[MR] Vatican Offers Volumes of Help to Latin Lovers

[Towey, Brian]

Thank you!

I was thinking recently that a popular modern phrase would render handily
into even classical Latin:

"I don't recall at this time, Senator."

Have any of you read Walter Ong's works on orality and literacy?  I was
fascinated by his observation that history's greatest achievements in
abstract logic were composed in "dead" languages--classical Latin, classical
Sanskrit, classical Arabic, classical Hebrew, etc.  Chirographically
controlled languages, which are actively written and read, but are nobody's
mother tongue, let people think in different ways than they normally can.  

One of the most difficult things about thinking medievally is this layer of
distance and abstraction.  Everything of consequence was written and read in
a language that was rarely spoken.  It's said that Martin Luther would
debate his opponents in ancient Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, whichever he
thought was their weakest.  None of those were actively spoken in Europe at
the time.  How alien that is to the way we think now!

-Charles Fleming
"Miror Otium Negotium Multum Requirere"