This is a guest column by William Griffin. He was brought up in Boston, where he acquired 14 years of Latin at such Jesuit institutions as Boston College High School, Boston College, and Weston College. His translations include three volumes by Thomas à Kempis and Augustine's Sermons to the People: Advent, Christmas, New Year's, Epiphany. He and his wife, Emilie, a fellow Latinist, live in Alexandria, Louisiana, with their lively Latin library and their aging, one-eyed Teddy. His favorite books? Winnie Ille Pooh and De Petro Cunicolo.
![Sermons to the People (02) by Hippo, Augustine of [Paperback (2002)]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31ktNZAIajL._SL160_.jpg)
Fifty-five years ago I met a young woman in Greenwich Village; we'd been attending a playwriting seminar on Monday nights. She was forward; I was backward. She invited me for coffee. She paid before I could. She dropped a quarter into the jukebox and punched "Moon River."
Her handbag was cavernous. A little spelunking by my roving eye, and I saw a book. A very small yellow book. Langenscheidt's Latin Dictionary (454 pages in 6 pt. type). And why do you carry that around? I asked. Who knows when I'll bump into a Vatican diplomat? she replied. She'd had eight years of Latin; I'd had twelve. I proposed to her on the spot. And we've been declining and conjugating ever since.
Who says Latin is dead? Not I. Not she. Not Jürgen Leonhardt, a classical philologist at the University of Tübingen. His book is something of a museum piece but in a good sense, and he is something of a docent in the best sense. He takes the reader on a leisurely stroll from one aula to another. From "Latin as a World Language" to "The Language of the Empire" to "Europe's Latin Millennium" to "World Language without a World" to "Latin Today." It was a wonderful way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Some random impressions from the tour:
"No other dead language continues to exert such influence in the world."
All the writings surviving from ancient Rome "constitute at most 0.01 percent of the total output" of texts in Latin.
"Latin is cropping up in the most unexpected places."
On this last point, Leonhardt adduces evidence from the actress Angelina Jolie, who (so it is reported) has had the Latin phrase quod me nutrit me destruit (what nourishes me also destroys me) tattooed on her lower abdomen. Clearly, scholars will want to delve into that.
Re vera, Latin is a fixed language, not in the neutering sense but in the sense that "several core components remain unchangeable, while other parts continue to evolve as in any other normal language." Later, however, Leonhardt makes this concession: "Treating Latin as if it were a living language is … not a sentimental step into the past but rather the best way to understand what Latin was as a world language and how it worked." Note the "as if."
Heu, heu, that rhetorical move may satisfy the professional Latinists and Latinistas, but I, by the grace of God, am not one of these. I will continue to think of Latin as a living, working language, and I'm not alone in this. Granted, there's only few of us left. But we do enjoy the annual picnic at Vesuvius; rain-check at Etna.
I come by my Latin sine cera. I've edited two volumes (volumes 3 and 4) in a high school Latin series (Harcourt). Here and there a Conventiculum Latinum. An online Latin Word-for-the-Day series. Translation of Latin classics. Business Latin. Etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.
One day I woke up and found that Latin had become my second language. I'd mastered the grammar and syntax, and I had a wordy mammoth of vocabulary. But I don't teach or write or otherwise proclaim the wonderfulness of Latin. I'm more like Chaucer s Clerk of Oxenford, a poor scholar but a faithful one, lugging his library on a faltering nag.
With this meager background I make bold to add four causes of the decline of Latin not mentioned by Professor Leonhardt in his fine volume.
Primo, the dictionary. How can one have a stable language without a stable dictionary? The unabridged English dictionary is one gigantic volume. But the Latin dictionary in my lifetime runs three volumes by different lexicographers and publishers.
Lewis, Short, Freund's A Latin Dictionary. 2,019 pages.
Souter's Glossary of Later Latin to 600 a.d. 454 pages.
Niermeier s Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus. 1,138 pages in bulk, but perhaps that number should be halved, what with it's being a Latin-French/English dictionary.
(I pass over in silence and in pain the recent publication of an expensive two-volume Latin-English dictionary that I can only dream about.)
Why three volumes? Wars and rumors of wars, but I thought lexicographers were above that. But for the reformation, there would be only one dictionary covering Latin from the beginning. A multiplicity of dictionaries is a sign of disintegration.
(If there is a dictionary of modern Latin, I'd welcome hearing about it.)
Altero, Latin is generally a subject for é lite students. But to survive, a language needs middle-class students, thousands and thousands of them.
Tertio, a language that can't be spoken is dead as a doornail. Of course, this statement can be refuted easily, but to what end? In my case all Latin fell into place when I was put into the uncomfortable position of having to speak Latin or starve. My first attempts were humbling, even humiliating. Soon, as with all languages, I caught on and haven't missed a meal since.
Nota bene. When Latin is spoken these days, it's generally in academic surroundings; the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax are Ciceronian. Not that there's anything wrong with that if the occasion is reenactment. Otherwise, speaking like that would be like spouting Shakespeare in Kroger's, aisle 7. Aliis verbis, one's Latin when speaking the language today should be as chatworthy and colloquial as English.
Fourth, when Latin is spoken the accent is generally Italian, which is odd. Wherever English is spoken as the first language, in the U.S. and the U.K., in Nigeria, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Singapore, or Jamaica, it has a fine, regionally and reasonably intelligible sound. Change English to Latin, and the result is the same.
Pentimento
I can remember my sophomore high school Latin and Greek teacher, Fr. Paul Ruttle, leading us through endless recitation of declensions and conjugations. We were his lead soldiers, and he was putting us through our parade drills. He was a wraith of a man. No doubt he smiled many times a day, but his skin was stretched so tight over his skull, no one knew it but he. But he had an aura about him. He was a holy man, the sort I could entrust my soul to, and indeed I did. His influence led me to enter the Jesuits, where I spent eight hard but happy years. One of his witless witticisms has stayed with me still: "On your death bed you'll be reciting conjugations and declensions till you breathe your last."
At the time the remark was made, 1950, it sounded preposterous, but as the decades have flown by, it has become less so. Having recently passed my seventy-ninth birthday, I feel I should put what time I have left to good use. I'd hoped to brush up my Shakespeare, but will probably dust off my Latin instead.
—William Griffin
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