Classical, Eccle, or Neo-Latin?

Textkit is a learning community- introduce yourself here. Use the Open Board to introduce yourself, chat about off-topic issues and get to know each other.
Post Reply
NelsonN
Textkit Neophyte
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Apr 25, 2004 7:59 pm
Location: Puerto Rico
Contact:

Classical, Eccle, or Neo-Latin?

Post by NelsonN »

If I wanted to start writing in Latin today, which Latin would be more appropriate? The Classical, Ecclesiastical, or the Neo-Latin?

For example, which Latin is used to write today's books--such as the Harry Potter books?

Neo-Latin seems to be adding scientific words, but I am not sure about Ecclesiastical Latin, are these two vocabularies growing separately today? I have tried searching for answers but I haven't found much.

Are these trully three separate standards?

Any links you may provide on this topic will be appreciate.

User avatar
benissimus
Global Moderator
Posts: 2733
Joined: Mon May 12, 2003 4:32 am
Location: Berkeley, California
Contact:

Post by benissimus »

You can pretty much just learn Classical Latin and then specialize in whatever era you like. All of the different version of Latin are very similar, except the words find different uses at different times. Spellings tend to vary more in earlier Latin, compound words and poetic uses become more liberal in later Latin.

Most of the worthwhile prose and poetry is in Classical Latin, but a great deal of important historical texts and philosophical, academic, political, and religious treatises are written in Post-Classical Latin. Whatever interests you is probably the one you should study, but Classical Latin is a great place to start.
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

Episcopus
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2003 8:57 pm

Post by Episcopus »

You should probably go for the easier Post-Classical latin.

chad
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 757
Joined: Tue Jul 22, 2003 2:55 am

Post by chad »

Aside from the spelling differences, I've read that later latin (like later greek) dumbs down the verb usage. basically while classical greek and latin are really verb-rich languages, later latin (e.g. ecclesiastical) and greek stop using many of the classical verb forms and become more noun-focused.

Professor Harris makes the point here:

http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin/ ... is_08.html

also check out "The Verb" section (scroll about halfway down) in Professor Harris' "The Intelligent Person's Guide to Greek":

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris ... ammar.html

mingshey
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 1338
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2003 6:38 am
Location: Seoul
Contact:

Post by mingshey »

I hesitated to take Homeric Greek 'cause I wanted to concentrate, in my limited time for the study of Greek, in a single dialect, that is Attic. But comparative studies really shed light on the learning. So I think I should also work on parts of Homer from time to time. Earlier forms of a language are inspiring, indeed. A language is fossilized when it gets old. The freshness and liberallity gets stuck in the idiomized expressions. And to amend the diminished freedom, distorted usages emerge, making the language ugly. In my mother tongue, too, older literary works show much more freedom and freshness than the modern forms.

Post Reply