home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
011689
/
01168900.015
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-17
|
1KB
|
22 lines
WORLD, Page 41World NotesLANGUAGELatine Loqui Libet
Once the lingua franca of the civilized world, Latin today is
little more than the fusty muttering of academics, historians and
(some) priests. But in Rome a team of linguists led by top Latin
scholar Abbot Carlo Egger is working to rectify that unspeakable
state of linguistic affairs.
This spring the Vatican is publishing the A-to-L volume of a
lexicon turning into Latin some 15,000 phrases that did not exist
in the time of Cicero and Caesar. Among the neologisms from the
complete opus: ampla rerum venalium domus (supermarket),
ignitabulum nicotianum (cigarette lighter), nuntius fulminans (news
flash) and mulierum liberatio (women's lib). Beams Abbot Egger, who
is also the editor of a Latin newspaper: "This is proof; Latin can
be used even today for everything."
Well, maybe. But how many guys are going to ask their girls to
join them in a saltatio carolotoniensis (Charleston) on the extrema
hebdomada feriata (weekend)? The answer, needless to say, is
manifestum.