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[aec34]

GCSE and A level Latin teacher here! Just thought I’d wave 👋

 

[zozo]

GCSE and A level Latin teacher here! Just thought I’d wave 👋

Great!! Hi... 👍

Then you might confirm... My current teacher in classical Latin is saying... The academic or school Latin is phonetically taught as a mixed bag of Classical and Church Latin and lots of Native language influence (in my case Dutch). And it deviates significantly from the early (1 Century BC) classical Latin. And they do this just because that this is the traditional way they always did it.

I guess the same thing happens also in the UK. (?)

I wonder why it makes actually little sense if Latin should be considered an international scientific language if we still all do our own thing and thus are saying words and names differently. 🤔

 

[aec34]

The academic or school Latin is phonetically taught as a mixed bag of Classical and Church Latin and lots of Native language influence (in my case Dutch). And it deviates significantly from the early (1 Century BC) classical Latin. And they do this just because that this is the traditional way they always did it.

I guess the same thing happens also in the UK. (?)

Hi @zozo - absolutely all true. The way I (UK) read Latin aloud will sound different to other nationalities, especially since I also had a Scottish teacher at school. (The situation is also differently complicated for Greek, where the ancient variety sounded very different to modern Greek, despite what some speakers will tell you.)

The international usefulness I guess comes down to the fact we are reading the Latin names rather than speaking them - we all know what we mean when we see the label crypt wendtii etc even if pronunciations differ.

Some people are keen on speaking Latin with a recreated accent from 1st century BC. This guy is a lot of fun - you wouldn’t guess it, but he’s American:

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

if Latin should be considered an international scientific language if we still all do our own thing and thus are saying words and names differently.

I'd agree with @aec34 comment, it doesn't matter that much, because most of the discourse is in print, and as spoken, near enough is usually near enough.

More of an issue is the <"continual name changes">. They are necessary (so <"naming represents relatedness">) and <"genera are monophyletic">. The problems can be to do with precedence and the rules of nomenclature, which mean that what was <"Copella nattereri"> may be a different fish from what is now "Copella nattereri".

cheers Darrel

 

[zozo]

Some people are keen on speaking Latin with a recreated accent from 1st century BC. This guy is a lot of fun - you wouldn’t guess it, but he’s American:

I've watched several videos from this guy before and it's indeed beautiful the way he speaks seemingly fluently Latin. I wish we all could speak it like that, they should teach it like this at school as an obliged 2nd language worldwide.

I always had a weakness for ancient extinct languages, especially the West Germanic language dialects we speak... Then when you listen to Old English from before the great vowel shift (Saxon) and Old Low Saxon Dutch they are amazingly similar to each other. And hearing it, they are beautiful dialects from the same family. A pity, they are all about forgotten, even tho we still speak western germanic, the so-called later language developments and standardizations actually drifted us further apart. Unbelievable that about a Millenium back all western germanic peoples understood each other. Different dialects but were still similar enough to have little problems figuring it out.

But we still have quite a few familiar traces...
Eng. Brown Cow / Old Eng. Brun Cu / Dutch. Bruine Koe / German. Braune Kuh.

Back in the day, they paid each other with livestock.
The Old English 'Féoh' was livestock, today 'fee' still is a payment in German the word 'Vieh' is livestock and in pronunciation, you can't hear the difference. So if you ask a fee in Germany you might get a cow. In Dutch the word 'Vee' is livestock. 😍

That we pronounce Latin differently from country to country could also be considered a dialect... Still understandable...