Latin, a language ringing the coffin bell
Salvete Omnes!
Today, I’d like to draw attention to this blog’s title.
~Non Fui. Fui. Etiam Sum!~
It is based of epitaphs found on tombstones in Rome. However, they read, “Non Fui, Fui. Non Sum, Non Curo.” This translates as, “I was not, I was. I am not, I care not.” The words refer to the beliefs of life and death and the apathetic view to the world beyond. This is a very aetheist view of the world that by no means was shared by all of the Roman people.
This blog’s title is a play on that epitaph and translates as, “I was not, I was, (and) I (Latin) still am!”
Rather unfortunately, the Latin Language has been labeled as dead and buried…
*Now, I should clarify. Technically speaking, a dead language is one that no longer has native speakers. However, this is problematic because there are such things as extinct languages. Extinct languages have no speakers at all. Now, these two adjectives work when refering living organisms such as humans. A single Human can be dead, however it cannot not be extinct. Now, if all Humans died out then yes, Humanity would be extinct, but this is a rather depressing thought. However, when a language dies, all of it dies, not just a part of it. Therefore, if we must insist upon personifying languages, then rather let us define them in terms of employment, unemployment, and death. A language such as Latin then because it is still so widely used, but is not an official language and not used in the traditional manner of a language, should be considered unemployed. It is still active, just not as much as it could. And then languages such as English and German and so forth are employed, and others like coptic, dead.*
…However, it is still very much alive and widely used. So, I say for latin, “Hear the bell, and ‘Cura‘ (care!)!
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November 26th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Hi I m glad to your post “Latin, a language ringing the coffin bell” so well that I like to ask you whether I should translate into German and linking back. Please answer. Greetings Detektiv
December 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Latin is, as I say, dead and kicking. technically, it is not dead at all, as a tiny number of families scattered around the globe use it at home – believe it or not – so some children are growing up using it. There is a popular podcast devoted to teaching spoken Classical Latin, called Latinum, http://latinum.mypodcast.com and a social networking site called Schola http://schola.ning.com which has a chat room, where members can be found typing to one another in Latin. So, Latin is spoken, it is written….and even more than being spoken or written, it is read. Thus, Latin is more alive than a great many living languages are, and besides, it has a great literature, of tens of thousands of books, possibly even hundreds of thousands, as many are uncatalogued, which, thanks to google books, are increasingly available for all to read at the click of a download button.
December 13th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Gratias Evan. That’s awesome. I didn’t realize that it is still used that way anymore. And I’ve never hear of Schola. I’ll have to check that out.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Wow! Thank you!
I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Of course, I will add backlink?
Regards, Timur I.
February 4th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Greatings,
everything dynamic and very positively
Have a nice day
Tania
February 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Hello. Your site displays incorrectly in Opera, but content excellent! Thank you for your wise words =)