Talk:Renaissance Latin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.	language Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

[edit] Sources?

Where are the sources for this article? The second last paragraph especially needs them. RedRabbit1983 16:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

Because humanist Latin lacked precise vocabulary to deal with modern issues, their reforms accelerated the process of turning Latin from a workday language to an object of antiquarian study. Their attempts at literary work, especially poetry, often have a strong element of pastiche.

There are no sources; it reeks of very strong bias; it reduces Erasmus and Petrach to authors of "pastiche" — though I doubt the author of the above could excel either. Therefore, it is clearly non-neutral. I suspect even the first sentence is not factually accurate. For, to my knowledge, Latin was no longer a workday language once the venaculars had supplanted Latin as a spoken language. Latin was a second language of clergy men and the educated class. RedRabbit1983 07:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

All of this depends on who you are and who you talk to. It wasn't just clerics that still used Latin and many people speaking Romance languages at the time would identify it as Latin if you asked them the name of the language they were using. Let us also keep in mind that the everyday form of Latin that the humanist were trying to replace did not die out. What happened largely was that there was the Latin taught in school and Latin taught by speakers. Medieval Latin lived on and enjoyed a continuity with itself as it continued to evolve and take in new words. The classical Latin that was being preached by the humanist not only had already been a dead language (not that it shouldn't be studies since it is an important historical version of the language) but died again after its reintroduction. Then it was resurected again many years later and by 1900 we see that it died Again. Now in the 21st century it is coming back for the third time and I do not pretend to know the future of the language but I will say Medieval Latin never died. It has continued to be used by people everyday. It has about 150 times the vocabulary of Classical Latin and a full grammatical structure. It has the ability to be less or more clear as a Modern language, for indeed it is one, depending on the authors whim. It can imitate Classial, old or any other type of Latin. It is a full and complete language. If you wanted to write an article about the space shuttle in Latin you would have to use Medieval Latin or start making up new words that only you alone would understand. Today we definatly think of the Romance languages as different languages from Latin and from each other dispite the fact that if you know Medieval Latin you can speak and be understood by anyone who speaks Spanish, Italian, Portugese and probably even French. It should also be noted that many of the Romanace languages are mutually intelligible to one another. Now that we have such powerful media tools at our disposal and communication between countries is easier then ever some people say that we will see the Romance langauges becoming more and more like each other in the future, eventually forming a common language again. This of caurse doesn't take into consideration the much improved teaching methods and materials of our modern age that stress a language be conservative. --Billiot 04:52, 17 June 2007 (UTC)