Flagellum equo
Pointed by Zuhlsdorf, an interesting proposal to restore Latin as the official language of Europe.

It's not clear if the reformers are aiming for classical or Vulgate. Sounds like the latter.

Obviously it can't and won't happen because English owns the digital world. But contrapuntally, the digital world would make the switchover much easier than ever before.

Latin is trivially central to the Latinate languages in the western half of Europe. It's also central to English vocabulary if not English grammar. Slavic is more distant, but Russians would have the partial advantage of familiarity with noun cases, which have vanished from the Latinates and English. Krauts would get the short end, with no vocabulary or grammar parallels. German has always refused to adopt Latin words as its own.

The author commits the modern Creative Destruction error here:

Another reason Latin went extinct was because of how difficult and complex it is. The language is by design, highly affected by vocal inflexion. That means nearly every spoken word can be modified based on context, voice, mood, person, number, gender, tense, and delivery. With no central authority governing what was authentic Latin, it quickly fell out of everyday usage.

As with buggy whips and dinosaurs and Neanderthals, LATIN DIDN'T GO EXTINCT. It smoothly morphed into Italian and other Latinates, and it became a major part of English by interbreeding and HGT. The Latinates kept most of the verb forms and lost the noun forms, so complexity itself wasn't the problem.

= = = = =

Later and sharper thought:

Among animals and plants, AND among products and skills and languages, EXTINCTION NEVER HAPPENS NATURALLY. A successful item in all of those categories may seem to disappear if you're classifying it narrowly. But in reality a successful item always adapts, always finds a way to reuse its genes or skills. Dinosaurs become birds, carriage builders become automobile builders, Latin becomes Italian.

In all of those categories, true extinction requires intentional mass murder. When you shoot all of the passenger pigeons, they are extinct. When you offshore all of the steel and electronics and textile industries, or when you lock down the barbers and restaurants, those skills become extinct. The people who owned those skills, now deprived of purpose and income, die out just as surely as the pigeons.

The "endangered species" fraud focuses our attention on purported natural extinction caused by change in habitat. The "endangered" laws remove land from successful human use, causing REAL extinction of human skills and communities and cultures.

LIFE IS PURPOSE. TECH IS DEATH.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Happy Ending, Language update, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:18 AM