I really wish Traditiones Custodes had not happened

[chevyontheriver]

How likely do you think it is that they sing it in English?

Probably less frequently than in Urdu or even Gaelic.

 

[BobRyan]

How likely do you think it is that they sing it in English?

Not very likely - I assume they sing it in their own venacular

 

[JSRG]

Latin is an easy language, unlike English which is crazy hard.

As someone who has been attempting to learn Latin, I can say it is anything but an "easy language." The verb conjugation alone disqualifies that; there's too many different conjugations to keep track of, and tons of verbs are irregular in some way on top of that. English has its fair share of irregular verbs too, but at least the regular verbs are incredibly simple to conjugate. Latin has other annoyances too (all of the cases for the nouns and the fact you have to remember which of the three genders every noun is--at least most of its descendant languages like Spanish simplified it to two).

Sure English has frustrating qualities too. The spelling/pronunciation is crazy and the prepositions are something really hard to get a solid grasp on if it's not your native language. But in a number of ways, English is actually fairly simple; the verb conjugations are simpler than a lot of languages (and certainly way simpler than Latin), there's no grammatical gender, and the only time cases matter is for pronouns, and even then it's relatively simple.

I can see someone thinking English is harder if they have particular difficulty with the pronunciations and spellings, and if their native language is a Romance language so the vocabulary is at least much easier, but I can't say I see English as much harder than Latin even then.

 

[chevyontheriver]

As someone who has been attempting to learn Latin, I can say it is anything but an "easy language." The verb conjugation alone disqualifies that; there's too many different conjugations to keep track of, and tons of verbs are irregular in some way on top of that. English has its fair share of irregular verbs too, but at least the regular verbs are incredibly simple to conjugate. Latin has other annoyances too (all of the cases for the nouns and the fact you have to remember which of the three genders every noun is--at least most of its descendant languages like Spanish simplified it to two).

Sure English has frustrating qualities too. The spelling/pronunciation is crazy and the prepositions are something really hard to get a solid grasp on if it's not your native language. But in a number of ways, English is actually fairly simple; the verb conjugations are simpler than a lot of languages (and certainly way simpler than Latin), there's no grammatical gender, and the only time cases matter is for pronouns, and even then it's relatively simple.

I can see someone thinking English is harder if they have particular difficulty with the pronunciations and spellings, and if their native language is a Romance language so the vocabulary is at least much easier, but I can't say I see English as much harder than Latin even then.

I think it was Reginald Foster, the quintessential Latinist of the 20th century, who said it was easy enough for Roman two year old children to learn. What I am saying is that to learn prayers like the Agnus Dei and Pater Noster is easy and one can learn them in a few hours.

 

[JSRG]

I think it was Reginald Foster, the quintessential Latinist of the 20th century, who said it was easy enough for Roman two year old children to learn.

A search for that turns up no hits, so the claim he said that seems probably false. In any event, if he did say that, unless he has actual historical proof that Roman kids mastered the language faster, then he's just making it up. It seems especially weak given that two year olds can learn just about any language, as shown by the fact... well, that they do for their native language (read/writing will take much longer in something like Chinese or Japanese, though, because there's so many blasted characters to memorize). Kids have a lot of language learning advantages that adults generally don't.

What I am saying is that to learn prayers like the Agnus Dei and Pater Noster is easy and one can learn them in a few hours.

That is more reasonable, but I don't think that's a feature of Latin being easy compared to English.

 

[chevyontheriver]

A search for that turns up no hits, so the claim he said that seems probably false. In any event, if he did say that, unless he has actual historical proof that Roman kids mastered the language faster, then he's just making it up. It seems especially weak ....

Good grief.

given that two year olds can learn just about any language, as shown by the fact... well, that they do for their native language

That was exactly his point. It is not too difficult to learn if a two year old can learn it. And a ten year old can master it.

 

[JSRG]

That was exactly his point. It is not too difficult to learn if a two year old can learn it. And a ten year old can master it.

If this was his point--I still haven't seen an actual quote from him--again it should be noted that English can be learned by a two year old (which we can verify through real life; evidence for this has not been given for Latin, even though I expect it is true). So how, therefore, does this demonstrate that Latin is an "easy" language while English is "crazy hard" if the same evaluation of difficulty applies to both? Indeed, as far as I can tell all native languages are something that a two-year-old can learn, as shown by the fact that... again, they learn it.

But all this applies to native languages. There are a crazy ton of benefits one has when learning their native language: Absolute and complete total immersion, plenty of free time with which to learn it, and extremely strong incentive in that you are completely unable to ask for things as basic as a drink of water without learning it. These factors are far less available when learning something as an adult. It is also very possible that the brains of children just work in a different way that allow them to learn things faster, though this one is a bit more debatable (the question is whether it's actually their brains being different or whether it can simply be chalked up to the things I noted before concerning environment).

Okay, okay... I admit a lot of this is really major nitpicking and a silly tangent. But I don't see by what valid metric someone can say Latin is "easy" compared to English being "crazy hard". And the only metric mentioned so far--the ability of a two year old to learn it as a native language--applies to English. Though it is worth pointing out that it does not apply to Latin anymore, as it is no longer possible to learn Latin as a native language, as no one speaks it natively.