Okay, so it's not quite dead...
This is from the May 15 Wired News e-mail, under the section called "Furthermore":
<blockquote>
Recentis Latinitas
The Vatican's Latin lovers -- that is, those who love the ancient language of Rome -- are issuing a new dictionary on how to say contemporary words like FBI and videophone. The book may never become a <i>liber maxime divenditus</i> -- a best seller -- if only because of its steep cost of 100 euros, but its release is causing a major buzz in literary circles. The Italian-Latin dictionary, <i>Lexicon Recentis Latinitas</i>, which joins two earlier volumes, A-L and M-Z, offers students of Latin, still the Roman Catholic Church's official language, a way to refer to things that didn't exist in Julius Caesar's time. FBI, for instance, is known as <i>officium foederatum vestigatorium</i>. TV correspondents embedded with U.S. military units in Iraq might be amused to know that they filed stories via a <i>telephonium albo televisifico coniunctum</i>. </blockquote>
Cool.
- Log in to post comments