‘Dead’ Language May Help Open EU’s Lines of Communication

If you thought that English is the language of the 21st century, think again. In Europe, the future could be Latin.

“It’s not practical if you have to translate the name of an EU program into 23 languages, so if you have a Latin word that can be pronounced in all 23 and means something at the same time, it’s practical,” said Wolfgang Jenniges, a European Commission translator and classical linguist.

Languages are big political business in the EU. Each member state fights fiercely for its national tongue, with EU texts routinely translated into all 23 of the bloc’s official languages.

As long as the EU has enough computer memory and paper to handle 23 versions of every text, it is a perfect political solution.

But trouble starts when there is only room to use one word from one language — such as when creating an internet domain name.

English — the EU’s most widespread language — might seem to have the advantage in such questions. But other member states fear that too much English use would cement it as the EU’s unofficial working tongue, a politically impossible position.

“English has become the lingua franca, but we’re not allowed to say so,” an EU linguist said.

The EU’s solution has been to find a politically neutral language in the only place it could realistically look: European history.

“The fact that Latin doesn’t belong to any one nation makes things easier,” Jenniges said.

With Latin at the root of many of the technical, scientific, religious and legal terms in Europe, Virgil’s language is perfectly placed to become the EU’s virtual tongue.

“There is a dose of Latin in all 23 EU languages: the dosage varies, but it’s always there,” the linguist pointed out.

In a striking blend of ancient and modern, the EU has adopted Latin titles for some of its top Internet addresses.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has the domain name “curia” — Latin for “court.” The council of EU member states uses the domain name “consilium,” or “council.”

Both those names are subaddresses of the EU’s web domain, “europa” — the Latin name for Europe.

EU projects are also being given Latin names. A recent translation contest was called “juvenes translatores” (“young translators”), while the EU has a “Tempus” (“time”) project for upgrading universities outside the bloc.

Classical names are even coming back into fashion for EU military missions. In recent years, the bloc has run operations named Althea, Artemis, Themis and Concordia — the goddesses of healing, hunting, justice and reconciliation.

Those names “transcend modern cultural and historical references of a national nature, as well as linguistic considerations,” an EU official said.

However, EU-watchers are not likely to have to reach for their Latin dictionaries any time soon.

Any decision to extend the use of Latin on a larger scale would be “eminently political,” and would have to be preceded by “the renewal of Latin teaching in schools and universities almost from scratch,” Jenniges pointed out.

But with political sensitivities showing no sign of fading, the EU may well find that the simplest way of avoiding potential fights between living languages is to look for more and more names in a dead one.  DPA