Latin at Wikipedia.org: Is it any good?

[JLatin1]

http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_prima, There is a Latin version of the Free Encyclopedia, Wikipedia in Latin. Can someone tell me if the Latin there is "proper Latin" because if afraid that if it isn't and I read too much there, I might assimilate some of the poor Latin.

[cweb255]

Glancing at it quickly, it looks fine to me.

[benissimus]

Out of necessity, they use a lot of neo-Latin. There is really no way around that if you wish to describe modern things such as computers.

[yadfothgildloc]

I looked around for a bit and didn't see any errors. As Benessimus said, lots of neo-latin, but that's hardly a problem.

[adz000]

First of all, this site is horrible at worst and at best inconsistent. I'm sorry that this is the case because it would be a lot of fun to have a real Latin encyclopedia (even though it's useless). JLatin, you shouldn't be worried about reading postclassical Latin, which is the continuation of a living language, so much as reading made-up Latin, of which many of these pages are great specimens.

Just look at the title of the first page:

Vicipaedia cooperandi opus est ut creatur Libera Encyclo­pedia

.
Using opus with the genitive is not license (yes you can find one or two cases), but lazy following of modern idiom. Indicative where a subjunctive ut clause is clearly meant? The verb cooperor is nothing but lazy.

Take another page at random: Historia.

Verbum historia saepe appellatio generalis rebus de praeterito usatur

Usatur!!!

And another: Ars Rhetorica.

In Graecia antiqua sophistes artem rhetoricam ut artem eloquentiae in re publica cum argenti doceverunt. Contra illos Socrates ut philosophiam cupit, sed ars rhetorica ut disciplina desideratur et bene aestimatur.

I don't know where to start with this. I suppose doceverunt for docuerunt is one of those Neolatinisms? I hope that argenti is supposed to be an ablative, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. What the hell are those ut's doing?

OK you get my point. These are the sorts of lazy mistakes someone makes who hasn't internalized Latin but is grabbing at calques from his native language and can't be bothered to proof-read or check a grammar. Obviously not all contributors are this horrible, but the presence of just a few are poisonous to the quality of this site.

[latin_student]

I am a bit confused...I notice that they use infinitives for search (quaerere) and go (ire). I guess "quaerere" is okay as the title for the search section. For the buttons, however, wouldn't it be better to use 2nd person imperatives (quaere and ite) ? They are commands after all.

Could anyone explain, thanx.

[benissimus]

I am a bit confused...I notice that they use infinitives for search (quaerere) and go (ire). I guess "quaerere" is okay as the title for the search section. For the buttons, however, wouldn't it be better to use 2nd person imperatives (quaere and ite) ? They are commands after all.

Could anyone explain, thanx.

That is really just a matter of convention. Many Spanish webpages, for example, use infinitives (e.g. buscar "to search").

adz has some valid complaints. I didn't take the time to examine the site very closely, but it looks like it may be somewhat sloppy. At least anyone who visits can revise it, provided that person has the benevolence.

[JLatin1]

First of all, this site is horrible at worst and at best inconsistent. I'm sorry that this is the case because it would be a lot of fun to have a real Latin encyclopedia (even though it's useless). JLatin, you shouldn't be worried about reading postclassical Latin, which is the continuation of a living language, so much as reading made-up Latin, of which many of these pages are great specimens.

Just look at the title of the first page:

Vicipaedia cooperandi opus est ut creatur Libera Encyclo­pedia

.
Using opus with the genitive is not license (yes you can find one or two cases), but lazy following of modern idiom. Indicative where a subjunctive ut clause is clearly meant? The verb cooperor is nothing but lazy.

Take another page at random: Historia.

Verbum historia saepe appellatio generalis rebus de praeterito usatur

Usatur!!!

And another: Ars Rhetorica.

In Graecia antiqua sophistes artem rhetoricam ut artem eloquentiae in re publica cum argenti doceverunt. Contra illos Socrates ut philosophiam cupit, sed ars rhetorica ut disciplina desideratur et bene aestimatur.

I don't know where to start with this. I suppose doceverunt for docuerunt is one of those Neolatinisms? I hope that argenti is supposed to be an ablative, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. What the hell are those ut's doing?

OK you get my point. These are the sorts of lazy mistakes someone makes who hasn't internalized Latin but is grabbing at calques from his native language and can't be bothered to proof-read or check a grammar. Obviously not all contributors are this horrible, but the presence of just a few are poisonous to the quality of this site.

ADZ, thanks for the heads up.

Taking what you you've said into consideration, I won't go there till I'm much more advanced in Latin, and can recognize the mistakes when I see them. Then I can do some editing to some of the pages to make the Latin into good Neo-Latin. It'll ibe a good exercise to mantain my Latin skills.