Contemporary Latin is the form of the Latin language used to compose texts from the end of the 19th century down to the present. Three kinds of contemporary Latin can be distinguished:

  • New Latin, formerly the dominant secular form of Latin used as an international lingua franca down to the 19th century, and as a significant professional language in academic and scientific fields such as medicine, pharmacy, zoology, and veterinary medicine, where many periodicals, itineraries, and important monographs were written in Latin. Today New Latin is still used in the nomenclature of animals, drugs, illnesses, anatomy, and botany, where Latin nomenclature is still required.[1]
  • Living or Spoken Latin, an effort to revive Latin as a spoken language and as the vehicle for new and entertaining dialogues and publications. Involvement in this Latin revival can be a mere hobby, or extend to projects for restoring its former role as an international auxiliary language. This form of Latin is the primary subject of this article.[which?] Contemporary Latin is characterized by the general adoption of the classical pronunciation of Latin as restored by the best specialists in the area. [2]
A contemporary Latin inscription at Salamanca University commemorating the visit of the then-Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko of Japan
A contemporary Latin inscription at Salamanca University commemorating the visit of the then-Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko of Japan

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[edit] Emergence of contemporary Latin

The emergence of contemporary Latin can be traced back at least to the late nineteenth century. During that period, Latin periodicals flourished that advocated the use of Latin as an international language.

Reform of Latin instruction and writing to more closely approximate classical Roman usage was an ongoing academic project throughout the 19th century. There was, however, much initial resistance to any change in traditional methods. For instance, the essentials of the classical pronunciation had been defined since the early 19th century (e.g. in K.L. Schneider's Elementarlehre der Lateinischen Sprache, 1819), but in many countries there was strong resistance to adopting it in instruction. In English-speaking countries, where the academic pronunciation diverged most markedly from the restored classical model, the struggle between the two pronunciations lasted for the entire 19th century. The transition between Latin pronunciations was sudden (in England, the "new pronunciation" was adopted throughout the schools in 1907[1]), drastic, but the older pronunciation, as found in the nomenclature and terminology of various professions, continued to be used for many decades, and, in some spheres, to the present day.

Between 1889 and 1895 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published in Italy his Alaudæ[3], which found continuity in the Vox Urbis: de litteris et bonis artibus commentarius[4], published by the architect and engineer Aristide Leonori from 1898, twice a month, until 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I.

Soon after the end of World War II, the movement bounced back with renewed force, yet again as an attempt at a cultural amalgam based in the long Latin tradition, and aiming towards a more integrated Europe, hand in hand with other pan-European movements like the one originating the present European Union, which started around the same time. It may have also taken strength from the example of the revival of the Hebrew language which had been successful in the State of Israel. One of its foundational moments was the first International Conference for living Latin (Congrès international pour le Latin vivant) held at Avignon (France) in 1956.

More Latin periodicals continued to be published in the twentieth century after the wars, like "Vox Latina" (published by Cælestis Eichenseer, from the University of Saarbrücken, Germany, from 1965 to the present) or "Melissa" (published by Guy Licoppe, in Brussels, from 1984 to the present). Also of interest is the recent emergence of social networking sites whose affairs are conducted wholly in Latin, an example of which is Schola.

Latin has also been used as a spoken language from the beginning in numerous summer conferences throughout Europe, and more recently in America.

[edit] Spoken Latin

Many users of contemporary Latin promote its use as a spoken language, a movement that dubs itself "Living Latin". Among the proponents of spoken Latin, some promote the active use of the language to make learning Latin both more enjoyable and more efficient, in this respect drawing upon the methodologies of instructors of modern languages. Others pursue a more radical approach, supporting the revival of Latin as a language of international academic, perhaps even scientific and diplomatic, communications (as it was in Europe and European colonies through Middle Ages until the early 19th century), or as an international auxiliary language. However, as a language native to no people, this movement has not received support from any government, national or supranational.

A substantial group of institutions (particularly in Europe, but also in North and South America) has emerged to support the use of Latin as a spoken language. Many of these institutions are listed at the links page of the Societas Circulorum Latinorum; others can be found in the external links list below.

Of particular importance to the movement is the Latinum Podcast , which for the first time offers an online audio course in Spoken Latin, using the Restored Pronunciation. The course has thousands of users, spread across the globe. By providing a virtual immersion environment it promotes the spoken language very effectively, and in a short space of time has started to build a community of students with the ability to converse in the language with confidence.

[edit] Original literary production

[edit] Poetry

The use of the Latin language in poetry never fully disappeared, and contemporary Latin literature has produced a series of Latin poets since the Renaissance, including Arrius Nurus, Geneviève Immè, Alanus Divutius, Anna Elissa Radke, Ianus Novak, Thomas Pekkanen, and others.

Alanus Divutius of Brussels, Belgium, wrote the following Latin poem in memory of those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks:

Ite viatores et mundo dicite vasto

nos híc innocuos mole jacere sub hac,

nos cives placidos, patres matresque quietos.

Cordibus in nostris nullum odium fuerat.

Nosque laborantes rapuit mors invidiosa,

nunc sumus heroes, nunc sumus astra poli.

[edit] Translations into contemporary Latin

Various texts—usually children's books—have been translated into Latin in the twentieth century, for various purposes, including use as a teaching tool or simply to demonstrate the author's command of Latin in a popular context.

Contemporary Latin texts include:

[edit] Other examples of contemporary Latin

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Saint Louis Code), Electronic Version". Retrieved on 2008-08-05.
  2. ^ E.g. Prof. Edgar H. Sturtevant (The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Chicago Ares Publishers Inc. 1940) and Prof. W. Sidney Allen (Vox Latina, A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, Cambridge University Press 1965), who followed in the tradition of previous pronunciation reformers; cf. Erasmus's De recta Latini Græcique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus and even Alcuin's De orthographia.
  3. ^ Cf. Wielfried Stroh (ed.), Alaudæ. Eine lateinische Zeitschrift 1889-1895 herausgegeben von Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Nachdruck mit einer Einleitung von Wielfried Stroh, Hamburg, MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, 2004.
  4. ^ Cf. Volfgangus Jenniges, "Vox Urbis (1898-1913) quid sibi proposuerit", Melissa, 139 (2007) 8-11.
  5. ^ Asterix in Latin.
  6. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeQs-TCjVtc

[edit] See also

[edit] External links



Ages of Latin
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—75 BC    75 BC – 200    200 – 900    900 – 1300    1300 – 1500    1500 – present   1900 – present
Old Latin    Classical Latin    Vulgar Latin    Medieval Latin    Renaissance Latin   New Latin    Contemporary Latin
See also: History of Latin, Latin literature, Vulgar Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, Romance languages, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum