Today I’m talking with Luke Ranieri (@ScorpioMartianus) who literally speaks fluent Latin and conversational Ancient Greek. He’s part of a small community of speakers around the world who have kept the Latin language alive, even though as a native language of Ancient Rome it died out over a thousand years ago. For him, learning Latin is about the community but most importantly about accessing the huge body of literature, ancient and modern, written in Latin. It was really cool to hear him talk about the way that his ability to speak Latin has allowed him to empathize with ancient Roman literature at a much higher level.
We talked about what Latin sounded like and how he and people like him have accurately reconstructed the pronunciation — he’s not just making this stuff up! We also talked about learning Latin and the way Latin is taught in high schools in the U.S. and the U.K., and as you can imagine Luke certainly has a lot of thoughts about that! I studied Latin and Ancient Greek in high school and it was interesting to compare experiences with Luke.
Make sure to check out Luke’s YouTube channels at @ScorpioMartianus and @polýMATHY
0:00 Luke introduces himself in Latin
1:51 Luke introduces himself in Ancient Greek
2:40 How Luke learned Latin
8:42 How do we know what Latin sounded like?
13:31 Who speaks Latin today?
17:09 Why learn Latin?
22:50 Why you need to learn to speak before you can read
28:52 Luke’s experience learning Japanese
31:23 People’s reactions to Luke’s Latin
32:09 How Luke’s Latin makes him empathize with Latin literature
34:35 What Luke plans to do next
36:11 Luke’s thoughts on Latin in high school education
39:29 The “correct” way to pronounce Latin
45:59 Future content Luke plans to make
48:03 Closing thoughts
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