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Since there's an increasingly large community of Latin speakers (of which I seem to be becoming a member), this seems like a place people might come to ask about modern uses of Latin, e.g. "Is 'adjungo' or 'adnecto' a better word to use when talking about an email attachment?"

(I'll say that I hope very much that the answer to this question is "yes," because more and more I find myself interested in questions of this kind.)

As I mentioned in my answer to another question, arguments about neologisms can become quite acrimonious, and there's no body that gives widely accepted judgments on them (the Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis isn't really used by anybody outside the Vatican, and sometimes not even there), but what's Stack Exchange without healthy disagreements?

(For what it's worth, I know of at least two kids who speak Latin as a first language, having heard it from birth. It's sort of astonishing to hear them talk.)

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Yes.

Modern Latin is still Latin, so it has a place here. In fact, there's already a , and all (2) questions there are upvoted, so I think the community thinks it's good. While there are some problems (as you mentioned, there's no solid consensus on many modern words), it's not a valid reason to say that modern Latin should be banned.

However, questions should, ideally, specify where they want words taken from, if that's applicable and not the point of the question. For example, a question asking how a particular phrase involving smartphones could be translated should specify the word they plan to use for "smartphone", while a question asking "what is the translation for smartphone" wouldn't.

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  • Ah, cool! Somehow I missed the contemporary-latin tag. Commented Feb 24, 2016 at 4:31
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Of course! Modern Latin is Latin, as is classical Latin, medieval Latin, and everything in between. Our scope should include all versions of Latin, contemporary and historic.

You should use the tag for such questions.

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Yes

Part of the joy of Latin is participating in a tradition that has lasted over 2,000 years, and that includes extending the tradition to the present day.

If you're writing an article on the Latin Wikipedia, it can be a struggle to find appropriate Latin words for the plethora of inventions and discoveries of the last hundred years or so. The Latin Wikipedia has a strict policy of noli fingere: every word must have authoritative precedent outside of Wikipedia. Consequently, even words like coffee can present difficulties.

One might object that a person would have to be crazy to write a Wikipedia in Latin, but the fact is, Contemporary Latin or Latinitas Viva is a thriving, if small, movement, complete with immersion programs and conferences entirely in spoken Latin.

The Latin Language StackExchange promises to be one of the best places on the Internet to get help finding sources where people talked about modern artifacts in Latin—or, if you need to invent a neologism, to get help finding good precedents in prior usage, prior extensions, and prior importations of loan words.

We should consider ourselves to have truly arrived if someone at Nuntii Latini posts a question here to help prepare a news story—or answers one!

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