From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 14:42:31 EST
At 07:17 AM 3/10/2003, Christopher John Fynn wrote:
> > How do you know that? Either "Caesar" or "Cæsar" is good Latin.
>
>No.
>
>Hart's Rules: ...
>The Chicago Manual of Style:...
Hart's and Chicago both correctly specify current British and American
classicist conventions for setting Latin text. There was a very long
period, however, during which Latin was typically set using the æ and œ
diphthongs, and it is still common to see them used in fairly recent
missals and other ecclesiastical Latin texts. The contemporary classicist
convention is based on the reasonable observation that the ancient Romans
did not use the specialised diphthong forms, ergo nor should we. The same
people consider Latin a dead language, suitable only for study of ancient
documents, which is clearly not the view taken at the Vatican, which
continues to produce new documents in that language. In recent encyclicals,
however, at least as published at www.vatican.va, the æ and œ are not used.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
It is necessary that by all means and cunning,
the cursed owners of books should be persuaded
to make them available to us, either by argument
or by force. - Michael Apostolis, 1467
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