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  • Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!

  • I come to bury Latin, not to praise it.

  • Salve amicis!

  • Ego et Julius, hoc est DNuntii.

  • As you can tell by my pronunciation, grammar, and word choice, I am among the select seven

  • or so billion people who do not speak Latin as a primary language.

  • In fact, everybody says that Latin is a dead language, and nobody speaks it, outside of

  • extracurricular clubs really just designed to show off how smart everyone in the club

  • is.

  • Pfft, buccones.

  • But that’s not exactly true, as we in the science, medicine, law, and education biz

  • know very very well.

  • Latin is still regularly used in all of these disciplines, mostly for descriptions of things.

  • So, while Latin is definitely dead, it isn’t extinct, which is the term we use for languages

  • which have no speakers or continued usage.

  • In fact, Latin is kind of a “victus mortuus”, or uhhzombie language.

  • It’s dead, but lives on in describing animal species, parts of the body, legal principles,

  • debate tactics, and a lot more.

  • Butwhy?

  • Why do we useUrsus maritimusinstead ofpolar bear”?

  • Well, the answer is multifaceted, as these things usually are.

  • But let’s start with Catholicism.

  • See, around the fourth Century, a craze was sweeping the Ancient Roman Empire and

  • all the kids were calling it Christianity.

  • This ultimately led to the formation of the Roman Catholic Church.

  • The Church was a huge fan of Latin, largely because that’s what the common man spoke

  • and that was their target audience.

  • Over time, Latin was promoted as being the language of religion and knowledge, and since

  • it was before the age of tweeting, everything written down was pretty dang important.

  • Scientific and medical discoveries, laws, and basically any source of information in

  • the Roman Empire was in Latin.

  • This meant that in order to be part of the educated or religious portion of society,

  • you had to speak, read, and write in Latin.

  • But, after the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin was deformalized and broken down into what

  • we know today as the Romance languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and

  • Romanian.

  • So why don’t we use any of those languages to describe laws or bears?

  • One big reason is that dead languages don’t move around very much... cuz theyre dead.

  • Latin is frozen in time, and without major populations speaking it, the words in it don’t

  • change meaning anymore due to popular usage.

  • For example, we used to use the word dank to describe your cellar, not your memes.

  • Butursus maritimuswill likely always be the Latin name for those carnivorous white

  • monsters roaming around the Arctic Circle, whereaspolar bearcould be, and probably

  • is, a slang term for a weird sexual act.

  • I don’t know, someone look it up on Urban Dictionary.

  • Actually, don’t.

  • And this makes scientific naming and notation particularly standardized, even when we discover

  • new things to be named.

  • All species have a two-part scientific designation, called "binomial nomenclature", or itsLatin

  • name”.

  • The application of these names is governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

  • (ICZN) and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN).

  • The first name is called thegeneric epithetand is usually the genus, while the second

  • is a “specific epithetor the species.

  • Sometimes there is even a third name for a subspecies included.

  • So, we, “homo sapiensare of the genus Homo, meaningman”, which also includes

  • Neanderthals and other hominids, but specifically we aresapiens”, meaningwise”.

  • As a group, we arewise menand women, of course.

  • An advantage of using a dead language is that it doesn’t favor any particular group; it

  • is decidedly neutral, which is great for things like law and medicine.

  • If we call a diseasegrossitosiswhile another culture calls itawesomeitis

  • youre going to end up with different reactions by doctors and the public for the same disease.

  • Calling it simplypneumonia”, removes any confusion or bias.

  • Dead languages might be dead, but justcause something is dead doesn’t mean it isn’t

  • amazing, influential, and widely respected.

  • Like Harambe, whose latin name isgorilla gorilla gorilla”.

  • Rest In Peace.

  • If you want to know a little more about how and why Latin turned into a bunch of other

  • languages, and what killed it in the first place, you can keep watching me talk about

  • Latin in this video on Seeker Daily.

  • If you found a new species, what would you name it?

  • Let us know in the comments and don't forget to like

  • and subscribe for more episodes of DNews everyday.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!

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B2 中高級

科學是如何讓拉丁語保持活力的 (How Science Is Keeping Latin Alive)

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    BH 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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