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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 5: Latin Lives!

February 25, 2015 The Allusionist

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

Every week since September 1989, a radio station in Finland has broadcast a weekly news bulletin...in Latin. WHY? Let's find out! Visit theallusionist.org/latin to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow, and convene at facebook.

For years, I've been wondering why a radio station in Finland broadcasts a weekly news bulletin in Latin.

And now, I have found out.

Antti Ijäs from Nuntii Latini - now the Finnish Broadcasting Company's longest-running programme - explains how he invents new Latin words for modern concepts, and why the show is important even though, outside of the Vatican, not many people speak Latin any more. Listen now via iTunes, your favoured podcast directory, or RSS.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT:

  • Examine the vocabularies for Nuntii Latini.

  • Explore Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia.

  • Sign up for your free monthly Latin puzzle book, Hebdomada Aenigmatum.

  • Learn a whole load of interesting stuff from the Reading, Writing, Romans blog

  • Try to understand the Papal tweets.

  • Have you seen Plebs? It's worth it for the theme tune alone, but I’m particularly amazed that a sitcom has been commissioned that is not only full of jokes aimed at the ever-rarer breed that is Latin students, but targeted specifically at those who had The Cambridge Latin Course textbooks.

  • Let's not forget the Latin grammar jokes in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
skelf

Say hi at facebook.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, and come back in a fortnight for the next episode.

Valete!

- HZ

CREDITS

  • Presented and produced by Helen Zaltzman.

  • Antti Ijäs has a blog about etymology, which makes me wish I understood Finnish.
    Here is Nuntii Latini's website (OK fine, here's an English translation) and the weekly bulletin is available as a podcast from iTunes.

MUSIC:

  • 'Allusionist Theme' - Martin Austwick

  • 'Latin Lingo' - Cypress Hill

  • Theme from Carry On Cleo

  • Theme from I, Claudius

  • 'You Will Be Back Someday' - Kevin Tihista's Red Terror

In episodes Tags Latin, ancient languages, Ancient Greek, Pan, panic, Nuntii Latini, Finland, Finnish, etymology, neologisms, news, radio, Romans, Ancient Rome, sniper, snipe, Greek gods, Greek, Latin grammar, grammar, Esperanto, universal language, Romance languages, skelf, Antti Ijas, Squarespace
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.