Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Pope's right – Latin is the perfect language for Twitter (Opinion)

Having said that, the Pope's Latin is, if not entirely wrong, a little fallible in his first tweet.

I would have gone for the adverb, humile, not the adjective, humiles, in "Unitati christifidelium integre studentes quid iubet Dominus? Orare semper, iustitiam factitare, amare probitatem, humiles Secum ambulare."

Or, to translate, "What does the Lord want of people who are completely devoted to the unity of Christians? To always pray, to continually do justice, to love good behaviour and to walk humbly with Him."

Still, that's only a minor quibble. 

The Pope is right to tweet in Latin. 

Not only will his tweets be comprehensible to Latinists across the world – in the same way that the Linnean plant-naming system is internationally understandable.

But also Latin is uniquely suited to tweeting, as a concise but eloquent language. 

Translating from English to Latin is like squeezing a concertina shut; from Latin to English is like opening it up again, revealing many and varied English meanings in a single Latin word.

That said, the Pope's Latin for Twitter – Pagina publica breviloquentis – is a bit of mouthful, meaning literally, "a public page of brief-speaking". What about just Verbum ("word") or Loquens ("speaking, talkative")?

Here are a few modish Latinisms to help the Pope's Twitter account along the way:

LOL – Magna voce ride
 

Lovin' it – Id amans
 

Just do it! – Fac!
 

Girl power – Puellae potestas

If you want to send an amorous tweet, you could do worse than borrow from Catullus: "Vivamus atque amemus" – Let's live and love…