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 Want to learn fluent Chinese like me? Sign up for my free newsletter and discover how you can pick up Chinese or other languages quickly using my weird but effective method: http://bit.ly/37gTpLc Check out my Chinese course: http://bit.ly/3tgq4d8 Want to know what I'm working on behind the scenes? Sign up for my newsletter and I'll send you free updates on my latest language projects: https://languages.xiaomanyc.com Subscribe to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLNoXf8gq6vhwsrYp-l0J-Q?sub_confirmation=1 Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xiaomanyc/ Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xiaomanyc/ If you guys like the music in my videos, you can check out all the AMAZING music Epidemic Sound has at my affiliate link here: http://share.epidemicsound.com/xiaomanyc

• published: 14 May 2021
• views: 695367