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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Esperanto instead of Latin

I saw just recently an online justification for using Esperanto instead of Latin in the Church.  To my mind it would make a considerable amount of sense as learning Latin takes MANY years and Esperanto is learnable in a few months.  It is not reasonable to tie people up for many many years learning a language when they just cannot get proficient at it. 

A reasonable compromise would simply be to use Esperanto for all activities that require dynamic interchange but retain Latin for use in the liturgy.  It is FAR easier to learn enough Latin to understand it than it is to learn enough Latin to actively use it.  Learning Esperanto would actually give most people sufficient vocabulary to understand most Latin prayers. 

I think the Church MUST deal with the language problem if it is to survive.  It has for all intents and purposes abandoned the use of Latin as a Lingua Franca and NOTHING has really replaced it.  Esperanto makes a great replacement for this.  I would still argue for liturgy being in Latin.

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