The headline is from a Turkish government site: “French call to replace English with Latin as Europe’s official language.” When I read the headline, I laughed. I stopped laughing as I read the article. Yes, Latin should be the official language of the European Union.
It’s an even better idea than that of Eric Zemmour – an Algerian Jew of Berber origin – who is an outspoken defender of France. He says French should be the European Union’s official language now that Britain has left. He points out that just two countries in the Union – Ireland and Malta – use English as official languages and both have their own languages. French, (almost the literal lingua franca) makes more sense as the Continental language than pidgin English.
However, the Turkish article mentions a French official named Sundar Ramanadane, who goes one better and says the EU’s common language should be Latin. Why?
- The United Kingdom left the European Union and “Brexit must be accomplished in both directions.”
- French would anger Germans, and German would anger the French.
- “Modern Hebrew, the product of the resurrection of a language long remained dead, accompanied the construction of Israel.” Europe should do the same. If the European Union is to be a power, it should have a language that builds a common identity.
- Latin is the source of almost all European traditions, from the Roman Empire, to Christendom, and into the Enlightenment. It was also the language of great orators and is still used in law, medicine, and especially the Church. The Romance languages are all based on it, and almost all European peoples speak a language that evokes the legacy of Rome and/or the Church.
- Unlike Esperanto or another artificial language, Latin would imbue the European Union with a “strength, vigor, the will to power,” making it more than a cartel of squabbling states. It would give the EU an idea. Latin may be a dead language, but it’s alive in the hearts of Europeans.
Mr. Ramanadane says there are other reasons why it should be Latin but he can’t think of any more. I can.
Latin would not crush regional or national languages. It might help resurrect marginal tongues such as Gaelic or Breton. A “high” language of the bureaucracy and a shared culture would eliminate the need to learn “foreign” languages. “Foreign” languages are just an acquired skill, not part of you. Latin wouldn’t replace national languages, but would give Europeans a way to be part of a common family. In the Medieval period, educated men across the West could communicate easily with each other in Latin, even as decentralized aristocrats or burghers governed small regions and cities with local identities.
Latin would also be a barrier against Americanization. The American government poisons European culture. American military protection also lets the Europeans dodge responsibility for their own defense. It gelds them. Barriers between America and Europe would make the Continent stronger. It would force Europe to build institutions like a pan-European army. Almost anything that cuts off Washington is good for whites.
Latin would put European unification on the right track. Today, the European Union is a soulless, globalist behemoth, seemingly designed to destroy nations via mass immigration. Most of us supported Brexit and the “nationalist” movements that defy Brussels.
However, our greatest triumphs came when Europeans acted together. The national rivalries between Germany and France, the British effort over centuries to keep the Continent divided, and the destruction of the monarchies and traditional European institutions caused by fratricidal and futile conflicts must never be repeated. Our race will not survive another brothers’ war. Whites worldwide share a common destiny.
My problem with the European Union isn’t that it’s too big or too centralized, but that it is an anti-European Union. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, invited practically the entire Third World to the Continent just a few years ago. Turkey’s Interior Minister openly mocked the EU’s inability to deal with this self-imposed crisis. When statesmen tried to guard their nations from disaster, the EU threatened to punish them. The EU has tried to sanction Hungary and Poland, though both have, so far, held firm.
Today, the European Union is a bureaucracy whose buildings look like overgrown Apple stores. It seems almost determined to flee Europe’s past. The EU, and Europe generally, lacks an imperium, a principle of authority that directs people to set high goals and accomplish great deeds.
The EU tried to meet the COVID-19 pandemic as a bloc through vaccine autonomy. It failed. European nations including Hungary and Slovakia sought Russian vaccines. Post-Brexit Britain has been much more successful with its vaccination program than the bumbling Europeans
A weak, divided Europe cannot stand up to the United States. America is pressuring Germany to cancel a pipeline deal that would deliver Russian natural gas. The Cold War is over and there is no reason Europe should be hostage to Washington’s anti-Russian vendetta. There’s no reason for both Germany and Russia to suffer because the Potomac Regime seems to want another Cold War.
I think economic, geopolitical, and administrative needs will drive European unification. The British exit didn’t weaken the EU; it may have strengthened it. It’s yet another irony of history that the English fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, whose postwar motto was “Europe a Nation,” may posthumously see his goal achieved, but without England.
All of Western history since the fifth century has essentially been an attempt to recreate the Empire. Countless kings, emperors, and soldiers from Charlemagne to Napoleon and even pan-European divisions that died on the Eastern Front fought for this. Even though ancient Germanic tribes kept their freedom from Rome, later German kings would call themselves Holy Roman Emperors and the Second Reich was led by “Caesars” (Kaisers). Building a sacred empire has long been the goal of Western man.
There’s a reason our foes want to destroy or abolish the classics. In our most distant ancestors, we see who we really are. We understand that we have a proud identity and history. To learn about your past is a revolutionary act, as the late Jonathon Bowden said, and Latin is the path to our greatest traditions.
Who counts as “us” in this scenario? The British voted themselves out. We Americans are even further removed from the Continent and are fighting to keep the United States as an outpost of Western Civilization. I’ve suggested that a revitalized monarchy and closer ties built on shared culture and language could preserve the Anglosphere, but I doubt it will happen. America is falling into a masochistic cult. The American Experiment has failed, and we need Europe as an impregnable fortress for our civilization.
The indigenous peoples of Europe – the white race – have a moral right to their ancient homeland and must remain a supermajority there forever. They must summon the will to reclaim it. Reviving Latin would be a first step towards an impossible dream, just as the Zionists realized their dream in Israel. We children of the European diaspora also need a strong Europe, free from “American” bullying.
I don’t think most of those who want Latin to be the European language see the issue in racial terms. However, history has its own momentum. European nationalists don’t want their countries to be overwhelmed by the Third World. European-Americans don’t want that either, but we lack power. Our opponents attack us because of our race, and we must meet this challenge on racial as well as cultural terms. European nationalists in France, Holland, and Germany have more in common with each other than they do with their Muslim co-citizens. I live an ocean away, but I share a worldview with a European nationalist, not an “American” who can’t wait to tear down George Washington’s statue and replace it with George Floyd’s.
Perhaps a strong leader will save America from the top down, but a renewed, racially and culturally conscious Europe is more likely. Something akin to the Roman Empire – something that never really died within our collective soul – might emerge. Europe would have modern technology, a moral code of honor and greatness, hierarchy, and independence. To reverse Churchill’s famous phrase, the Old World, with its rediscovered power and might, could rescue and liberate the New.
An interesting idea.
Why not go to the source, go Greek. Just about all of the classics were written in Greek, and the Classic Greeks were Whiter than White as their arts show.
Looking back, I had plenty of opportunities to learn Greek, and wasted all of them.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta…
Greek is not the source. Proto-Indo-European is the source of all Indo-European languages.
Fascinating, older than Latin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtzg5uEpiOI
Founders of Rome who named Rome. NOT Latins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkySjRwUteE
The same discussion has gone on in India, the notion of reviving their ancient Sanskrit instead of using English as their national ‘link language’ … India is far more diverse in languages than even the EU
The closest major modern language to Latin is Romanian (not Italian), with some bow as well to the local dialect of Sardinia … Romanians would have an edge
But ‘classical Latin’ is too heavily inflected, with too many rules … the pidgin English common now in international relationships (plus airline and ship communications etc) is obviously going to serve
There is significant scholarship saying that what we think of as ‘Latin’ was never a natural language, and its origins are in ancient Dacia / Romania and not Italy
It is also increasingly held that much of what we think of as ‘Latin literature’ – writings of Julius Caesar and so on, many of the most famous works – were actually forgeries of the later middle ages and Renaissance, when huge funds were being offered for anyone ‘finding ancient Latin writings’, when you could buy a great villa ‘finding’ one such book, when rich Italians & the Vatican sought to amplify the ‘glories of Rome’… so many were ‘found’ in that time, after being ‘lost for centuries’
M J Harper:
“Latin is not a natural language. When written, Latin takes up approximately half the space of written Italian or written French (or written English, German or any natural European language). Since Latin appears to have come into existence in the first half of the first millennium BCE, which was the time when alphabets were first spreading through the Mediterranean basin, it seems a reasonable working hypothesis to assume that Latin was originally a shorthand”
https://www.unz.com/article/how-fake-is-roman-antiquity/
Europe should speak Sanskrit.
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source…”
— Sir William Jones
The European nations should NOT return to Latin. Latin is the rotten language of the Roman Empire that invaded, colonized and exploited most European, West Asian and North African nations, and it is also the language of the Roman Catholic Empire that exploits and disturbs the peace of all nations. NO to the Latinization.
Agreed. This is just another poisonous form of globalism.
Latin is a powerful and sublime language, hardly “rotten”.
It was the language of , an ancient Aryan tribe. They lived a thousand years before the existence of the Roman Empire and they had nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church. They were big, blond Aryans, closely related to the Proto-Celts, very different from the greasy, mongrel Italians of today.
are not related to the “Latinos” either. The so-called Latinos are nothing but mongrelized Spaniards, and the Spaniards themselves were Iberians mixed with the Moors. These people, in essence, have no Latin blood in them whatsoever.
So, whatever you may think are the undesirable effects of the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church, you can not scapegoat Latin for them.
This is a good idea, but the EU would never implement anything like this because the EU was designed by American neoliberals for the purpose of exploiting Europe. It’s primarily an economic project, to create a more easily managed economic zone to be dominated by the USA, not a political project. The extent of EU political goals are just implementing further neoliberalization and ensuring free flow of goods and immigrants for capitalists, which requires destroying European culture, not elevating it. Any positive future European project would require decoupling from the USA, and the USA would start a war in Europe before allowing that to happen.
Everyone in the world is just living in this stasis, waiting for the USA to finally die so something good can happen. And hoping to avoid being caught up in death spasms of the increasingly irrational American imperial state.
How would this stop the parasitic hoards from coming to Europe? Europe has bigger problems than any language issue.
High student of classical history here.
Who here knows the history of Latin, where it came from, how it was used, who saved it,
alongside Greek, a shared history. It’s quite incredible and you see parts of this history
everyone. People are interested and it is not hard to learn. We all speak Latin
and do our ancestors great honor, they prevailed. Will we ?
The most significant comment in the article is the war on Classical History, with link,
and western history in general, our ememies seek to cut us off from our history, culture, customs, religion, beliefs, etc It’s very deliberate. Our society is far more fragile than people undersand. It took thousands of years to get here and one or two generations to destroy it.
Third world people do not care about Europen History and that is the main reason why
we will become third world countries. We are already here. Look at all ths sickness
they are promoting along with ” math is racist ” , it never ends.
English is a Germanic language, but most of the words are derived from Latin. Latin and Christianity served to unify Europe during the Middle Ages, and perhaps they still can in a cultural sense today. But don’t bet on an ethnostate, wignats.
“most of the words are derived from Latin”
Not true. The core vocabulary of English (the common, everyday words we use) is almost entirely Germanic. It’s the scientific and technical terms that are mostly Latin-derived.
No, Europe should speak Greek. It’s the richest and the sweetest of all European languages.
Sanskrit sounds much better than the Greek.
Seshadri,
Very interesting. Which Sanskrit literature is this song from?
It is actually a hymn known as Shiva Tandava Stotra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Tandava_Stotra
Here is another more complete version:
Seshadri,
Thanks for the Wiki link. I don’t know a word in Sanskrit but still I enjoyed listening to both renditions of this hymn. Doesn’t Sanskrit sound vaguely like a mixture of Latin and Russian? Well, I hope to learn it some day when I have time.
@Angelos: Very good. I’ve had years of Greek and years of Latin instruction, and I can appreciate this. However, ethnic languages and regional dialects are natural (“Tower of Babel confusion of speech” is a natural human tendency) and should be encouraged and preserved, not discouraged and destroyed with Neo-Latin or other “cosmopolitan speak.”
anonymous,
I certainly agree that ethnic languages and regional dialects should be preserved.
But, if there should be a common European ‘link language’ – as this article proposes – Greek would be a better choice than Latin, IMO.
Cum exceptis sanguinis, omnes suasiones sunt (((fallax))).