I've always wanted to get into Latin, and my current plan is getting through "Lingua Latina"[1], a book written <i>in Latin</i> and heavily recommended by others.<p>I do wonder about a "global Latin community", though. My personal experience with Latin "speakers" has been tinged by an atmosphere of Elitism. Not just about knowing the language, but the whole curriculum of literature. A bit like when you're thrown into a club of people quoting Star Wars all the time, just a bit more high-falutin'. Comes with centuries of "classical education" being a hallmark of upper class schooling. Compare that with the basic concept of languages like Esperanto...<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia...</a>
Fascinating article! I wish a similar change had come over Ancient Greek studies, too. My experience was that intro classes was an impatient way to half-read Platon. I once asked our instructor, a TA who was wrapping up his PhD in Classics, how to say “It’s raining” in A. Greek and he didn’t have a clue, such a question never occurred to him. And studying later texts, such as the <i>Souda</i> was not even considered.
The mention of the Catholic Church's use of Latin made we wonder: if you're going to resurrect Latin as an international language, which pronunciation are you going to use -- the reconstructed classical pronunciation of Cicero et al., or the Italian-influenced pronunciation of Church Latin? For example, Caesar's <i>veni, vidi, vici</i> would be pronounced something like "wainey, weedy, weeky" in the former but "vainy, veedy, veechy" in the latter.<p>And then there's the traditional English pronunciation, which assumes that Latin is pronounced more or less the same as English: e.g., <i>mater</i> is made to rhyme with "later".
For those wondering, the missing ALF web site URL: <a href="http://www.academialatinitatifovendae.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.academialatinitatifovendae.org</a><p>I didn't know this exists. Funny how reading all this Latin instills a feeling of home. Have I been a Roman in a previous life? But then, I'm not a believer in reincarnation.
I'm probably a little late in posting here. If any of you are in the Seattle area and interested, come check out the Latin meetup: <a href="https://www.meetup.com/eastside-latin/" rel="nofollow">https://www.meetup.com/eastside-latin/</a>.
> As soon as the nineteenth-century method of analyzing the languages without ever using them started to take over, Classics immediately started to die.<p>This sounds absurd. At my high school‡ Latin and Greek were living languages, and we studied them, as we studied French, as a way of reading literature and understanding a culture distant yet related to ours. Unless you were an actual linguist, what would be the point of studying a language without using it?<p>‡ which was, I admit, a "Latin School"
Surely cicero was capable of speaking demotic, and writing Katharevousa?<p>The implication that Shakspear spoke in meter feels false. Poets rhyme for amusement, but can also just "say" <i>pass the salt</i> and mean it non-ironically.<p>You can ask for the nearest coffee shop in Latin without using ciceronian style, and its good latin. Spending the mental energy to think it may be going beyond the pale.
A couple of resources: <a href="http://frcoulter.com/latin/" rel="nofollow">http://frcoulter.com/latin/</a> ; <a href="https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339" rel="nofollow">https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339</a>. Also, I thought <i>Latin: History of a World Language</i> by Juergen Leonhardt, an most interesting book.