Sunday, July 27, 2008

Who says Latin is a dead language?

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, gave a speech in Latin!! He was apparently a Classics Major at Oxford. Read about it here.

This reminds me of a story I heard about a Jesuit priest who ran into Fr. Henri de Lubac in the Vatican's library. They both wanted to speak with one another, but the priest didn't know French and de Lubac didn't know English - and suddenly they both had an "Aha" moment - Latin! They sat there and had a conversation in Latin in the Vatican library.

I wish I had started off with a Classics major instead of doing religion, to be honest. I think it's a lot more versatile and the emphasis on languages is very attractive. C'est la vie, I suppose.

2 comments:

Stephen C. Carlson said...

For this paper I'm researching, I found some articles published in 1947 within the journal Verbum Domini, put out by the Papal Biblical Institute.

All the articles I looked at were written in Latin.

Unknown said...

Gotta love Fr. Swetnam!