All politics and no play makes Johnny a dull boy - I love it: Caveat Emptor: Lovers of Latin Try to Sell a Dead Tongue - They Update It With a Word for 'Internet,' but Europe Isn't Buying

From The Wall Street Journal:

INCOURT, Belgium—A modest white schoolhouse near Brussels is in the vanguard of a long-struggling movement of Latin enthusiasts who refuse to say requiescat in pace to the ancient language.

At Schola Nova, dozens of students are required to take up to 10 hours of Latin a week, but they don't dwell just on Virgil or Ovid. They speak what is known as "modern" Latin: The children talk on telephonis gestabilibus (cellphones); they use computatoria (computers) to surf the reticulum interretiale (Internet); and they wear bracas Genuenses (jeans).

The school is the brainchild of founder Stéphane Feye, a bearded Belgian and native speaker of Franco-Gallici (French), who dreams of resurrecting Latin as Europe's lingua franca.

"We have a single money, the euro," Mr. Feye says. "We should have a single language, Latin."

Given the economic problems created by the euro, it might seem like a non sequitur to encourage a single language for the continent. But a hard core of Latin enthusiasts say the language would foster a sense of European unity that's been lacking since the decline of the Holy Roman Empire, which used Latin as one of its official languages.

 

Ever since the empire officially ended during the Napoleonic wars and Europe dissolved into a patchwork of fractious nation states, Latin has been more a scourge of Western schoolchildren than a living language.

 

A loose group of scholars and enthusiasts now connects the "Living Latin" movement. A number of them live in Germany and Austria: Despite not being derived from Latin, German's grammatical structure—heavy on declensions—makes Latin easier for German speakers to grasp.

 

Among Latinists, the idea of updating the language is controversial. The Academia Vivarium Novum, a school in Rome where students from around the world take immersion courses in Latin, deplores the corruption the language suffered during the Middle Ages. It aims to preserve Latin as it was spoken during the time of Cicero, not adapt it to the era of Mr. Berlusconi.

 

"We already have a common language that would allow us to speak about these trifles," said Luigi Miraglia, director of the academy, in a speech (in Latin) earlier this year. "If we must speak about Coca-Cola or McDonald's, we can speak English."

 

"The dead language is important because it is dead," Mr. Miraglia said in an interview.

 

Latin campaigners have over the years petitioned EU officials to add Latin as one of its official languages (there are now 24), or even to designate Latin as a pan-European language. But the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has nixed the idea.