How much do you know of Latin? Do phrases in history books like Pax Romana and Veni, Vidi, Vici, or lines in Christmas carols like in excelsis deo come to mind? Would hearing today’s news say, “Donald Trump, praesidens Civitatum Americae Unitarum” sound odd? That’s normal for the broadcast, Nuntii Latini. It gives current events in spoken Latin. The goal is to bring the ancient language to modern times.
Nuntii Latini on the Finnish radio station YLE 1, has been broadcast since 1989. But the program was to end in January due to its small audience. More than 3,000 listeners wrote in from around the globe, some in fluent Latin, encouraging the station to save the program. YLE agreed to extend its life to at least its 30th anniversary in 2019.
“Ne umquam desperaveris,” (loosely translated: “never give up”) said co-announcer Reijo Pitkaranta (REY-yo Pit-ka-ronta). He is a lecturer in Latin at the University of Helsinki and one of the original creators of the five-minute program that means “news in Latin.” Listeners tune in from China and Vietnam to Belgium and the United States.
Latin is called a “dead language." That means it is no longer anyone’s native language, but it’s not “extinct.” An extinct language has no living speakers. Today, the largest user of spoken Latin is the Catholic Church. Some masses are still said in Latin, and Vatican radio occasionally broadcasts in the language. In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation in Latin as Italian media scrambled to translate.
The Bible we read today was translated into Latin from the original Greek and Aramaic, so people throughout the Roman Empire could read it. Early Christians held services in Latin since it was the language of the day.
Why did Latin die? A better way to think about it is that it dissolved into other languages. Latin is a complex language, and as the Roman Empire spread, people from each country altered it. Some left off word endings or difficult tenses, so they could easily speak it. When Rome fell in A.D. 476, Latin’s official spoken use faded away. The world was left with the Romance languages like Italian and French.
Finland is no stranger to linguistic oddities. Author J.R.R. Tolkien, upon hearing Finnish, chose it as the inspiration for his own Elvish dialect, Quenya. Though entirely unrelated, local experts believe Finnish and Latin’s similar complicated grammatical structure make Latin a natural fit for Finns to learn.
