The Leonard Lopate Show
A Biography of the Latin Language
Find out how the Latin language has shaped Western culture and history for more than two thousand years. Nicholas Ostler’s new book is Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin.
Weigh in: Do you think about the influence of Latin on our modern world on a daily basis?
Dear Leonard and Nicholas,
I use Latin daily in biological nomenclature. I also find legal Latin amusing, especially phrases like RES IPSE LOQUITUR. Other useful phrases:
DE GUSTIBUS NON DISPUTANDUM
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
NULLUM PRANDIUM GRATIUM
Hope I spelled all this correctly!
Is Mr Ostler familiar with The Secret History of the English Language by MJ Harper which claims that Latin is an off shoot of italian and not the precursor of the Romance languages?
Hello!
It would be nice if you could make it possible to download this show as an mp3-file! Without the ''subscribing'' or ''I-tunes'' thing.
regards Stefan
When I went to High School on Long Island (1961-1965), Latin was a required language. Latin was extremely helpful, when, on a 2-week notice, I was sent to Brazil in 1964 as an Exchange Student. Relying on Latin - both words and grammar -- I was able to pick up Portuguese fairly quickly and was having conversations within a few weeks.Since then I have studied Spanish and French, and although I can't "speak" them, I can usually read the descriptions at museums and other tourist sites. So Latin has been very helpful to me.
I recently ran across a constructed language called Interlingua. It was apparently based on words that had the most cognates across the major romance languages, as well as English German and Russian.
It looks like a romance language and is amazingly easy to understand.
Latin is still taught in some NYC public schools. Midwood High School maintains a Latin-language program to this day. It is a required course for some students.
Both the itunes download and the mp3 available here for the History of Latin segment are actually audio from another segment of the show, New York Landmark preservation. Is it possible to correct he mistake? I missed the show yesterday and am particularly interested in this topic.
The Lopate Show responds: Thanks for alerting us to the problem. We are addressing it now and the correct audio should be available shortly.
There is of course a course for learning to speak Latin as a conversational language, while learning Classical Latin at the same time. This is, like yours, also a podcast, available free on itunes
http://latinum.mypodcast.com
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