Finnish EU Presidency: Conspectus Rerum Latinus
As I was writing the opening post and trying to figure out what Timor-Leste would be in Latin, I got sidetracked in exploring the current state of blogging in dead languages in general. I noticed many have commented on the Latin language news report Conspectus rerum latinus on the Finnish EU Presidency site. I'm thinking of reviewing some of the comments on this subject in the press and other blogs, but first I think I should explain my interest a bit further.
The last time Finland held the EU presidency, i.e. 1999, a similar news report was also introduced and got quite a lot of attention in the international press. However, it was often erroneously associated with the dispute over the German language interpretations in the meetings (on this subject, see e.g. BBC News account 'Santer backs Finland in language war' on 2 July 1999). I then wrote a little press review to the Classics Students' quarterly magazine Rostra right after the Finnish Presidency had ended. I've just translated this old article into English, and you can find it in the previous post in this blog
To my surprise, the old language issue seems to still be alive. At least according to the AFP report 'Finnish EU presidency to snub German language' on 7 April this year. I haven't seen any connection made to the Latin news report this time, though, but many other interesting comments about the conspectus rerum has been made, and I'm going to review them here as I write it.
[Special thanks to Roz for proof-reading!]
Labels: English, Finland, Latin, Lingua latina, Nuntii latini
