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From:	Maria (204.211.2.254)
Subject:	Re: which latin to study?
Date:	May 7, 2008 at 12:52 pm PST

In Reply to: which latin to study? posted by Hazel on May 6, 2008 at 6:55 pm:

Latin is a language which was living, changing and in heavy use for centuries; therefore, it changed a bit over time. Just as modern English doesn't sound just like the English of the 18th century, but is recognizable as the same language, classical and ecclesiastical Latin are the same language, but with some grammatical differences.

Classical Latin is that of most of Roman literature, history and philosophy - Cicero and Tertullian, Ovid and Vergil.

Ecclesiastical Latin, or Church Latin, is used in later philosophical and theological writings - Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Bacon, and even Galileo.

In terms of which is more "popular" - you'd be hard put to apply that term to Latin at all; the question is why you want to study it. I was taught both. If you want to be familiar with classical literature, I'd tend to go for classical Latin, but truly, if you can read one well, you can manage both. If you're going for extensive readings in Western philosophy, you'll end up with both anyway.
In terms of just learning the structure of the language and its contributions to the development of English and the Romance languages, actually, either would work fine. The grammar is not really all that different.

If you're trying to duplicate the course of study of "cultured" education in the last century, of the sort that prepared young men for Oxford and Cambridge, then Classical is your best bet.

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