Common unifying language
Since all Romance languages evolved from ancient Latin, I would think if people wanted a common language Latin would be perfect.
What is missing in the language why did it die ?
Or
Maybe it did not really die like all languages because of time it just evolved to something that can no-longer be called Latin ? French, Spanish, Italian ..... are all dialects in a way.
8 Comments
95
It should be obligatory for tattoo artists to know Latin, so that they can tell when someone requests to have some Google Translate spew up permanently imprinted on them.
There are doozies for sure. The Latin discussion forum has a thread dedicated to bad latin tats http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/mistranslated-tattoos.6653/
Now I know what love is??? LOL
more here: http://brokentattoos.blogspot.com/2010/07/latin-tattoos.html
But Romance languages are only a tiny proportion of languages worldwide. And they simplified for a reason. Many of the interesting tenses and moods have been dropped. Spelling and pronunciation has changed. New vocab has been added.
In some professions it still (probably more so in Europe). A friend of mine who is a dentist studied Latin as a compulsory part of her training. She told me she had to send a report to a French collegue. She doesn't know French so she sent it in Latin. I was really surprised that Latin is still actually used in a practical way by people outside the Vatican.
latin is really alive: you can hear nowadays too: "manus manum lavat" or " quod licet jovi, non licet bovi" or "si tacuisses, filosophus mansisses" etc.
There is an active Latin speaking community of an estimated ~10.000 speakers (that can hold a simple conversation). Many more are in the process of studying it as a living language.
