10 minutes ago)… Or Bureaucrats / Enginers / Programmers
Darn, I guess all those linguist who have firmly established that English shares a common origin with German – not any Romance language – are out of a job now, eh?
Latin was certainly used by the Catholic Church for centuries to deny people further down the social scale the opportunity to read the bible for thenselves .
Maybe it was undesirable for the commoner to compare what their so-called betters were doing against the scriptures.
In fact you could be put to death for daring to translate the bible.
Many things have several local names but there is only one latin, so if something is given a latin classification and then that is published everyone will know what is being referred to when that latin name is used again.
When it is used in a technical way there is no problem but just dropping stuff in to express some percieved superiority is plain snobbery.
I believe that Middle English was basically a creole of the more Germanic Old English and the Latin-based Norman French, so Modern English isn’t exactly a “pure” Germanic language.
Opus: Please repost the OP without any Latin-based English words.
Casdave: Interesting proposition; but I doubt its veracity. I’d think a more likely reason on why the church heirarchy didn’t translate the scriptures into the common tongue was because they considered the sacred writings, well, sacred, and thus not to me trifled with.
Latin terms that remain in every day language have developed technical meanings that carry alot of weight–when I refer to a priori knowledge, I am not just staying “Knowledge before experience”: I am saying “Knowledge before experience as has been discussed and defined by the philosophical tradition.” I am contextualizing the bare meaning of the sounds. When a lawyer uses Latin terms that could be translated, he is being specific, makeing it clear that he means these words as they are definged in legal parlance. Normal English translations are fuzzier
Serious students of European history use Latin daily. Most of the primary source material avalible has never been published in an English translation, and primary souces are what matter.
The incredible thing about the English lauguage–and it is a truely incredible launguage–is its extreme flexibilty in picking up words and phrases from almost anywhere. Yes, it is Germanic, especially in terms of grammer and syntax, but the vocabulary is full of words from Latin, from Greek, from Celtic, from French, from Romany (Dad), from Mayan (Shark), from various North American launguages, from Spanish, from invented slang and jargon–we are the three-penny whores of lingusitics, willing to take in terms from anywhere just because we like the sound of them, never mind that we already have a perfectly good word to describe something. And we are reluctant to let words disapppear, holding on to them forever, even if new words with the same meaning arise. This is our greatest strengh, because it gives us such a wonderful ability to inject nuance and irony into our speach–not to mention the chance to make beautiful puns! When I say “de facto” instead of “in fact” it is not because I am snobby–it is because the incredible flexibilty of the launguage allows me to choose to comunicate a certain snobbiness along with the meaning of the phrase. Do you see the difference?
If the bible had been originally written in latin perhaps this would be true.
Anyhow if it was so sacred that translation could not be countenanced then why were common people not taught to read and understand it in latin?
Why was it read out in church in latin without allowing the peasant find out for himself.
The church definately did not want its authority challenged and unveiling the mystique would have led to that-in fact it did ,think Martin Luther who nailed his condemnations to church doors.Translation was a part of that process.
The ethos of the Catholic Church for centuries was to keep people ignorant and to repress those who made enquiries that did not suit it Copernicus ,Galileo, Bacon ,et al
Casdave: You misread my posting. I asked Opus to repost without using Latin-based English words. I did not ask you to repost without using Grammar, Paragraphing, and Logic. Care to try again?
Half right. English (like German and some other Northern European languages) is indeed a member of the Indo-Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European language family; but Latin and all its Romance descendants are also part of that larger family, so they also share a common origin with English. They all go back to Proto-Indo-European, they’re just at different spots on the family tree (and medieval English, as was pointed out, received an immense influx of Latin vocabulary and grammar, so by now it’s much more “Latinized” than, say, Icelandic or German).
Monty rhetorically asked:
Including your username! LOL to see this thread originating from someone with a good Latin name like “Opus”.
But perhaps the OP has a point that promiscuous Latinity doesn’t advance the cause of communication (and remember, Latin was so valuable in pre-twentieth-century Europe largely for the precise reason that it was such a useful lingua franca—sorry!—that made communication easier for people of different native tongues). Here’s my rule for when I post or publish or in any way make public stuff with foreign words in it: if a non-English word or phrase can’t be found in a decent English dictionary, I owe you a translation. Would that content you? (As for the folks who like to hijack the conversation into Latin in-jokes, just remember that de gustibus non est disputandum. :))
Ok I’ll give it a go Monty.
1)Your premise is that maybe the Church regarded the Latin bible as being so sacred that any translation of it could not be countenanced, from their point of view.
2).My point is that the bible was not written in Latin originally therefore it is a translation.
3)Using the logic from (1) then surely the original writings in their original tongue were so sacred that translation into Latin could not be countenanced. This begs the question why should the Church regard one translation, into latin, as sacred and one into a more accessible tongue as ,well, blasphemous.
Perhaps the Catholic Church wished to ensure that it held an absolute authority over the words of the bible by making sure that others were ignorant of their meaning.
This then would make it very difficult for anyone to make a challenge to its authority based on the bible itself.
Martin Luther did make a serious challenge to Church authority and this was at least partly based on the Latin being translated.
All I am trying to point out is that the use of Latin in this case was to exclude people rather than communicate.
Sometimes some people will use Latin phrases in a way that excludes others and hope that it confers some sort of authority on themselves but ,as has been shown here to better effect than I can muster, there are occasions when it is very useful.
Sometimes I have it all worked out in my head-it just doesn’t always come out the way I want it to, is that any better?
No. My premise is that the RC Church may have regarded the Scriptures, in the original languages, as being sacred and thus not a good idea to have competing translations. The lingua franca, as mentioned above, was Latin and thus the Vulgate sufficed to be a uniform text for the “known” world.
No kidding. See my response just above.
You failed to use the correct logic as I’ve shown in my response above.
WAG (Wild Assed Guess). Not to mention, it’s also an incorrect guess. The RC Church heirarchy has always been well aware of the Eastern Rite churches, to include, of course, the Orthodox. It would take a miracle to make the Greeks unaware of the Greek meaning of the Greek texts of the Greek Bibles extant at the time.
Except, of course, for those Greek-speaking Greeks whom I mentioned above.
And a number of other things which were arguably far more important than your assertion. As it is, I’d have to say that he was more concerned with the mass itself being celebrated in the vernacular.
WAG.
Of course the Latin phrases can be useful, especially since the English language has adopted very many of them. For that matter, English words themselves can be used in an exclusionary fashion. Or are you not familiar with the expression “ten-dollar words?”
'Twas easier to read, but still just as incorrect as before.
Salvete omnes! Puto me loqui in Latine valde bene, et illud studeo propter multas causas. Sed primum, est pro sapiente Romanorum antiquorum. Quoque linguam Graecam studeo! Lingua Hispanniarumque quoque!
Sorry…I couldn’t resist…I’ve been taking Latin for a while, and…well, coactus sum id usare…err…I was compelled to use it…but you know…I’ll be quiet now.
Sorry, My bad, believe it or not, I didn’t mean to say that Latin is the base of the English language. I had a temporary lapse of thought, it won’t happen again, I promise. What I meant to say is SOME of the words in the English language that we use daily DOES have Latin roots, mainly because of when William The Conqueror from Normandy invaded England and forever changed the English language.
-- *Latin for All Occasions*, copyright (c) Henry Beard, all rights reserved, quid pro quo certiorari stare decisis mandamus subpoena duces te cum, do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Please repost the OP without any words developed prior to central heating. Clearly, an appreciation of our shared tongue is missing in this generation of heated schools.
Hey What are those people talking about ??
I bet the rabble wish they knew what we were talking about.
2 - Cultural convention * i.e. *(id est … if I remember correctly) e.g convenient short hand.