Saturday, August 04, 2007

Latin or Italian



Cardinal Arinze has recently complained that Bishops and priests can no longer communicate with one another because they don't know Latin.
When I was in Rome last one of the staff at the English college was telling me about the difficulties students have in studying at the Gregorian University, because of the Italian, Fr Justin reflects on this, but read his whole post.


These days, lectures at the Gregorian University in Rome are conducted in Italian, not Latin. In other words, in a modern language, the language of the country, not a dead language. Good, you might think. But the point is that the lecturer is still going to see anxious and bemused faces in front of him, on all those who do not have Italian fluently, in fact, which will be almost all of the first-year class. Probably a similar proportion, in fact, to those who had not studied Latin seriously in the past. This gives the added problem that the Italians have a significant advantage over the other students, who are reduced to cribbing notes from each other in order to make any sense at all of the course. This would have been less the case when all were at an equal disadvantage.

4 comments:

Physiocrat said...

The "Latin or Italian" argument, for the British at least, is tangential to another, which is the truly dreadful quality of British schools. This is apparent when students from different countries come together. British children do not learn English grammar, let alone Latin. Therefore they are struggling with any language, dead or alive, or their own, for that matter.

It would be a good thing if Latin could be taught at primary school but where would the teachers come from?

When you spend an extended period out of Britain the poor state of the country's social institutions and public services can be seen in perspective. It would be marvellous if the Catholic Church, through its schools, could help to initiate the turn-around that is needed but how is that going to happen?

WhiteStoneNameSeeker said...

If there was someone out there will enough time, talent and willingness to do a blog to help us all learn Latin I would be there.
I would love to teach my little ones Latin-but I could do with some help.

Fr Ray Blake said...

W.S.Seeker,
Have a look at:

http://www.latin-mass-society.org/simplicissimus/index.htm

I found this useful brushing up on my Latin, I don't know of its use if you are starting from cold.

Anonymous said...

http://www.learnlatin.tk/

This is a free on-line course. I did a couple of homeworks and someone even responded!

My understanding is that ecceliastical/medieval Latin is less complicated but I am no expert.

Fr Ray - how is your Spanish? Have you seen the syllabus for a course that the British seminarians used to undertake at Valladolid? I once heard Fr. Drainey (Ushaw rector and ex-Valladolid) describe the course as having "gone peculiar". Peculiar is hardly the word! Doesn't look Catholic at all!

http://www.osafilipinos.es/programas.html

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