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Finland’s weekly news show in Latin cancelled after run of 30 years
- MasterScrat 7y agoWow, I studied latin for many years, and this would have definitely been interesting to know then.
- bytematic 7y agoMaybe they can do some sort of podcast, change the format a bit? Latin students would love this, worldwide!
- schoen 7y agoIt's been available in a podcast format for some years already https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339 https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339 and Latin students worldwide do love it!
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoI suspect many Latin teachers might be uncomfortable with their students getting into Latin that enthusiastically. Many high school Latin teachers are actually not very proficient in Latin, they are merely capable of teaching from a syllabus that is usually quite modest. Except for some elite schools, Latin is taught just to give students a taste of the language and expand their vocabulary in their native language by recognizing Latin borrowings. The pupils aren’t intended to actually master the language and read non-set texts comfortably, let alone follow Neo-Latin materials or practice spoken Latin. If the students surpass the syllabus, that makes things difficult for the teachers. If a student has taken up the language so enthusiastically, the teacher may simply demand that he/she simply test out of the course instead of continuing to come to class.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- busterarm 7y agoI took 8 years of Latin through Catholic school. By the second year of High School, we were required to read history texts written in Latin.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago> I took 8 years of Latin through Catholic school. This just proves my point. Catholic schools in the US are private institutions, and one that would teach Latin with vigor is a rare case. However: > we were required to read history texts written in Latin. It is common for Caesar’s Gallic War to be assigned early on, but students working through it with the support of a tailor-made glossary and commentary is not a particularly impressive achievement. De bello gallico (like Xenophon’s Anabasis in Greek) is assigned precisely because it is an extremely easy text, and it is not very representative of Latin literature in general. If your school expected you to read Livy, or even Tacitus, that definitely puts it into the “elite” category.
- busterarm 7y ago> If your school expected you to read Livy, or even Tacitus, that definitely puts it into the “elite” category. Yes to both :D
- joycian 7y agoLivy, Seneca, Cicero, Virgil also featured in my Latin classes. I'm not sure of the relative difficulty levels anymore, though. All of these were fascinating for different reasons: Livy for the narrative, Seneca for the wisdom (see also Montaigne who heavily quotes Seneca in his essays), Cicero for his personal involvement in Caesarian politics and Virgil for his role as Augustus' propagandist and continuation of the Homeric tradition. I should read more of these texts, I remember being really fond of Latin classes. Edit: to concur with GP, Caesar's writings (de bello Gallico) were somewhere in the first half of the curriculum and were definitely regarded as relatively easy.
- mattkrause 7y agoThis is a remarkably uncharitable view of teachers’ motivations and abilities! You’re not wrong that most Latin classes have somewhat different goals than modern language classes, but that doesn’t necessarily make them less rigorous, as you seem to be suggesting. Deprioritizing speaking, for example, makes sense for s language where students are...unlikely...to encounter a native speaker in the wild. We did eventually get there when doing poetry and other stuff meant to be heard, rather than read. I also can’t imagine many teachers getting upset or uncomfortable with interested students. All of mine would have been over the moon if they discovered us studying more outside of class. I think this especially true for Latin, since it is such a niche field that people are certainly not in for the money! Source: 3 years of Latin at a public high school, followed by a linguistics and CS degree.
- lwhalen 7y agoOh man, I would've watched the HELL out of this show in highschool. Pity, I didn't even know it existed! I had a beloved Latin teacher back then (regrettably, he passed years ago) who would've been all over this too.
- schoen 7y agoApparently some students at Western Washington University have started an analogous project: https://nuntiilatini.com/ https://nuntiilatini.com/ It's interesting to compare the accent of native English speakers and native Finnish speakers in Latin. :-)
- superpermutat0r 7y ago> It's interesting to compare the accent of native English speakers and native Finnish speakers in Latin. :-) Finnish has a phonemic orthography, almost. So it's quite easy to just read Latin the way it is written.
- schoen 7y agoThis doesn't necessarily mean that their vowels are closer to ancient Roman vowels than Americans' vowels are, though, for example.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoThe vowels of English are pronounced as narrow diphthongs. This really sets English apart from the pronunciation of modern European languages, and also from Latin as reconstructed. Finns certainly have a distinct accent in many foreign languages, but they do less violence to Latin than people from the USA or UK.
- imjustsaying 7y ago>The vowels of English are pronounced as narrow diphthongs. All of them?
- asveikau 7y agoIt's possible for Americans to do the correct vowels, though. We have most of them elsewhere in the language. I started learning Romance languages fairly young and at my peak fluency [a little rusty these days] I had people telling me I sounded near-native in Spanish. Personally the thing that bothers me most about American accents with these languages is failure to make diphthongs out of adjacent vowels. An American accent will stretch a Romance diphthong out into lengthy syllables. For example in this audio link above, the speaker says hodie has "HOE-dee-ay". I speculate someone more used to speaking a Romance language would say /'hodje/, two syllables. (I note English wiktionary has it as 3 syllables. Not sure what an ancient Roman would do.) In any case I think a lot of the confusion is orthographic in nature. An English speaker is used to an <e> being /i/. It's not that they can't do an /e/ sound if they tried. A lot of people in the US also have very little real exposure, eg. we have language classes in school where making a real attempt to drop our accents and interact on a level plane with natives is never even seriously considered, it's just a place to hold you in a desk and fill out worksheets.
- greendestiny_re 7y agoSic transit gloria mundi.
- unmole 7y agoSort of related: India's public broadcaster has had a daily 5 minute bulletin in Sanskrit for as long as I can remember. A weekly 30 minute news show too started a few years ago.
- aatharuv 7y agoInterestingly enough, Sanskrit is an official language of India, both at the national level, and in at least one state (Uttarkhand).
- Koshkin 7y agoNice. Looks like the EU, on the other hand, has missed the chance to make Latin its official language.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoThe EU has now expanded to countries – Bulgaria, Greece – where Latin did not play a major role historically. Even Romania, where the language is Romance, never employed Classical Latin as a language of learning (Greek and Church Slavonic were used instead). So, choosing Latin would seem unfair for the Orthodox world.
- eaandkw 7y agoWouldn't want to be unfair to anyone. Perhaps Esperanto could be the official language
- sansnomme 7y agoInterlingua is better.
- dredmorbius 7y agoLatin did play a major role in Greece (which was ruled by Rome), though in a twist, as Adam Davidson of The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast (a real treasure) notes, Rome adopted Greek as its language of scholarship and aristocracy rather than imposing Latin on the Greeks.
- FabHK 7y agoThe mic drop: Nuntii Latini finiti Nuntii Latini Radiophoniae Finnicae Generalis, qui inde ab anno millesimo nongentesimo undenonagesimo (1989) iam triginta annos septimanatim emittuntur, post hanc emissionem finiuntur et decreto moderatorum radiophonicorum post ferias aestivas non continuabuntur. Auscultatoribus, quorum grex ad omnes orbis continentes amplificatus est, propter fidelitatem gratias quam maximas agimus et valedicimus. A translation (not idiomatic English, staying closer to the original, but better than Google...): Latin News Terminated Finnish General Radio's "Latin News", which have been transmitted from here since 1989 already 30 years weekly, will be terminated after this transmission and, by decree of the radio directors, not continued after the summer break. To the listeners, whose flock has grown to all continents of the earth, on account of their faithfulness we give the greatest possible thanks, and bid farewell.
- AnssiH 7y agoAudio link: https://areena.yle.fi/1-50142295 https://areena.yle.fi/1-50142295 starting at 04:05.
- JetSpiegel 7y agoThis is almost intelligible for this Romance language native...