The same way new words are coined in languages that have native speakers: someone decides a word means something and uses it, and other people follow or not as they see fit.
I mean, except for French, where there’s like a government body that decides official usage.
It doesn’t tend to happen quite as productively or organically for the Latin community as it would normally for a more modern tongue. In most languages, the number of competent speakers greatly overwhelm the coterie of experts. So, even though we still treat the entry of a new word into Webster’s Dictionary as though it were a pronouncement from oracles, it’s really that lexicographers have to respond to what the language is actually doing, and one of those tasks they are set to is to separate those flash-in-the-pan coinages from ones that there will be a lasting need to be able to look up. The actual speakers are the authority, and the experts are taking their cues from them.
Not so in Latin. By its very nature as a language with a somewhat steep and intimidating entry requirement, the Latin community is unusually rich with experts. Furthermore, even people who will flay you for calling Latin a “dead language” are highly resistant to the kinds of innovation that come naturally to a living one. There are those who are hostile even to translating comics like Donald Duck or Asterix into Latin. Innovation in French may be discouraged from on high, but innovation in Latin is discouraged from all around, because it’s all on high.
The Latin Vicapaedia, being a reference work project, does not innovate if it can help it because that’s not the job of a reference work. So, to explain the modern world it relies heavily on any usages it can cite from the last great period of innovation in Latin – the Neo-Latin period, in which Latin was the Lingua Franca of science and scholarship. At that time, people used Latin not as a kind of nerdy hobby but as an actual tool of communication. They used it.
So, where can new usages propagate? There are very few places where a new coinage can just be dropped in. In Schola, the Latin social networking site, they only demand that you write in Latin, and are friendly to innovation, but even there a new usage is more likely to provoke discussion than to actually propagate.
In fact, most new coinages in Latin propagate through being compiled: Furman’s Lexicon, which I believe is a compilation of the outcome of years of a Latin listserv, is quite often cited, and it itself is the distillation of innovative coinages from other lexicons. The other source most often utilized is the Conversational Latin and the English-to-Latin section of Bantam College Latin & English Dictionary, both by John Traupman. The Vatican has a department that decides on new coinages, and they have a Latina Recentis. And there are other sources used by people who don’t speak English. But, basically, the upshot is this – you get new coinages into Latin by being the one compiling the lexicon.
Yes, I believe most “major” languages (now, how we would define this I can’t say for sure) have some sort of advisory body to make usage suggestions. But (and I know you’re aware of it, but many people may not be) they are merely usage suggestions and not binding on anyone, except perhaps governmental publications in some cases.
A very interesting thread.
Do we know how latin was spoken in the classical era? Does it differ much from what is spoken in eg the Vatican today?
Yes. And yes and no.
I’d say the difference between Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin is roughly comparable to the difference between, say, the way Americans speak English now to the way the British spoke it a century ago – different pronunciations, different manners of speaking, but basically mutually intelligible. It’s nothing nearly as disparate as the difference between our English and that of Shakespeare.
To be more specific, it means “with you (plural)”. If you were waying “may the Lord be with you”, and speaking to only one person, you would say “Dominus tecum”. “te” being the second person singular pronoun (accusative).
Doesn’t the Latin plural pronoun also carry a respectful connotation when used on a single person like vous does in French, usted in Spanish and Sie in German ?
I’ve never heard of that in Latin.
Not that I’m aware of.
I’ve had people say pax vobiscum to me at mass. I don’t know whether that’s because they’re using the second person plural in a ‘polite’, French vous fashion, or whether, not knowing much Latin and constantly hearing the vobsicum form, they don’t realise that the second person singular form is pax tecum, as Arnold Winkelried notes. I use the *tecum *form if I’m speaking to one person only.
You wish peace on people in church in Latin? I don’t attend Catholic services very often, but everytime I have this was done in the language of the parishoners (in my case French), never in Latin.
That’s probably it. Thanks for setting me straight.
The personal pronouns don’t carry degrees of respect or familiarity in general, but:
iste, istae, istud - this is a second-person pronoun which implies that the thing referred to belongs to the speaker, however it can also be a mild rebuke of the referent. I’m not sure how the context distinguishes it from an implied rebuke of the addressee, but it brings to mind the old commonplace “Why is it always ‘iste puer’ when he’s been naughty?”
ille, illae, illud - The third-person pronoun was used with greater frequency by medieval Latinists than by the Romans who tended just to repeat the referent. Also, in the middle ages arose the tendency to use this pronoun as a mark of distinction, meaning something like “that famous…” which is why you get in our modern age Winnie Ille Pū.
Yes, when the mass is in Latin. It formalises and ritualises the greeting. It’s much preferable to the colloquial inanities that one gets at a vernacular mass.
If you are interested in this stuff I can strongly recommend Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin by Nicholas Ostler (author of the incomparable Empires of the Word).
The opinion of the “academie française” isn’t binding on anyone, either (and I hardly see how it could be) . Not even for governmental publications (the most obvious example of it being the feminization of the name of official jobs when the holder is a woman. The academie was opposed to it, the government just decided that those ofices/titles would be feminized in official publications, and that was the end of it.)
That’s interesting; I don’t know where I could find a mass service in Latin around here.
Yes, I’d read that the advice of the Académie française wasn’t even binding on official documents of the French government. But I figure that at least some language regulatory bodies work to define standards used in official publications. That’s a useful purpose for them in my mind.
I was looking at the reviews of the book Askance recommended. One guy mentioned the following:
The commenter goes on to hint at the hilarious coda to this story, but this isn’t an open spoiler thread so I’ll leave it there.
Well, all languages were vernacular at one point. Latin may have been chosen for that reason, but it has been retained because it has become hallowed as the liturgical language of the Roman rite, and it’s universal.
And I completely agree that the mind, as well as the emotions should be engaged when praying. But the emotion should be one of reverence and worship. That’s why I prefer a simple, but solemn Dominus tecum greeting at such an important part of the mass, rather than the colloquial “how are you today” that is so common when the mass is in English. The only emotion that produces in me is irritation as people turn around and start having banal conversations when we’re all supposed to be preparing to receive communion.
Eh. I mean, I understand where you’re coming from, though I tend to focus more on the fact that people show up to church in shorts and sandals. But my being secular foils my outrage.
I do love that idea that in some places they still do the mass in Latin, but this is an homage. Frankly, I am often disappointed at how confused Catholics can be about what they supposedly believe. Damnit, if I wasn’t so secular I’d be crying out for them to quit bitching about gay marriage and abortion and make sure the flock was getting the rest of the fucking catechism.
Then again, I also like the idea of a liturgical language in principle. But I’d hardly be studying a language I couldn’t be obscene in.