Do we need Wikipedia in Latin?

I’ve only just caught up with the fact that there is a version of Wikipedia in Latin: or, to be precise, Vicipaedia.

I have to say that it is all very well done. I explored it, hoping to discover some dreadful howlers. But a ten minute glance gave them pretty much a clean bill of health. And there is plenty of earnest worrying about how to translate such termini technici as ‘link’ into Latin. Ligamen, nexus or vinculum? Oh help…

They haven’t got very far yet. Check out  the section on “professores rerum classicarum” (professors of  Classics) and you’ll find they’ve only got to three: the distinguished, but unlikely trio of Barry Baldwin, E. R. Dodds and W. L. Westermann.

But my problem with this enterprise is not its accuracy in Latinity or its progress. It is: what on earth is the point?

I am a great supporter of retaining Latin where it is traditional or useful. I don’t want to get rid of  Latin mottoes on coins. Nor, for that matter, do I want to ‘modernise’ the speeches made on our Cambridge Honorary Degree day. They are delivered in Latin, with written English crib provided – for the benefit of those whose Latin is a bit challenged.

For one thing the slight incomprehensibility with which Latin clothes the whole occasion makes what might be the oozing flattery of the speeches in honour of those getting Hon. Degrees a bit less offensive. It also (as you’ll see if you take a look at James Diggle’s published Hon. Degree speeches) it allows a lot more wit than you’d get away with in English. Try him on Jacques Derrida – I always wonder what our Chancellor, Prince Philip, who has to listen to all this, made of that one.

Much the same goes for college grace before and after meals. “Benedictus benedicat etc etc” makes it a whole lot easier for the agnostic crew to let it all wash over them, while apparently satisfying the believers.

I’m pretty keen too on the general idea of using Latin in books meant for modern classical scholars. If you are a publishing a collection of ancient Latin inscriptions, you might just as well publish the commentary and explanation in Latin too. After all, anyone wanting to consult a Latin inscription is, by definition, bound to know the language – so it can be more inclusive to publish the commentary in Latin than in one particular vernacular, whether English, Swedish, or Japanese. It’s the lingua franca argument.

But that argument doesn’t extend to the likes of Vici – or to those charming Finns who waste their spare time putting the news into Latin and broadcasting it to the waiting handful.

The whole point about Latin is that it is a wonderful language, with wonderful literature worth reading on any evaluation of the world culture. But it is also well and truly dead. It doesn’t help the cause of Latin one bit to pretend that it is remotely worthwhile inventing new Latin words for “web” or “wind turbine” or “EU”.

So sorry if I’m being a killjoy, but I’m hoping that Vici dies a death.

(With thanks to Frank Wilson and Tony Francis for alerting me to Vici!)

Comments

[Richard]

Another reason not to treat Latin as a modern language:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7333788.stm

All best,
R

[G.]

Scelerate "humilissimus" potius quam "humillimus" scripsi. Quod oportebat mihi satis clarum esse, nam in alia mea nota recte "simillimam" scripsi.

[Jane]

Not sure who is being castigated for fetishism, or on what grounds.
What I found exciting was the way the ancient language leapt out at me, similar to the guy's tale about the football team banners in Italy.
I was forced to sit in a hotel room in Portugal for ten days, nursing sick daughter, while we waited for clearance from medical insurers to fly home.
Desperate to hear any English spoken, we tuned in to a Brad Pitt film which was screened in English with Portuguese subtitles.
Romantic heroine asked mentor when it was OK to give up on a relationship if it didn't seem to be successful. "Never" said Brad Pitt. "Nunco" flashed across the screen in the subtitles. Heroine asked the question again, when is it OK to give up? "Never".. "Nunco"
I was so excited I texted my other daughter back in England to look up nunco in her Latin dictionary and confirm my 30-year old memory from O-level Latin. She texted back, "Yes, the word for never is numquam".
This brought some much-needed delight to an otherwise difficult period of time.
I felt I'd touched a link which had been passed down from generation to generation for two thousand years.
Having been brought up in the UK, where Latin is the language of power, (the church, the law), and is used to subjugate, to legislate and to pontificate, it was stunning to hear it in everyday use.

And the advice about never giving up on a relationship has come in handy from time to time, as well.

[Lidwina]

But what is point? And does a website in a just-about dead language have more point than a professorship in Classics?

[SW Foska]

- 'Gheorghiu' is quite common, it is really the Greek form 'Georgiou' in Romanian orthography (many Greeks settled in Romania over the centuries but they are thoroughly assimilated). 'Standard' is Georgescu, although people only really started having these -escu surnames in the 19th century, before that you would be 'al lui Gheorghe' (George's), which you can still hear in villages.
- The '-ica' diminutive for the Christian name 'Gheorghe' is 'Gica'.
- Any more questions? I'm hoping to drum up enough clientele to set up a pay-per-minute Hotline.

[Tony Francis]

Gheorghiu is a frequently seen Romanian name. Is this just a common last name, or are these people exceptionally talented?
Florin Gheorghiu (including his win in the Nimzo-Indian in 1966 over Bobby Fisher: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb5 etc)
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin_Gheorghiu
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gheorghe_Gheorghiu_Dej
Piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu
http://www.harrisonparrott.com/artists/Teo_Gheorghiu.asp
and finally Angela
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Gheorghiu
It would appear Angela not only sings La Traviata, but is la traviata (my understanding is that "la traviata" means "the troubled girl". Other sources give: "the fallen woman" or "the woman who strays" - maybe these latter descriptions aren't fair to her. Maybe "La Tempesta" would be better.)
Concerning Wiki: I am not retracting anything I previously wrote. Someone added something to one of my articles. I was faced with a trilemma: 1.) leave it (it was written in a dorky and misleading fashion); 2.) revise it; 3.) delete it. It was pertinent, so I rewrote it, which was quite a bit of work. Years ago I was whining to my old editor. In old Jewish wisdom/guilt, he said, "You are the only one who can do it. It isn't a matter of who can do it, and won't. They can't. You can." And so it is. I am back writing on Wiki. They are still the same jackasses as before. But, there are so many sub-par articles needing attention. If you want to call that a lover's spat, so be it.

[SW Foska]

Alternatively, Romanian 'Gorica' could be a diminutive of 'Grigore'.

[SW Foska]

'G', thankyou for your observations. I would try to write Latin too but I might be asked to pay myself (badly) to translate myself (badly). Just by the way, 'Gorica Pirgu' is a man's name, that of a character from the classic Romanian novel 'Craii de Curtea Veche'. "-ica" is a standard diminutive suffix to masculine names, e.g. Ionica, Petrica. 'Gorica' is maybe from 'Goran' a common Serbian name also possible in Romanian. It is pronounced 'Gorika' and the stress is on the 2nd syllable, unlike 'Gorica', the Slavic name for Gorizia, which is pronounced 'Goritsa' and stressed on the 1st. Both derive from Slavic 'gora' = mountain.

[G.]

Gratias tibi ago, o Ricarde, propter notitiam huius paginae interretialis de nuntiis Graecis, quam nunc cotidie diligenter conabor legere, ita ut tandem et Graece tam volubiliter quam Latine scribere possim.
Sed, de Gorizia, oportet monere Slovenice Goricam appellari, quod nomen eiusdem dominae est quae hic scribit.
Foska: haud mirum sit G, Gambrinum, atque Gamberini eundem virum esse. Sed, etsi clarissimus, humilissimus quoque, nam non solum Vicipaediae mihi opus est, sed multi studii ac scientiae. Scribo quam velociter possim, nec libro grammaticae utor. Sed, ut dixi, quodvis initium feci, ac paenitet me quod nemo mecum secutus est.

[Richard]

I knew Tony F. would return to the wiki fold. It's like watching a lovers' reunion. We must all pretend to forget all those words written in anger.
R

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska: The Wiki article on Istro-Romanian has been deemed to have "weasel words". I didn't see any weasel words, but it appears to have been written by someone who uses English as a second language:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanian_language
The article on Istro-Romanian grammar carries a "needs to be re-written" tag. It appears adequate to me:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istro-Romanian_grammar
Istro-Romania seems to be yet another patch in the patchwork of the Balkans:
http://www.istro-romanian.net/
The UN endangered language list declares Istro-Romanian to be a "seriously endangered language".
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_index.html
My mother's Austrian grandfather used to converse with travelling Gypsies in their own lingo, much to her delight. I see from the list that Gypsy is Romani and considered extinct.

[SW Foska]

tony, i was not talking about Friulian but about the putative dialect of Romanian which Amelie had claimed existed. Incidentally there is a dialect of Romanian near Friuli called 'Istro-Romanian' but it is not 'more latin' than standard romanian. there are apparently only 350 speakers left.

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska: Are you suggesting the Wiki article concerning Friulian is in error? If so, you should offer to revise it. By the way, I am back writing on Wiki. One can curse the darkness, or light a candle. This reminds me of a Catholic Church, St. Anthony's, in Wichita, KS which was recently restored to its German condition, complete with German written above the altars, as originally built. Above one of the side altars was a gold leafed incomprehensible phrase. I finally figured out it was Vietnamese. Some German restoration!

[Amelie J Smith]

Dear Fosca

Thank you.

[SW Foska]

Richard, no such dialect is recorded by either the older or newer Atlasul lingvistic roman. By the way, I'm against fetishizing 'preserved' latin. Anyone is free to rhotacize, palatalize, plunder other lexical funds, add alloy wheels, whatever.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

[Richard]

I meant "west Asian", of course. I was trying too hard not to say "oriental" in case somebody told me off.
R

[Richard]

When I was visiting my partner's family in NE Italy (near to Trieste, and nearer to Gorizia), the football team from Udine, further up towards the mountains where Friulan is spoken, won a great victory.

See here for Friulan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friulian_language

The local TV news showed the crowd cheering and greeting their heroes with many flags and banners in the team's black and white colours. Rather as when the arabic numerals stick out from something written in a script like Japanese or Chinese, the word "habemus" suddenly popped up from one of these banners. "My goodness," I thought, "This mountain language really is very archaic!"

In fact the banner read "Bianco e nero? Habemus campioni!" ("Black *and* white? Habemus Champions!").

It was a joke on the recent installation (coronation? inauguration?) of the new Pope ("habemus papam" says the cardinal when the smoke has turned white...).

Anyway, Amelie's first comment referred to local dialects in Romania, not to "standard" Romanian. Is the point perhaps that some Romanians speak a dialect which lacks (many of) standard Romanians words with Slavonic and east Asian roots? Or is more conservative in its phonetics (as Sardinian is more conservative in many ways than "standard" Tuscan Italian)?

Best wishes,
Richard

[Oliver Nicholson]

Someone once pointed out to me that Lucifer of Cagliari (mid-4th c. bishop) liked to use "narrare" in stead of "dicere" and that modern Sardinian dialect habitually uses a derivative of 'narrare' for "to say'. I do not know if this is true.
OPN

[PL]

Dante, in his "De Vulgari Eloquio", remarked that the Sardinians have no vernacular of their own but only speak "grammatica" (i.e. Latin). No doubt that was an exaggeration. But I'm told that even today the dialects of central Sardinia are-- in their more obvious features at least-- the closest thing to Latin you can hear on the lips of ordinary people. For instance, instead of "andiamo" they say "eamus".

[Jane]

Ref survival of Latin in modern European languages-
Portuguese contains everyday vocabulary which is virtually unchanged from Latin - you can almost hear the word slightly mutating down the centuries
Examples "nunco" = never
"hoje" = today

[SW Foska]

1. Amelie, I usually charge £300 a translation, and even then I'm not rich. But as you're new, and as nobody else has leapt forward, here goes: 'Your opinion is somewhat debatable. I don't know if you or Mr. Gambrinus understand Romanian, but few specialists would go so far as to designate that language 'a form of latin' Pretty much verybody recognizes that it has Latin roots, but it also has Slavic and Thracian ones, an extensive Turco-Oriental vocabulary, and other secrets too, which distinguish it from Latin.'
2. Hi Gorica, thanks for your judicious comments, how is Curtea Veche? Just about the masculine vocative, it may be "identical to that of the Latin second declension", but it is also identical to the Slavic. E.g. Lord in Serbin is 'gospodin', the vocative is 'gospode'. While the Romanian feminine vocative is more Slavonic than Latin: sister 'sora' becomes 'soro'.
3. Tony, by 'Oriental' here I mean nothing Saidian, but need a generalising adjective to refer to that group of vocabulary of Persian, Arabic or Turkish origin which came via Ottoman Turkish to most Balkan languages.
4. Finally, and hopefully relevantly, 'G' does need Vicipaedia to tell him that it's usually not 'lingua romana' but 'lingua dacoromana', a term coined by modern Romanian linguists to avoid saying 'valachica' which is what mediaeval latinists really used. And Romania a 'civitas'? If only!

[Michael Bulley]

Loved the comment from Thomas Wibberley (the first to this piece). I felt it had to go (pointlessly) into Latin verse somehow. At last I wrote a pointless, even witless, piece of verse (non-Ovidianly). Wibberley’s comment was witty, though.

utilis haec est res at semper inutilis illa.
illa modo placuit nunc placet haec mihi res.

[Richard]

"Acropolis World News" by Juan Coderch of the University of St Andrews is news in Ancient Greek:
http://www.akwn.net/
All best,
Richard

[Simone]

What a delightful idea! I would never have thought to search for such a thing as Latin News on the internet, were it not for the reference to it in this blog. For that, I thank you, Prof. Beard:-)
Does anyone know if there is anything similar in Ancient Greek?

[Christopher Jones]

With all due respect, I disagree with Dr. Beard. My full response can be found in a blog post on www.LatinLanguage.us (click URL to get there), but my summary response is that Vicipaedia is best treated as a "sandbox" to encourage budding Latinists to test their knowledge of the language, and that some of the sillier arguments on that site over usage (e.g. inventing and arguing over new Latin words for modern items) are more a result of the prescriptive/analytical approach to Latin instruction.

[Gorica Pirgu]

As for Romanian being some kind of Latin trapped in a timewarp, it is true that the language has, for example, retained more Latin noun inflections than any other Romance language - genitive, dative, and vocative (the masculine vocative is even identical to that of the Latin second declension - e.g. Doamne (O Lord) or domne/domnule (mister!), from domn < dominus). Otherwise, Foska is right: much of the vocabulary is of Slavonic, Magyar, Turkish etc. origin: e.g. a iubi "to love", dragoste "love" (Slavonic) - in Romanian, "amor" is a nineteenth-century loanword from French); a citi "to read" (Slavonic); gîndesc "I think" (Magyar), but cf. "cuget" = "cogito". Sometimes Latin and Slavonic vocables exist side by side: liber/slobod, a termina/a ispravi, a spera/a nadajdui etc. However, as the visiting Catholic priest to whom Foska spoke no doubt quickly found out, speaking Latin won't get you very far in Romania.

[Amelie J Smith]

Can anyone tell me where I can find a source to help me translate the message which Foska addressed to me? I understand 'Draga' but am pretty much lost after that.

[Oliver NIcholson]

There was a law suit a few years ago in our state which involved Vatican correspondence conducted in the chaste obscurity of the learned tongue, and the judge insisted that it was all translated for the court file. One of our graduate students got the job: "I was looking at motor bike catalogues", he said. It's about time the Common Market (or whatever it is called this week) went over to Latin; then we could all be as rich as creosote.

[adj]

In English - if you want to be Roman, go to Italy.

[PL]

C.S. Lewis carried on a Latin correspondence with (now the Blessed) Don Giovanni Calabria of Verona from 1947 till the latter's death in 1954, and afterwards with his successor. Lewis's letters were edited by Martin Moynihan and published, with Moynihan's facing-page English translation, by Collins in 1989.
Lewis's Latinity is a bit formulaic and full of quotations, but Latin was clearly a living language for him, as for his correspondent

[Tony Francis]

To read of the religious turmoil of Romania:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11583b.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03435a.htm
There is a direct link between the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathari. Despite what the article on Cathari may indicate, Aquinas referred to Cathars as "Manichaeans.

[G.]

Dubito, e mea experientia, Romanam linguam (haec est, Romaniae civitatis, nec Romanorum antiquorum qui urbem Romam condiderunt) simillimam Latinae esse. Saepe conatus sum nuntios Romanos sine dictionario legere, sed adhuc rem generaliter paucaque verba modo intellexi. Certe Gallica Hispanorumque lingua similiores Italicae, ergo Latinae, sunt.
Nunc quae Foska scripsit conabor legere, partim ex ludo, sed quia aliquid de me quoque dixisse videtur. At longum laborem exspecto.
Et, ut finiam, in illo scripto meo quod primum misi, errorem alium inveni (et hunc quoque in translatione sententiae quam posteritati committere putabam): nam "non est ratio cur (vel quare), etc." oportebat scribere (sed "quia" melius auribus sonabat). Bene scripsi? Rogo ut mihi dicatis.

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska: Thanks for the kiss!
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/lovers_painting.jpg

[adj]

To explain, in a brief moment, the most erudite classicists institutionally are the regius chairs and at the lowest end of the scale the Queen's Scholars who were boys from Eton and Westminster. Much erudition in the classical tradition also came through the Church in this country. That seems to have been the pinnacle of our establishment for a long time. Obviously, the ideal was the Philosopher King, like Marcus Aurelius, but in this day and age, it is probably the Church and the Chairs who manage to become Regius (at the top) and the young musicians, scholars etc at the bottom. To be speaking Latin, aged five, and to be given the opportunity to learn Latin from the likes of Smedley was a feat indeed. I wouldn't go about criticising Cambridge chairs and these kind of people anyway, not once they are dead or established. It's not going to make one many friends with the gods.

[SW Foska]

draga tony, n'am scris boaba despre 'descendants' sau stramosi cum se zice de obicei pe la noi; chiar asta dovedeste ne-inteligibilitatea reciproca intre latina si romana, lucru ce am incercat pe propria piele, fiind abordat o data de un parinte catolic la Cluj care, nestiind romaneste, m'a luat pe latina. Il intelegeam cat de cat, dar de raspuns, nu'mi veneau cuvintele pe buze. Te pup si eu!

[Tony Francis]

Te pup, Draga Foska: What is all that gibberish about "descendants of Latin and eastern (oriental) Turkish, radicini slavonesti"? Please, from now on, speak plain American on this post! (American: pronounced Uh-Mur-I-Can.) PS: You should be aware that the, word "Oriental" is highly inflammatory and verboten on this post.

[judith weingarten]

In 1990 or 1991, the National Archives office in Rome received some requests for information from the new Polish government. As foreign languages, the Poles knew only Russian and German, and the Italians only French and English. They carried on a long and happy correspondence in Latin.

Judith
Visit Zenobia's website, Empress of the East

[Richard]

Is this Romanian dialect really so close to Latin as to put it in a different category from other Romance languages as Italian, French, Romanian, the mountain languages like Swiss Romansh, Friulan, etc.? Can anybody provide us with a sample?
Many thanks to Oliver Nicholson for reminding us of the great book by P. Dickinson "The Dancing Bear", which I hadn't thought about for years.
Best wishes,
Richard

[SW Foska]

Draga Amelie,
Parera dumitale e cam discutabila. Nu stiu daca tu sau dl. Gambrinus intelegeti romaneste, dar putini sunt specialistii care s'ar incumeta sa desemneze aceasta limba drept 'o forma a latinei'. De are radacini latinesti, o recunoaste mai toata lumea; dar are si radacini slavonesti, tracice, un intins vocabular turco-oriental, si inca alte secrete, care o deosebesc de latina.

[adj]

Just raising a head from a re-write. Vicipaedia is awful. The only people who can get away with that kind of stuff are the Queen's Scholars and even they are remote and exceptionally lucky to be selected. They are immersed in it aged eight or nine.

[Oliver Nicholson]

"Surely it is inaccurate, and intellectually lazy, to describe Latin as a dead language when there are villages in Romania where the local dialect is a form of Latin?"

And you can read how this came to be in Patric Dickinson's fine tale of the mid-6th century "The Dancing Bear".
No language is dead while it continues to speak to people

[John Scott]

If memory serves, the Vatican still makes use of Latin for its curial materials (indeed I recall an anecdote about e-mails around the Cambridge Classics Faculty requesting assistance in preparing texts) and the Vatican therefore still uses Latin as a 'living' language, inventing terms for many modern activities. Arguably the Vicipaedia discussions may prove helpful for them.

[Gambrinus]

Veniam rogo: numquam solet evenire quin aliquid erratum sit, et errorem animadverti. Scilicet, "inscium" recte potius quam "inscius" in oratione obliqua.

[Amelie J Smith]

Surely it is inaccurate, and intellectually lazy, to describe Latin as a dead language when there are villages in Romania where the local dialect is a form of Latin? I believe that the residents claim to be descendants of Hadrian and Trajan's veterans who were given land grants in what was then the newly conquered country of Dacia. My Latin teacher told our class that even the local road signs were written in a form of Latin.

[Gambrinus]

Opus estne? Certissime! Iam olim sciebam illud magnum opus exsistere, sed nunc memini, tua gratia. Vivat Vici, gaudium fert! Numquam morietur. Bene dixit ille novus philosophus: "non est ratio quia omnia rationem habeant" (hoc Principium Webberlii appellabitur). Et autem rogo ut nos quoque in hoc commentario, quantum possumus, Latine scribamus.
Recte puriterque scripsi? Scio me inscius grammaticae verborumque esse, propter tempus longinquum, sed oportet quodvis initium facere.

[Xjy]

Classical Latin may well be dead, in the sense that that period is over and done with. But then, so is Elizabethan English and Dickensian English. So is Old Norse - but not the grammatically identical Icelandic. So is Ancient Greek - but not its organic descendant Modern Greek, ditto Classical Chinese. Esperanto was a laboratory experiment - and had a sort of glass-cased pseudolife. Non-dead.

Latin however lives on in its great-grandchildren the Romance languages, and even, as a trickle to their flood, in its own right, in pockets of Latinity.

Now, however much we might despise these pockets, and their lack of mother tongue authenticity, and their marginality, they provide a living counterpoint to the culturally superior Classical Period, and more significantly a burgeoning educational training ground in relation to the Classical Period. More so than Modern Greek, about the same as Modern Icelandic, perhaps.

Burgeoning cos they're growing. The YLE Latin broadcasts Nuntii Latini have attracted a following that discusses current events and Latin issues in Latin on the chat rooms on the Finnish Radio site, Colloquia Latina (http://chat.yle.fi/yleradio1/latini/). This kind of thing, and the WikiLatin project, make it possible for enthusiastic students and teachers and amateur Latinists to use their knowledge of the language in an active and not merely passive way to get stuck into communication and debate about things that interest them now rather than just Cicero then. Rhetoric in practice.

Given the appalling shit so many people choose to devote their non-working time to (I hesitate to call it "free" :-) ) I think there's every reason to applaud and encourage this kind of thing rather than dismiss as cranksville. And not just for learners, though the benefit for them is obvious. Even experienced teachers and practising classicists stand to gain from activating their language skills in the Colloquia or editing a Wiki article or two.

Classics might be a minority interest in every country where it's found, but add up its adherents and you'll find quite a crowd. And there's a special attraction to participating in a contemporary Latin subculture - unlike English (maybe), French, German or Chinese, say, there's no mother tongue mafia to keep you from defining yourself as where it's really at. Cos on the one hand you have the Classics, bitte sehr, but on the other, you have as much right as anyone else to demonstrate your prowess in the field - there's no patrial conditions on Latinity.

So, Mary, maybe you should be less contrary than contrite in this matter! Looking forward to a reappraisal or at least adjustment of position after some suitable pause for reflection. I mean, if the EU panjandrums can do it, so can we :-) .

[Laura]

Regarding Robert's comment re: the translation of Harry Potter into Latin, I have to say that I disagree: it is a marvelous translation, filled with delightful touches. Thank goodness it is not Ciceronian in style! We have plenty of Cicero to read as it is, and who would want a novel written in Ciceronian prose? Ugh. I led a reading group last year of eager students who made their way through almost two hundred pages of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, reading out loud and having a great time. That is more extended Latin prose than any of those students had ever read before, and both their enjoyment and motivation were very high throughout. It's unfortunate that the book is not equipped with a glossary of neo-Latin words not found in a standard classical dictionary; I would say that is the main obstacle to Latin teachers and students being able to make more use of this extremely enjoyable Latin reading material. Kudos to Peter Needham for what I think is a wonderful translation!

[ricardo moraes]

Dear Mary, although I find amazing how can those boys find time to write the vicipaedia, I think it's a good and funny idea. Dont't be such a killjoy! Here in Brazil, a Latin addict once translate Winnie the Pooh to Latin and it was a smash hit ! (or more or less,just a funny christmas gift ). Fernando Pessoa ,the portughese poet wrote :Navegar é preciso, viver não é preciso( We must sail, to live is not necessary ). The phrase ,maybe from Pompeus ,in Latin, wouldn't be in need of translation if quotated in vicipaedia. Best wishes.

[anthony alcock]

Teubner still has Latin prefaces, e.g Jim O'Sullivan's edition of Xenophon of Ephesus (2005).

[Ann]

Why get worked up about it? Wiki/Viki is something people do in their free time. (Though I think Mary & Richard's mention of it being used as a class exercise is excellent) Besides, if we don't use a language in new ways it truly becomes irrelevant.

Also, it seems like you're saying that Latin should be used in some cases BECAUSE it's incomprehensible to most people. That seems like a much worse fate for a language than people having fun with it on a website.

[Mary]

Richard: you're right, I was going too far to wish Vici a demise; and true... if we think it worthwhile (as I do!) getting kids to do prose composition in Latin, then why not have them tidy up a bit if Vici, instead of face another well chosen paragraph of Burke or Churchill, or whatever.

Nicholas Wibberley wins on this one too. I should be the first to uphold pointlessness.

On the OCT's, I am ambivalent. Frankly I find it quicker and easier to see what Ll-J et al are saying when they write in English... but I still have a soft spot for the old Latin. (And I would certainly prefer that to the Dutch.)

[Richard]

Surely these are reasons for ignoring or not caring about vicipaedia, not for hoping that it dies a death?

I think some teachers have used it as a novel way of getting students to work at prose composition: for the last class of term, we'll work together on possible improvements to these particular vici pages, that sort of thing.

When I was writing my doctoral thesis (on a Greek subject), one of the main authorities on a particular problem was a Dutch doctoral dissertation dating from 1905. I'm very glad it was written in Latin rather than Dutch...

What's your take on the new tendency for Oxford Classical Texts to have prefaces in English? The first - nisi fallor - was the ed. of Sophocles by those dangerous radicals Lloyd-Jones & Wilson. No more "Parisini frater (ut ita dicam) apud Oxonienses inuenitur" and the like... With the new ed. of Propertius by S. Heyworth, this can now be found in Latin authors as well as Greek (so that the original justification, that those who know Greek, esp. in the USA, need not also know Latin, does not apply).

With the books of Greek inscribed verse epigrams "Carmina Epigraphica Graeca" and CEG2, the author wrote all the commentary etc. in Latin, but gave a glossary to explain his renderings of "votive relief sculpture" etc. into Latin, in case we didn't get it. And in the second volume he gave in English material he had previously given in Latin, apparently in the hope that more people would understand his system of dots, brackets etc. that way...

Best wishes,
Richard

[anthony alcock]

Si hoc legere scis, Latine scis.

[Tom Elliott]

One quibble: whatever one may think about the relevance or value of an undertaking like vicipaedia, your own list of "useful" contexts for Latin contains a subaudible rationale for just the sort of tedious sorting of cyber-neologisms you ridicule. As scholarly publication increasingly embraces online forms and formats, we need the vocabulary to talk about the medium, the method and the format. As these are new and evolving forms, the terminology is necessarily novel (and sometimes fraught). If you want the option of Latin as a possible language for digital works written for an international audience of classical scholars, then someone must sort out for us how to say "link" just as the editors of the print CIL and IG did for "photo" and "squeeze".

[Robert]

I was quite surprised at the standard of the Latin in many of the Vici-articles. It's much higher (at least, much closer to the classical Ciceronian model) than the recent translation of Harry Potter, which is horrible. The practical value of Wikipedia in Latin is almost nil, although I suppose it provides an amusing task to people who enjoy prose composition; and, provided that the contributors keep close to the language of classical Latin prose, it could be quite a helpful (or at least amusing) way for a beginning Latinist to get some extra reading-practice.

But really, if you want to read some Latin prose, there's hardly a shortage of good material surviving from the classical world!

[Nicholas Wibberley]

I don't see the point of everything having to have a point.