Latin as the universal European language

[Save_Ferris]

America won't change to Latin. The world will change to English.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I support this as it would make Europe even more irrelevant to the world than it already is.

USA #1

 

[Miles Teg]

Aw come on, dudes! Have some class, ffs! Tsk-tsk-tsk... People these days... Traders, not romantics.

Foreign language classes are where romanticism goes to die.

Anyway, I support this move. We've been looking for a decent excuse to change the name of the world's lingua franca to American.

 

[Winner]

I have a feeling they would be more open-minded if you called the language Slovakian and what you speak its Czech dialect (rather than the other way around).

Neither is a dialect of the other. Both are descended from a language originally spoken in Moravia/Western Slovakia. How you call it is irrelevant.

Slovak is a language separate from Czech mainly because it has been codified as such, and this top-down standardization then strengthened its unique elements. When I speak with Slovaks about this, many tell me that in various parts of Slovakia they use words and phrases that sound far more "Czech" than the "correct" form as defined by the "literary Slovak" standard would lead us to believe. Some dialects of Slovak really sound like something you would hear in Moravia. There is also clear dialect continuum observable in East Moravia/West Slovakia.

My point is, defining language objectively is nearly impossible. If tomorrow the Austrians decided that they speak a language separate from German instead of a variety of German, made a law saying that, then the world would eventually take it seriously, even though everyone with any knowledge of the issue would see the absurdity of it.

Esperanto?

...is ugly as hell

The problem is, euphony and ease of learning are two mutually exclusive qualities in a language The simpler it is (when you get rid of all the exceptions, archaic elements, irregular stuff, etc.), the worse it sounds.

I am sure speaking the High Elven tongue would be pleasing to our ears, but we'd probably spend 10 years of our lives banging our heads against the wall trying to learn it

But seriously, make it English, everything else is just impractical.

Yes. But the pronunciation must be based on RP, I am so sick of the American accent.

Plenty of awesome content had already been made in the time of glorious past. It's too superior to modern pop-trash (mainly in English) to even bother to compare.

Sadly, most people today enjoy the pop-trash. Until you can offer it as an incentive, any such initiative will fail.

Nah, Latin maybe universally recognizable, but Cyrillic is awesomer, no contest. In case we have a unified state, we should have something unique about us in everything, including the writing system Besides, imo, Latin isn't suited for Slavic phonetics: you have to make up a tonn of diactrical signs, "szcz" and all that. And anyway you end up with, for example, the "c" in Serbian not being the "c" in Polish, and not being "с" in Romanian, Irish or English, so not much unification and no uniqueness in the end.

Čeština funguje docela dobře s naprostým minimem diakritických znamének

Now in God-given magnificent Cyrillic script, in which angels communicate in Heaven, you have striclty one distinctively looking character per one sound, no diactrical signs (bar "й" and "ё", but they are fully functional letters rather than diactricals) and a high general level of kickassiveness, compared to other scripts.

Besides, as one of the X century monk stated in his teachings, unlike the Greek and Latin scripts, than were made by pagans, Cyrillic was constructed by holy fathers, was officially approved by both the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome, after which liturgy in Slavic was officially allowed (first language after Hebrew, Greek and Latin). Why, oh why, didn't you end up using it anyway, silleh Moravians? We could be ruling the world by now.

Christianity is poison. We should have created our own religion based on the traditional beliefs, then raid the West for knowledge

Have you tried Slovio, by the way?

Never heard about it.

Foreign language classes are where romanticism goes to die.

So true.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Resurrecting a dead meme for the sake of building bridges between vastly different people? That didn't go over too well when my redneck cousins found Chuck Norris jokes.

 

[Leoreth]

America won't change to Latin. The world will change to English.

Although that will be mainly due to America's pigheadedness than anything else.

Anyway, I support this move. We've been looking for a decent excuse to change the name of the world's lingua franca to American.

American? Never heard of that language. Which native Americans speak it?

The problem is, euphony and ease of learning are two mutually exclusive qualities in a language The simpler it is (when you get rid of all the exceptions, archaic elements, irregular stuff, etc.), the worse it sounds.

I am sure speaking the High Elven tongue would be pleasing to our ears, but we'd probably spend 10 years of our lives banging our heads against the wall trying to learn it

Disagree EMPHATICALLY.

(And by the way, you're contradicting yourself. Quenya has almost zero exceptions, archaisms or irregularities, and it definitely is quite pleasing to the ear. It's mainly about phonology anyway.)

 

[woody60707]

Now thinking about this, I would like to change my answer to yes. I think I would love to watch you guys all try to learn Latin. EU passing laws forcing everyone to to use Latin in all official documents and such.

Just let me grab the popcorn first.

 

[Mise]

No, that's ridiculous.

English is already the quintessentially universal European language. I'm not sure what language could possibly be more universally European than English:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Word_origins

 

[holy king]

Make it Deutscher and we've got a deal.

?

 

[Josu]

Since we're trying to make the universal language as hard as possible, why not go all the way?

I suggest everyone speak Basque, written in the Runic Alphabet, and pronounce everything backwards.

I vote yes for it, I have 33% work done

 

[holy king]

Since we're trying to make the universal language as hard as possible, why not go all the way?

I suggest everyone speak Basque, written in the Runic Alphabet, and pronounce everything backwards.

that would be most unifying.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Latin is an archaic high-register form of Italian that functioned as the written form of Romance until national Romance standards were created. It'd make more sense to use modern standard Italian than Latin. But as Europe is essentially a Slavic continent with Germanic and Romance edges, it would be better to teach Cottbus Sorbian, of which all other Slavic tongues are mere debased dialects! Cottbus Sorbian also has lots of Germanic and Romance borrowings!

In all seriousness, Europe has naturally created its own universal language: English. As ideologically pleasing as it would be to have a "neutral" language (which Latin is not), it is not worth adding yet another language to the teaching of hundreds of millions of children and costing over the years trillions of dollars. The only advantage I can see is that it would give more employment to Classics graduates!

 

[Illustrious]

Can't stand those natural sciences dudes always greeting each other with "Salve amicus".

Me neither. Mostly because it's not even good Latin. Mind you, I can understand mere scientists not getting as far as the second declension vocative...

 

[Winner]

In all seriousness, Europe has naturally created its own universal language: English. As ideologically pleasing as it would be to have a "neutral" language (which Latin is not), it is not worth adding yet another language to the teaching of hundreds of millions of children and costing over the years trillions of dollars. The only advantage I can see is that it would give more employment to Classics graduates!

But we should strive to maintain some sort of "high" English as our European lingua franca, so that the Brits don't have so much of a natural advantage over others (since their English is inexorably getting more and more decadent and ugly).

 

[Pangur Bán]

But we should strive to maintain some sort of "high" English as our European lingua franca, so that the Brits don't have so much of a natural advantage over others (since their English is inexorably getting more and more decadent and ugly).

As I'm sure you realise, most in the UK and Ireland learn local "dialects" and subsequently learn to use a higher register of English based ultimately on regionally and socially-specific dialects of the region to the north-west of London.

The way it would ultimately go is probably something like Roman-era Greek. You had high-register literature going about in Ionic and Attic, but all the foreigners learned Koine and that was what ultimately prevailed. Just the other day I was using a photocopier, I noticed when I turned it on its lcd display read "the machine warms up". Inability to distinguish present simple and present continuous is a classic give-away for a foreigner using English, but is accepted usage among foreigners themselves and doubtless its usage will prevail over time as the actual semantic difference involved is negligible.

 

[Godwynn]

But as Europe is essentially a Slavic continent with Germanic and Romance edges

This thread is a goldmine of ridiculous statements.

 

[Leoreth]

Just the other day I was using a photocopier, I noticed when I turned it on its lcd display read "the machine warms up". Inability to distinguish present simple and present continuous is a classic give-away for a foreigner using English, but is accepted usage among foreigners themselves and doubtless its usage will prevail over time as the actual semantic difference involved is negligible.

Maybe it's just to save display space, though?

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Maybe it's just to save display space, though?

"I am warming up" would save time, and be kinda ballin though.

 

[Tee Kay]

Although that will be mainly due to America's pigheadedness than anything else.

You are kidding, surely.

This thread is a goldmine of ridiculous statements.

While this is true, Bán does have a point; after all, Europe technically includes Russia.

 

[Pangur Bán]

"I am warming up" would save time, and be kinda ballin though.

Maybe it's just to save display space, though?

Even "the machine" is questionable idiom. A natural English-speaker would most likely just write "warming up", which is substantially shorter too.