Thursday, October 26, 2006

Latin news - from Finland

This is hilarious! BBC News reports about Finland:
It is the only country in the world which broadcasts the news in Latin. On its EU presidency website one can find descriptions of meetings in Latin.
[...]
There is also a man in the corner of the room singing Elvis Presley's songs in Latin, like Can't Help Falling In Love - or Non adamare non possum.
[...]
The news in Latin on national radio gets 75,000 listeners, which may not sound like much, but on a per capita basis is more than some BBC Radio 4 programmes get.
A list of the newsletters in Latin can be found here. From the latest issue:
Finnia hospita erit summo conventui Unionis Europaeae et Ucrainae, qui Helsinkii die Veneris 27 m. Octobris habebitur. Legatis UE praeerit primus minister Matti Vanhanen, legatis Ucrainae autem praesidens Victor Yushchenko. A parte Unionis Europaeae huic conventui intererunt etiam José Manuel Barroso, praeses Commissionis Europaeae, et Benita Ferrero-Waldner, membrum Commissionis Europaeae. Pro Finnis praesidentiam obtinentibus aderunt Erkki Tuomioja, minister a rebus exteris Finniae, et Paula Lehtomäki, ministra commercii et progressus.
This is rather similar to Italian so I can understand most of it, but I can't vouch for its grammatical correctness, because - unlike many Italians who learned it in high school - I never studied Latin (I went to high school in Baltimore, MD, and if necessary I can translate Aramaic...). At any rate the text above refers to an EU-Ukraine Summit in Helsinki which takes place tomorrow. Too bad the Latin newsletter discusses one of the most boring subjects on the planet: EU affairs.

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