Those who were both particularly privileged in their educational opportunities and/or nerdy in their subject choices might note a bit of a classical theme around this blog: Liternum was a town in Campania, Italy, while Lovernius is the latinised name of a southern Gallic chieftain.
The classical motifs are intended to be merely decorative: the blog deals mostly with politics, geography and economics - current affairs, rather than ancient. The hints of romanitas are just to offer a bit of the flavour of "civilisation". However I came across an opinion piece today in the Financial Times on the utility of studying Latin, and on which, given my own educational background - I loved Latin at school, and read Anglo-Saxon and Celtic at Cambridge - I thought I might venture a brief opinion of my own in the article's comment section. Here I expand and develop it.
The main thesis is utilitarian - the practical sense, rather than the philosophical. "Latin is an essential language for our digital age" because of the civility and civilised use of language it teaches. As I have discussed my views on the matter of civilisation previously, I will not re-iterate the arguments here - "civilised" is not a term Mr Auslin actually employs. I think, however, that the relativist perspective which underlies my earlier discussion on that topic may be usefully extended to Mr Auslin's seemingly rather prescriptivist approach to English. He finds contemporary English usage distasteful, considering that people need to "recover [...] the ability to use our own language" - although I am not sure that the argument that opting to speak a vernacular of some sort instead of a prescribed correct form necessarily implies weak powers of argument or expression. I think that there are arguments in defence of prescriptivism, but this seems like thinly veiled snobbery. Perhaps there are arguments in defence of that too...
My principal point however is not about prescriptivism, but about functionalism. Reducing the study of Latin to its practical usefulness in the form of e.g. transferable skills is, to my mind, a pity, perhaps born of an education system that is increasingly oriented towards preparation for the "world of work", rather than education gratiā education. The functionalist approach is, of course, perfectly understandable, given the competitivity of the contemporary labour market, and the significant constraints on many schools' budgets.
Yet as far as learning critical thinking, powerful expression, how to "assess information critically, articulate ideas and convey them eloquently," or "being able to break down and rebuild sentences" in order "clearly to comprehend or construct a thought" - all of these skills might be acquired from the study of many a modern language and its literature, if the texts to be studied are chosen with these ends in mind. As far as utility is concerned, this would also have the benefit of picking up the modern language. Latin can never win on this basis, because the contemporary language will almost always be seen to be more useful.
I decided long ago that the arguments in favour of Latin's utility are always fundamentally weak. They fail to persuade because they miss the point.
Latinists, and students and lovers of other dead languages, need make no more apology for what they do than an artist. Their sole crime is merely not to be overly preoccupied with the market value of what they do - let us hope there is a place for such people in a civilised society.
Perhaps the primary purpose of learning a dead language should be to read what is written in it, simply because what is written in it is worth reading. This is a pretty solid argument for learning any dead or rare language - access to the literature of an entire culture (or multiple cultures: for example, both classical Rome and medieval Europe), in the original language. The weakness with this argument is, of course, the existence of translations: this is particularly in evidence for all the even moderately well-known classical texts, the meanings of which have often been studied and debated for a few hundred years.
One must turn then to the debate on the value of reading something in the original rather than in translation. In very brief, in my opinion, one is likely to get somewhat closer to the intended meaning by reading in the original - but learning an entire language well enough to do so for only a small number of texts may feel like a poor return-on-investment. What is more, even if one does so, there will still be ambiguity in the original text; then there are questions about the editing of the text by later scribes and scholars, and difficult or variant readings in different surviving manuscripts - one might learn a whole language and still not be sure what a crucial passage of the original text said.
Songs and poetry may be a good example of where learning the original language is likely to be especially valuable: where the form is as important as the content, one really cannot appreciate the original artistry except in the original words. In my experience, it is rare to find a good verse translation that is as accurate as it is beautiful; and often, they do not (sometimes cannot reasonably) employ the poem original metre. I would argue, for example, that the traditional Old English poetic metre is beautiful enough on its own to make learning the language worthwhile. The beauty of the form (as opposed to content) of the original texts is much less persuasive for prose however, at least when good translations exist.
Perhaps, in a way, I am still missing the point. If we are speaking of learning languages, then what of the language itself? One may simply find a particular language aesthetically pleasing; this may be a perfectly subjective judgement, but that should not prevent one from enjoying it. Alternatively, one may simply think or feel that knowing or using the language spoken in a particular period that one is especially attached to makes one feel closer to it.
In my opinion, these are the two most solid reasons for learning a dead language. As a result, dead languages really cannot be forced on anyone, and are
likely to remain a niche interest. Is that so bad?
Utilitarian arguments for the study of dead languages are a bonus, not an end in themselves; dead languages and their literatures are legitimate primary objectives. Therefore, let people study them for the mere enjoyment of it. Perhaps this form of indulgence has merely fallen from fashion. In any case, I find it hard to imagine, in the foreseeable future, that Latin will ever actually die.
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