Metre and Writer

“What’s the use of Latin?” We’d normally understand that as a rhetorical question with “use” meaning “benefit”, but I suspect that won’t be the whole story in the near future. The interest shown in Latin at the moment is to some extent of a novel kind, barely recognisable to us who were taught the language decades ago simply because a GCE qualification in it was required to get into certain universities. Latin is now frequently being made use of: admittedly as an oral medium and with the ostensible purpose of better attaining traditional academic goals. But any new or recovered facility in the everyday use of a language is likely to lead some blessed – or wretched? – souls to want to go a step further, to wield it with literary aspirations. It happened with Esperanto and Revived Hebrew. If someone told me it’s happening with Klingon I wouldn’t be too surprised.