Why Latin is important

[Epictetus]

Evidently the reporter who broke the story about the Pope's resignation did so because she knew Latin, and realised what was happening before the official translations were released. Pretty interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21412604

[Lyceum]

Pfft come on, was it ever in doubt? but yes there are many uses.

I laughed at Ostler's comment but, come on, he's being unfair. The Vatican Latin is only bad if you mean to speak like an actual Roman, Church Latin is a very modern construct and is actually reasonably self consistent all things considered so its unfair, especially since they don't want to speak like Romans.

Otherwise, I'm failing to understand the excitement. As long as the Orthodox Church is doing fine, I'm all good.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Interesting to know. If I hear people speaking latin it takes me a minute to recognize it, but I don't hear anyone speaking latin except about once a year, max.

[Lyceum]

Yes it takes a while, and most people when speaking tend to have a horribly un-Mediterranean phonology and make no attempt to correct it so it can be hard to follow. Saying that, it's been the defacto language amongst many of my coursemates for years and quite a useful one at that. Which is useful for me since I don't read Latin literature now very often yet still need it for academic purposes and otherwise the language would die within me.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

I occasionally read it for my own studies. I'm not very good but after about 30 minutes and with the help of Whittaker's words I usually can translate a passage.