Contemporary Latin
Contemporary Latin is the form of the Literary Latin used since the end of the 19th century. Various kinds of contemporary Latin can be distinguished, including the use of Neo-Latin words in taxonomy and in science generally, and the fuller ecclesiastical use in the Catholic Church – but Living, or Spoken, Latin is the primary subject of this article.
Token Latin
Latin is still present in words or phrases used in many languages around the world, as a relic of the great importance of Neo-Latin, which was the formerly dominant international lingua franca down to the 19th century in a great number of fields. Some minor communities also use Latin in their speech.Mottos
The official use of Latin in previous eras has survived at a symbolic level in many mottos that are still being used and even coined in Latin to this day. Old mottos like E pluribus unum, found in 1776 on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782, are still in use. Similarly, current pound sterling coins are minted with the Latin inscription CHARLES III·D·G·REX·F·D. Monarchs before Elizabeth II used a Latin form of their names on currency, e.g. Georgius and Edwardus for George and Edward respectively. The official motto of the multilingual European Union, adopted as recently as 2000, is the Latin In varietate concordia. Similarly, in officially bilingual Canada the motto on the Canadian Victoria Cross is Pro Valore.Fixed phrases
Some common phrases that are still in use in many languages have remained fixed in Latin, like the well-known dramatis personae, habeas corpus or casus belli.In science
In fields as varied as mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine, pharmacy, biology, and philosophy, Latin still provides internationally accepted names of concepts, forces, objects, and organisms in the natural world.The most prominent retention of Latin occurs in the classification of living organisms and the binomial nomenclature devised by Carl Linnaeus, although the rules of nomenclature used today allow the construction of names which may deviate considerably from historical norms. Botanical descriptions were mandated to be written entirely in Botanical Latin from 1935 to 2012 and are still allowed to be written so.
Another continuation is the use of Latin names for the constellations and celestial objects, as well as planets and satellites, whose surface features have been given Latin selenographic toponyms since the 17th century.
Symbols for many of those chemical elements known in ancient times reflect and echo their Latin names, like Au for aurum and Fe for ferrum.
Latin abbreviations are widely used in medical prescriptions. In some countries, medical prescriptions are still written entirely in Latin, except for the signature.
Vernacular vocabulary
Latin has also contributed a vocabulary for specialised fields such as anatomy and law which has become part of the normal, non-technical vocabulary of various European languages. Latin continues to be used to form international scientific vocabulary and classical compounds. Separately, more than 56% of the vocabulary used in English today derives ultimately from Latin, either directly or through French.Latin uses and composition from 1900 to the present day
Ecclesiastical Latin
The Catholic Church has continued to use Latin. Two main areas can be distinguished. One is its use for the official version of all documents issued by the Holy See, which has remained intact to the present. Although documents are first drafted in various vernaculars, the official version is written in Latin by the Latin Letters Office. The other is its use for the liturgy, which has diminished after the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, but to some degree resurged half a century later when Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the Latin Mass.The Church of England permits some services to be conducted in Latin at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Most recently a Latin edition of the 1979 USA Anglican Book of Common Prayer has been produced.
Latin in Central Europe
In parts of Central Europe, composition of serious Latin poetry continued, such as those by Antonius Smerdel and Jan Novák. In Smerdel's case, his free verse written in Latin has modernist as well as classical and Christian elements. His choice of Latin as a medium reflects both the relative local relevance of Latin, which had a strong poetic tradition into the late nineteenth century, and a means to evade the attention of political censors.Latin in classical music
Some Latin texts were written for specific musical cases, for instance classical music pieces, such as Stravinsky's 1927 opera Oedipus Rex.Academic Latin
Latin has also survived to some extent in the context of classical scholarship. Some classical periodicals, like the German Hermes, to this day accept articles in Latin for publication; Mnemosyne did so at least until 2017. Latin is used in most of the introductions to the critical editions of ancient authors in the Oxford Classical Texts series, and it is also nearly always used for the apparatus criticus of Ancient Greek and Latin texts.The scientific journal Theoretica Chemica Acta accepted articles written in Latin until 1998.
The University Orator at the University of Cambridge makes a speech in Latin marking the achievements of each of the honorands at the annual Honorary Degree Congregations, as does the Public Orator at the Encaenia ceremony at the University of Oxford. Harvard and Princeton also have Latin Salutatory commencement addresses every year. The Charles University in Prague and many other universities around the world conduct the awarding of their doctoral degrees in Latin. Other universities and other schools issue diplomas written in Latin. Brown, Sewanee, and Bard College also hold a portion of their graduation ceremonies in Latin. The song Gaudeamus igitur is sung at university opening or graduation ceremonies throughout Europe.
Living Latin
Origins
After the decline of Latin at the end of the Neo-Latin era started to be perceived, there were attempts to counteract the decline and to revitalize the use of Latin for international communication.In 1815, Miguel Olmo wrote a booklet proposing Latin as the common language for Europe, with the title Otia Villaudricensia ad octo magnos principes qui Vindobonæ anno MDCCCXV pacem orbis sanxerunt, de lingua Latina et civitate Latina fundanda liber singularis.
In the late 19th century, Latin periodicals advocating the revived use of Latin as an international language started to appear. Between 1889 and 1895, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published in Italy his Alaudæ. This publication was followed by the Vox Urbis: de litteris et bonis artibus commentarius, published by the architect and engineer Aristide Leonori from 1898, twice a month, until 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I. In 1889 and 1890, Eduard Johnson published small German phrasebooks for learning conversational Attic Greek and conversational Latin. These books were republished and translated into several modern languages.
The early 20th century, marked by tremendous technological progress, as well as drastic social changes, saw few advances in the use of Latin outside academia. Following the beginnings of the re-integration of postwar Europe, however, Latin revivalism gained some ground.
One of its main promoters was the former dean of the University of Nancy, Prof. Jean Capelle, who in 1952 published a cornerstone article called "Latin or Babel" in which he proposed Latin as an international spoken language.
Capelle was called "the soul of the movement" when in 1956 the first International Conference for Living Latin took place in Avignon, marking the beginning of a new era of the active use of Latin. About 200 participants from 22 different countries took part in that foundational conference.
Pronunciation
The essentials of the classical pronunciation had been defined since the early 19th century but, in many countries, there was strong resistance to adopting it in instruction. In English-speaking countries, where the traditional academic pronunciation diverged most markedly from the restored classical model, the struggle between the two pronunciations lasted the entire 19th century. In 1907, the "new pronunciation" was officially recommended by the Board of Education for adoption in schools in England.Although the older pronunciation, as found in the nomenclature and terminology of various professions, continued to be used for several decades, and in some spheres prevails to the present day, contemporary Latin as used by the living Latin community has generally adopted the classical pronunciation of Latin as restored by specialists in Latin historical phonology.
Aims
Many users of Contemporary Latin promote its use as a spoken language, a movement that dubs itself "Living Latin". Two main aims can be distinguished in this movement:For Latin instruction
Among the proponents of spoken Latin, some promote the active use of the language to make learning Latin both more enjoyable and more efficient, drawing upon the methodologies of instructors of modern languages.In the United Kingdom, the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching was founded in 1913 by the classical scholar W. H. D. Rouse. It arose from summer schools which Rouse organised to train Latin teachers in the direct method of language teaching, which entailed using the language in everyday situations rather than merely learning grammar and syntax by rote. The Classical Association also encourages this approach. The Cambridge University Press has now published a series of school textbooks based on the adventures of a mouse called Minimus, designed to help children of primary school age to learn the language, as well as its well-known Cambridge Latin Course to teach the language to secondary school students, all of which include extensive use of dialogue and an approach to language teaching mirroring that now used for most modern languages, which have brought many of the principles espoused by Rouse and the ARLT into the mainstream of Latin teaching.
Outside Great Britain, one of the most accomplished handbooks that fully adopts the direct method for Latin is the well-known Lingua Latina per se illustrata by the Danish linguist Hans Henning Ørberg. It was first published in 1955 and improved in 1990. It is composed fully in Latin and requires no other language of instruction, thus it can be used to teach students of many different languages.