Meet the Don
Spider strategem
Taking over from treasuries
Latins sweep awards
E-lack-of-commerce
Woeful ranking
Countries like to leave a mark on their six-month presidency of the European Union. Finland is no exception. A visit to the Finnish presidency website gives you the choice of a news review in English, French, Finnish - or Latin. The "conspectus rerum latinus" is lovingly translated each week, providing such gems as ministri aerarii et praefecti aergentariae centralis (finance ministers and central bank governors), colloquia Unionis Oeconomicae et Monetariae (talks on economic and monetary union) and praeparationes ad amplificationem communitatis (preparations for community enlargement).
Tuomo Pekkanen, professor of Latin at Jyväskylä University, who started broadcasting the news in Latin on Finnish radio 10 years ago, explains that coining words for new technology isn't a problem, you just go to the Latin root.
Perhaps using Latin isn't as daft as it sounds. Pekkanen says there are an estimated 50 million people in Europe who learnt Latin at some time in their lives, and there will be more since the Soviet embargo on Latin lessons was lifted. If there were the political will it could become the language of the European parliament, he puckishly suggests. Considering the widespread international use of English, Latin has greater complementarity as a second international language than German, he argues.
The team began Finland's presidency with a bang, recording a linguistic dispute on why German wasn't being used as an official language in all the meetings held in Finland. Germany threatened to boycott (boicotizare) all unofficial meetings of the presidency.
On a brighter note, the bulletin continued, "our internet site (locus interretiarius) offers news and information in Finnish, Swedish, Anglice, Francice - nec non Germanice!" Visit the site at http://presidency.finland.fi/frame.asp, and for audio and visual delights in Latin go to www.yle.fi/fbc/latini/index.html DS