Forget it, languages with declensions are not suited for today world, for some reason. Think about most spread languages: English , Spanish, Chinese. All them lack declensions.
Ĉu ni devas lerni Esperanto?
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If you study Latin you'll encounter many situations where you know the meaning of all the words and phrases in a sentence, know all the possible syntactic functions of all the words, but still cannot make sense of the sentence. You have to stop and think how it all fits together, almost like you're solving a jigsaw puzzle. That's mainly because written Latin style is completely alien to modern speakers of western-european languages, it takes time to get used to it.
My take on Latin revival, which I think is perfectly doable, is that we should use a 'neolatin' language, a language with Latin morphology, syntax, lexis (although only a subset of latin words and phrases would be chosen and set to be used in everyday/formal speech, the other being considered archaic or poetic) but with different stylistics, one that would be much closer to modern romance stylistics (perhaps Jerome's Vulgata could be taken as a model).
Morphology (declensions) is not a big deal in Latin, since it's mostly regular. It's easy to passively learn the endings by heart if you're exposed enough to the language, even when this is only written exposure. And learning which noun case to use with a given verb has the same level of difficulty as learning which preposition to use with a verb.
The main problem with Latin today is that the only exposure to the language students get is exposure to the Classics.
If you study Latin you'll encounter many situations where you know the meaning of all the words and phrases in a sentence, know all the possible syntactic functions of all the words, but still cannot make sense of the sentence. You have to stop and think how it all fits together, almost like you're solving a jigsaw puzzle. That's mainly because written Latin style is completely alien to modern speakers of western-european languages, it takes time to get used to it.
My take on Latin revival, which I think is perfectly doable, is that we should use a 'neolatin' language, a language with Latin morphology, syntax, lexis (although only a subset of latin words and phrases would be chosen and set to be used in everyday/formal speech, the other being considered archaic or poetic) but with different stylistics, one that would be much closer to modern romance stylistics (perhaps Jerome's Vulgata could be taken as a model).
Morphology (declensions) is not a big deal in Latin, since it's mostly regular. It's easy to passively learn the endings by heart if you're exposed enough to the language, even when this is only written exposure. And learning which noun case to use with a given verb has the same level of difficulty as learning which preposition to use with a verb.
The main problem with Latin today is that the only exposure to the language students get is exposure to the Classics.
If Baldewin doesn't like the name Esperanto, he can call it "Internacia Lingvo". Its initiator didn't call it Esperanto.
Internacia Lingvo
I don't like this name at all. It reminds me of ugly slavonic languages
I don't like this name at all. It reminds me of ugly slavonic languages
I study Classics, I don't think that's a bad thing at all - have you ever heard of Interlingua? It seems to be precisely what you're describing. It's a conlang (constructed language) based on Latin and the Romance languages, and without learning it I could instantly understand it all just because I know Italian. Italians can understand 100% of it without learning it, as can Spaniards and the Portuguese, I believe.
I know interlingua and like it, but it's just a sort of general romance. I'm talking about real Latin morphology, real Latin syntax, and real Latin words, but not of trying to emulate Cicero or Livy. It would be just Latin but with prevalescence of SVO word order, shorter sentences, less to none accusativus cum infinitivo, and few to none of the stylistical tools Latin writers loved that left little or no traces on modern languages.
I also love the Classics, but I doubt you could revive a language only counting on the very little percentage of the population who actually like the classics enough to want to read them in the original language. Scholastic/Ecclesiastical Latin, modeled on Jerome, is very close to what I mean: just read Aquinas and religious songs from the Middle Ages, it's all a lot easier to understand than anything classical.
I also love the Classics, but I doubt you could revive a language only counting on the very little percentage of the population who actually like the classics enough to want to read them in the original language. Scholastic/Ecclesiastical Latin, modeled on Jerome, is very close to what I mean: just read Aquinas and religious songs from the Middle Ages, it's all a lot easier to understand than anything classical.
People sadly think it's mighty hard to master Neo-Latin. Too much prejudice. This is sad, because Interlingua and Esperanto are boring conlangs in the end.
No, cases aren't hard to master. People only think that. Are verb conjugations hard?
No, cases aren't hard to master. People only think that. Are verb conjugations hard?
I adore cases, verb conjugations and hard syntax! Interlingua is too simple, we are not kids, nor Chinese after all :-)
Its a pity that most people do not know that Esperanto has become a living language, however after a short period of 121 years Esperanto is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide, according to the CIA World factbook. It is the 17th most used language in Wikipedia, and a language choice of Google, Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Native Esperanto speakers,(people who have used the language from birth), include George Soros, World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to NATO and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. According to the CIA Factbook the language is within the top 100 languages, out of all languages, worldwide.
Your readers may be interested in the following video :) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
A glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net :)
Native Esperanto speakers,(people who have used the language from birth), include George Soros, World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to NATO and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. According to the CIA Factbook the language is within the top 100 languages, out of all languages, worldwide.
Your readers may be interested in the following video :) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
A glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net :)
<< Are verb conjugations hard? >>
I don't know. I think that as long as the irregularities are few (as in Latin), it shouldn't be hard.
The only languages I've studied with highly inflected verbal system were Latin and Ancient Greek. Latin was easy (but I'm a Romance speaker, and Romance verbal system is really close to Latin's, at least the active part), but Ancient Greek's verbal system used to give me headaches. It's full of special cases, euphony rules (that make little sense for non-natives) and irregularities. I never got to really learn Ancient Greek, I could translate texts but it took a long time, was mighty hard and boring.
I don't know. I think that as long as the irregularities are few (as in Latin), it shouldn't be hard.
The only languages I've studied with highly inflected verbal system were Latin and Ancient Greek. Latin was easy (but I'm a Romance speaker, and Romance verbal system is really close to Latin's, at least the active part), but Ancient Greek's verbal system used to give me headaches. It's full of special cases, euphony rules (that make little sense for non-natives) and irregularities. I never got to really learn Ancient Greek, I could translate texts but it took a long time, was mighty hard and boring.
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