Finns speak Latin better than Italians
I sometimes read Zuhlsdorf's blog. He's a Roman priest on the 'traditional' side, which means the Christian side. He pushes for Natural Law without getting bogged down in legalistic details. More importantly, Zuhlsdorf understands how language works. A good Christian writer is rare, but a writer who understands language is nearly unique.

Come to think of it, those two are parallel. The usual traditionalist constantly quotes paragraphs and subparagraphs from Canon Law, most of which are irrelevant or wrong from a proper Natural Law standpoint. The usual grammarian constantly quotes the Canon Laws of "grammar", those fantastically stupid fictional "rules" about split infinitives and prepositions and such, all of which are wrong and irrelevant to Natural Language.

Recently Zuhlsdorf discussed methods for introducing Latin to kids, especially in a home-schooling situation. He got several sane and sensible contributions from commenters who had done the job.

Obviously you can hear Latin in a traditional Mass, but where can you hear it in an ordinary secular context?

The answer was surprising, and the sound itself was also surprising. An obscure Finnish radio station has regular podcasts of news in classical Latin.

Classical Latin had phonemic vowel length, which was lost in its later stages. None of the Latin-derived languages preserve length, and the Latin used in church is much closer to Italian than classical. Because length is not phonemic in any of those languages, speakers can't replicate the proper rhythm.

Vowel length is strongly phonemic in Finnish. Double-length vowels and consonants are common in Finnish, and are represented in writing by double letters. So the Finnish announcers apply their habits to Latin, and the result has an unfamiliar rhythm which is probably close to the real thing.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 2:11 AM