without commenting further or in detail,

1) my latin education continued at harvard and beyond;

2) henry beard has written several books on Latin, which are best sellers;

3) harvard is recognized as the best classics department in the country;

4) the leading textbooks and the leading scholars in the country all agree that the 1st century ad/bc is the correct time frame for fixing the grammar of the Latin language for latin grammar textbooks.

5) latin is NOT a living language. Rather latin is a DEAD language. there is no one alive, other than in the Monty Python movie Life of Brian or that Passion of the Christ movie by Mel Gibson, who is still speaking Latin today.

6) Dead languages get measured, evaluated and ruled upon, not by living language or deconstructive french rules like some derrida-ist construct, as you want to do, but rather by scholarly means, which is to say, we set a time and place in history by which to define the language, and then write the grammar as of that time, which is to say the time of Cicero, Virgil, Caesar, etc. the Classical age of Latin Literature. At that time there was no “j” in latin.

7) it may be true that Petrarch and 10000 other medievalists and renaissance scholars wrote bad imitations of latin classics, in latin, from around 1200 to 1800, but how many of those are in print or studied? does anyone read Newton’s principia in the original latin? galileo’s works in the original latin? no one does. the only latin we read is cicero and virgil from the 1st century ad/bc.
consequently, latin AFTER the 1st century ad is basically unimportant, with the sole exception of st. jerome’s translation of the bible into the Vulgate, and of course the latin mass used by the western church. the pope still writes in latin, but his latin is always quite awful, to be honest. you’d think someone that was infallible would write better latin.

9) there is nothing arrogant about reporting the truth. this is a newspaper, not a blog. we’re here to report the truth, and the truth is that the philadelphia union have built a stadium in chester which is ill-suited to the location, because of the airline traffice and noise, picked out a slogan which is grammatically wrong because they didn’t consult a latin professor, and also they haven’t built the neighborhood shopping center they promised the poor people of chester when they covenanted the project, a fact widely reported in the general news.

10) i don’t dislike soccer, in fact i’m not even american by birth, i was born in europe and am an avid football fan, as we call the sport in europe. you are mistakten about my motivations. it is my passion for football that makes me sad that philadelphia is to be represented in soccer/football by such a mickey mouse effort as the philadelphia union.

11) i am not the judge of what is proper latin; the scholars and textbooks of latin are the judge. let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

12) it certainly matters that franklin never said the phrase, because at the press conference, the sons of ben claimed the latin phrase originated with ben franklin. that clearly was an outright lie or misrepresentation.

13) i cited a composer who would readily disagree with you. I can cite ten more who i know personally. if you have a list, please set them forth. my composer friend just finished an oratorio set to the latin mass and i can assure you there isn’t a “J” to be found in it.

14) re the national lampoon, you obviously lack a sense of humor.

15) chester’s crime rate and the noise level, e.g. decibel level from the airport, are highly relevant, because they go to the experience of the stadium location. i love soccer/football, but the obvious thing to have done here was lease dates at the Eagles brand new stadium, which is soccer ready and has plenty of open dates and parking, rather than build a new stadium in a crime ridden area where jet planes are taking off and landing every five minutes overhead. this is just like shea stadium, an awful fan experience.

16) they have been trying to “revive”chester for fifty years now. nonetheless, it continues a downward path, due to drugs, organized crime and economic flight. the closing of the philadelphia naval shipyard recently has not helped either. chester has noticeably declined since the 1970s, and in the 1970s, it had noticeably declined since the 1950s, and in the 1950s, chester had noticeably declined since the 1930s. this has been a long and painful process of decline and fall of a city that was once so prosperous, the county’s leading citizens all lived in mansions in chester, pa, the city of chester. the last mansion standing is the DeShong Mansion, and it has been abandoned now for years, but one can still perceive its magnificence and elegance.

I would love to see Chester revived, and i support those efforts, along with efforts to bring soccer to philadelphia, but i have every right to report the news as to issues with the philadelphia union and their stadium.

even if they’re in latin….

–art k

2) con’t…

However, you neglect to consider that we know longer live in the time of Augustus Julius Caesar, and thus that exact Roman Latin conventions are not fully relevant to us in the third millennium AD. The phrase “Jungite aut Perite” is presently very relevant to Philadelphia and Major League Soccer. Even the fact that Benjamin Franklin himself never wrote the phrase that way does not matter. What matters is that common, contemporary understanding of Latin allows the phrase to be written as such.

In truth, the spelling gives the phrase a time-stamp that distinguishes it from the Latin of Roman times. This is what I meant by the “dynamic” nature of language. So, while writing the phrase as “Iungite aut Perite” is not incorrect, it does not give true justice to the full history and continued relevance of the Latin in our times.

3) Again, your son’s composer godfather does nothing to help you. I assume that you include him only to give your argument a superficial credibility. I know many other composers who would readily disagree.

4) What the National Lampoon has no bearing on this argument, however funny you think it was. Henry Beard was one man with an opinion, just as you are. Language is about more than one’s own personal ambitions and biases.

5) The Chester’s crime rate and proximity to the airport do not belong in this argument. They are topics for another discussion. However, they do seem to reveal a dislike of MLS, probably due to your American-sports-purist leanings towards baseball, and basketball. Might this be the underlying reason for your original post?

I do hope that soccer flourishes in the US and especially in Philadelphia. I am an avid baseball fan, but I see no reason not to support the MLS in this city. There is no shame in following a sport that puts you in dialogue with people from around the world.

I also hope that Chester revives (which will take much more than a new MLS stadium). Your pessimism regarding the city’s inhabitants is itself disturbing.

To sum things up, the fact that there is no “J” in 1st century AD/BC Latin is only of consequence to those writing in the 1st century AD/BC. I do not look for the letter “J” in the original works of Ovid or Cicero, and I would never expect to find one. However, Latin as a language existed far beyond the 6th century AD, and I would expect it to change to reflect its use in different eras and ages.

In short, I see languages as evolving and dynamic, while you see them as unchanging and static.

I believe that history is on my side.

While I am happy to see your intense passion for the Latin language, I am also fairly disgusted by your continuously haughty tone.

1) Listing your Latin accomplishments and awards does more to defeat your purpose than to help. Indeed, arrogance seeps from your words like foul puss from a wound.

Your argument should stand on its own merits, not rest on your high school achievements.

2) By stating that all “proper” textbooks teach the uncorrupted form of Latin, you are taking it upon yourself to be the judge of what proper, uncorrupted Latin is. The fact that others disagree with you is of no matter because you can cast them as unknowledgable

I’m sorry, but your windbag rant about the incorrectness of “Jungite aut Perite” is itself misguided. It is perfectly normal to see the IU diphthong spelled as a JU as in judicare. As a singer of classical, latin texts, I sing words containing J quite often.

If anything, there is some confusion amongst scholars as to the use of J in latin. It may not have been in the original Roman Latin alphabet, but its introduction into the latin alphabet sometime in the middle ages has made it quite appropriate for use today.

My reply:

1) Not a “windbag rant.” My formal Latin education at the Haverford School included winning the William Wallace Prize for Excellence in Latin Studies twice, in 10th and 11th grades incidentally, a prize normally awarded to seniors. To this date, I remain the one and only student ever to graduate from Haverford School who won the Latin Prize twice PRIOR to the senior year. I took the SATII (then called the achievement test) and the AP test as a high school junior and performed very well, and, being as I also had learned ancient and modern greek ON MY OWN, was invited to continue my classical studies at Harvard, then the best classics department in the country.

2) It would NOT be normal to see a “J” in Latin prior to the 16th century. the “J” in Latin is a modern corruption of ancient Latin. All proper Latin textbooks that teach Latin properly note that there is no “J” in Latin. The fact that medieval, renaissance, 16th or 17th century or modern Latin scholars may have introduced a “J” into Latin, is of no relevance whatsoever. It’s as relevant as modern Italian grammar, which is to say, irrelevant. The standard by which Latin grammar must be judged is Latin as of the time of Augustus Julius Caesar, Cicero, Ovid, Sallust, etc. and at that time, there was no “J” in Latin, just as we measure ancient Greek by its grammar at the time of Attic Greek in the 4th Century BC and 5th Century BC, and not by its corrupted forms in koine Greek, medieval Greek or Ottoman Greek or 17th, 18th or 19th century Greek, where the diphthongs are forgotten and the meter is corrupted.

3) Far from being a rant, this post is attempting to be scholarly and particularist about the matter. Ben Franklin NEVER wrote “Jungite et Perite” in his life. He wouldn’t have written it because he knew ancient Latin and wrote it the way Ovid would have written it, without a “J”. In fact, all of the founders knew ancient Greek and Latin quite well and none of them would have made such an atrocious error as this.

4) It might be normal to see “Judicare” spelled with a “J” in English as a transposition from “Iudeo”, the latin verb for “to judge”, but this is irrelevant, because there is still no “J” in classical, 1st century BC/AD Latin.

5) You may be a SINGER of classical Latin texts, but my sons godfather is a COMPOSER of music, including many operatic and oratorio forms including librettoes with classical greek and Latin texts, and he well knows there is no “J” in Latin. Your librettoes are corrupt forms of latin text. End of story. It may well be that when Handel composed Oratorios and Operas, in 17th or 18th century England, that the letter “J” was sometimes substituted into the Latin language as an English corruption of the formal ancient latin language, but this does not alter the formal grammar of 1st century BC/AD Latin.

6) There is no confusion among scholars. There is no “J” in Latin in the 1st century AD/BC classical Latin. You will look in vain for a “J” in the works of Ovid, Sallust, Cicero, even the late writer Boethius, who wrote as late as the 6th century AD. THERE ISN’T ANY “J” IN ANY CLASSICAL TEXT BY ANY FAMOUS LATIN WRITER OF THE CLASSICAL AGE. there is no “j” in latin.

7) I stand by my source, Henry Beard. He once wrote for the National Lampoon, the greatest literary journal of our times. After all, “Pinto’s first lay”, which originally appeared in the National Lampoon, was the literary work later converted to “Animal House”, the greatest film of the 20th century. Also, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, original writers of the Simpsons, did their first work for the National Lampoon.

The Ibis is the symbol of the Harvard Lampoon. There is no “J” in Ibis.

9) On top of there being no “J” in Latin, the Philadelphia Union have built their stadium next to the Philadelphia Airport. The level of airplane noise during soccer games will be outrageously loud; an airplane will be taking off virtually every five minutes. In short, the same fools who came up with this horrible latin phrase also picked what amounts to the worse possible location for a stadium in the entire Delaware Valley. What we’ll have here is a new Shea Stadium, where the noise from the airplanes will be so loud, no one will be able to enjoy the soccer game. Noone actually spends time in Chester from the media; but those of us who have been to Chester recently KNOW that airplane noise, since the airport expanded its runways, is OUT OF CONTROL in Chester, and is LOUDEST precisely where the new stadium will be built.

10) There is a “J” in “joyless,” which is what the new soccer stadium experience will be, after you park in expensive lots, go to a game drowned out by airplane noise, and then come out to find that your car has been stolen or vandalized by one of the many drug addicts who routinely patrol Chester City at night. It would take a virtual mercenary army corps to protect every single car of a crowd of 10,000 people at a soccer game from vandalism or theft by drug addicts and thieves, which currently constitutes about 50% of Chester’s population. Chester is not only a poor city, but for years has been the center of organized crime in the region, a fact well known to law enforcement authorities and the subject of many reports. It’s an ill-conceived place to put a stadium.

–art kyriazis

If anything, there is some confusion amongst scholars as to the use of J in latin. It may not have been in the original Roman Latin alphabet, but its introduction into the latin alphabet sometime in the middle ages has made it quite appropriate for use today.

If you do not believe me then read this website: http://grammatice.blogspot.com/2008/06/latin-semivowels-and-letters-j-and-u.html

exerpt: “I’ll confess that in my own writing of Latin, I freely use the letters v/V and find it rather odd when u/U is used as a semivowel (e.g., uirumque), but I usually never employ the letters j/J when I am writing in Latin. You can see the disarray in modern Latin spelling conventions if you compare different books in print. For example, the paperback Latin dictionary which I like best, John Traupman’s Latin & English Dictionary, promotes the use of the letters j/J. Traupman includes “J” as a letter in the alphabet and Latin words that begin with [i] followed by another vowel are listed under the “J” category, rather than the “I” category. Yet in Wheelock’s Latin, one of the most popular textbooks, the glossary in the back of the book does not include “J” as a letter, so you find a word like iuvenis, listed under “I” (while in Traupman you will find it under “J”).”

So, you can certainly see that the letter J has been an active part of the Latin alphabet for some time. Furthermore, it shows just how dynamic language is. In your view, the Latin language was fixed in stone sometime during the Roman Empire, but indeed, even this currently “dead” language was evolving through scholarly, ecclesiastical use through the middle ages and even to modern times. Latin itself borrowed letters from the Greek and Etruscan alphabets. Its ancient Latin alphabet had only 21 letters. Do you deem them the only ones fit for Latin spellings?

You, sir, seem to suffer from being educated to the point of ignorance.

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