ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
I was bemused to discover that the Pope did something I agree with: he advocates the revival of Latin.  (Link courtesy of my partner Doug.)  For centuries, Latin was an auxiliary language of the Church, scholars, and widely traveled people.  That was incredibly useful and I'm disappointed that people ditched it.  It's a great language, with a lot of history and literature to its credit, and any  widespread auxiliary language is really convenient.

In general, I think the guy is a dick, and we disagree on almost everything.  But in this our paths run together, and I'm an oldschool activist capable of swapping out allies on different issues.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 10:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lyonesse.livejournal.com
you might be interested in the highly-successful movement to revive hebrew, which was a dead language for a long time and isn't anymore. but they had children learn it natively, which is not what the pope is suggesting.

i was amused to discover that atm's in vatican city will offer you latin as a language for your transaction :)

Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-14 10:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
>>you might be interested in the highly-successful movement to revive hebrew, which was a dead language for a long time and isn't anymore. but they had children learn it natively, which is not what the pope is suggesting.<<

I have read that story! I think it's cool.

Yes, language nesting is the most effective approach. However, schooling will work, especially for an auxiliary language. Used to be, Catholic schools taught Latin quite thoroughly and from a fairly young age. It's not ideal but it gets the job done.

Re: Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-19 01:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kestrels-nest.livejournal.com
Which was how Hebrew was taught, until the settlement of Palestine/establishment of Israel.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] msstacy13.livejournal.com
In general, I think the guy is a dick, and we disagree on almost everything.

I concur.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ideealisme.livejournal.com
Delendus Papa est.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fayanora.livejournal.com
Oddly enough, Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan) was in favor of using Latin or other magical languages for rituals. He said Catholic masses in Latin had more magic in them than the English versions. Some of the rituals in his books are in Enochian, which is High Irony for ya. (Enochian being the language of the Angels.)

Yes...

Date: 2012-11-14 11:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
Language can have a big impact on ritual. It's why I use multiple languages in some of mine. We had four in our interfaith Samhain ritual: English, Hebrew, Lakota, and Latin.

Re: Yes...

Date: 2012-11-14 11:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fayanora.livejournal.com
I use my conlang, Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog, for parts of rituals.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-15 02:00 am (UTC)
zeeth_kyrah: A glowing white and blue anthropomorphic horse stands before a pink and blue sky. (Default)
From: [personal profile] zeeth_kyrah
It's as much about mindset as anything. People associate ancient languages with High Magick (special K and all), and consciously or otherwise put more "oomph" into what they're doing because they get into it more -- like actors who advocate the Method school of acting, which is basically "become the character" so that you truly feel what the character should feel.

Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-15 02:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
The effects I've found most salient are:

1) Native languages draw on the collective energy of people who have done a given ritual before. If it was only or primarily practiced in the native, and not in modern vernacular, the native pitch pool will be deeper.

2) Everyone, including deities, tends to respond more favorably to their native language, especially if they're in a place or time where they hear it rarely if at all, or if they don't expect to hear it from someone like you. The results can be quite advantageous. Just saying "Buenas dias" in Mexico will make a lot of the vendors cut their tourist prices in half or more.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] starcat-jewel.livejournal.com
This is known as the Stopped Clock Principle, aka "even a stopped clock is right twice a day".

I'm less impressed with the "we need a lingua franca" argument, because English is already filling that role pretty reliably in the modern world. But I do think that some acquaintance with both Latin and Greek would be helpful in producing a populace with better vocabulary and reading comprehension, which we desperately need.

(Note: I never took Latin in school, and my entire knowledge of it has been etymologically derived -- which is rather backwards from what I'm saying above, but the flow goes both ways.)

(edited to fix HTML)
Edited Date: 2012-11-14 11:25 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fayanora.livejournal.com
It's also known as "jerk has a point," a term a friend of mine recently introduced me to, in reference to something Ann Coulter said.

Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-15 12:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
>> This is known as the Stopped Clock Principle, aka "even a stopped clock is right twice a day". <<

*laugh* That is actually one of the things I said when I heard about this.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-15 08:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sagaciouslu.livejournal.com
Ms. Jewel, you make my heart glad; I agree that having Latin and / or Greek would make people better readers. And, also, hopefully, give them a richer sense of culture, and myth, and how deep human beings can actually be. You know. When they're not busy being shallow.

As for the lingua franca thing, well, English is a mess. I pity the poor bastard who has to learn the language as an ESL student. OTOH, Latin - being a declined language - is arguably more difficult, a fact exacerbated by the lack of any meaningful living examples of the language in current use. At least English is ubiquitous and vibrant, if messy.

Hmm. Sounds like a number of relationships; vibrant but difficult and messy.

Esperanto, anyone?

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-14 11:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fayanora.livejournal.com
On the other hoof, it is totally possible to make rituals with a high degree of magick in them, in English. If you've ever seen any of Alastair Crowley's rituals performed in person by someone who is good at them, you'd understand. :-)

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-15 02:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sagaciouslu.livejournal.com
FWIW, I'm an atheist who attends a pre-Vatican II mass twice a year. I love the music. I like the latin. And I love seeing the very last vestige of sanctioned, institutionalized ritual magic in the Western world...

Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-15 02:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
>>FWIW, I'm an atheist who attends a pre-Vatican II mass twice a year. I love the music. I like the latin.<<

Cool! I like some of the old Church music too.

>> And I love seeing the very last vestige of sanctioned, institutionalized ritual magic in the Western world... <<

Yes, that can be entertaining. When it's properly cast, it is sublime and quite powerful. There aren't a lot of priests these days who can make the old magic work, but I've met a few who could, and it's impressive.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-15 06:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] marina-bonomi.livejournal.com
I also think that the fact you agree with him is a rare occurrence (although the fact that he has a keen interest in liturgy is far from new).

A thing that I try to avoid, though, is to use that fact as a basis to make considerations of value on your person (or anybody else).

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-15 05:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] paka.livejournal.com
I disagree. I feel that the Latin-is-for-scholars, we-had-wars-over-people-being-able-to-read-the-Bible thing lends a nasty elitist taint to the whole thing. By comparison, the revival of Hebrew wasn't a biggy; if you were Jewish, from the most revered rabbi to the most brutish thug of a boxer and stonemason, you already at least kinda knew some Hebrew.

That, and I still think English and Arabic are still the best "everyone kinda sorta knows some" languages thanks to their general flexibility in use.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-19 01:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kestrels-nest.livejournal.com
if you were Jewish, from the most revered rabbi to the most brutish thug of a boxer and stonemason, you already at least kinda knew some Hebrew.

And if you were Jewish, you were literate. No distinction between male and female on that, either, as women were expected to teach the young children.

But it was not the language that they spoke every day; like Latin, it was reserved for religious observance and scholarship. The lingua franca was either Yiddish (eastern European) or Ladino (Jews of Iberian descent.) That made the revival of Hebrew a fairly big deal - when all you know are the phonemes from reciting the prayers, learning to use the language in daily life is a non-trivial undertaking.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-19 08:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] paka.livejournal.com
Okay, so the revival of Hebrew as an everyday language is something big, I'm sorry to have been a little too quick to dismiss that; but I still feel it was an exceptionally democratic sort of thing, rather than Latin, which was used to shut off big chunks of the population from their intellectual heritage.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-19 01:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kestrels-nest.livejournal.com
And you're correct about that. One lf the reasons Hebrew was chosen was that it was common to all Jews. Latin, on the other hand, became the language of mysteries accessible only to the educated and/or religious.

(no subject)

Date: 2012-11-16 01:01 am (UTC)
ext_3294: Tux (tux)
From: [identity profile] technoshaman.livejournal.com
I'm ok with missa in latinam, but *as an option*... part of why Luther advocated for the vernacular Mass was so that the people could understand for themselves what was being said. Latin is great as a part of higher education; I'm quite grateful for the two years I spent studying it, and had I the option, I would've taken more... but so much of Catholicism is based in communities where high school is a luxury at best.

Josef is *dangerous*. Karol I could respect, even if I didn't agree with him on about half his stuff, but putting the Inquisition in charge of the Church? Doubleplusungood.

I'd love to see Latin make a renaissance... if it's used for *education*, not *obfuscation*.

Thoughts

Date: 2012-11-16 02:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com
>> I'm ok with missa in latinam, but *as an option*... <<

As a freedom advocate, I agree with Latin mass as an option.

As a priestess, I'm totally behind the idea of a hierarchical, formulaic religion having one single language so that people could go absolutely anywhere in the world and walk into any one of their churches and get the same services they know from home. It builds the power and the comfort. There are sound technical reasons for that technique.

As a linguist, I point out that the way you make sure everyone can understand the liturgy is to teach everyone the Church language so they are all fluent. Then you also have an auxiliary language so all your followers can communicate with you even if they speak different vernacular languages.

>> part of why Luther advocated for the vernacular Mass was so that the people could understand for themselves what was being said.<<

See above.

>> Latin is great as a part of higher education; I'm quite grateful for the two years I spent studying it, and had I the option, I would've taken more... but so much of Catholicism is based in communities where high school is a luxury at best. <<

Yeah, I had a real hard time deciding between Latin and Russian once I had those options.

If you're serious about teaching a language, though, it doesn't require high school. You could do it at Sunday school, or sheesh, tack on a language lesson after the liturgy. People have done it.

>>Josef is *dangerous*. Karol I could respect, even if I didn't agree with him on about half his stuff, but putting the Inquisition in charge of the Church? Doubleplusungood. <<

Yyyyeah. He's really, really clocking himself with the language move even for people who hadn't already recognized him.

>>I'd love to see Latin make a renaissance... if it's used for *education*, not *obfuscation*.<<

Agreed.

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