The Associated Press reports that the Vatican has released a modern Latin dictionary.
VATICAN CITY - Latin may be considered by some a dead language, but a dictionary of modern Latin published by the Vatican has become a "liber venditissimus" -- a best-seller.
It is a project to keep the language updated, even if they didn't have dishwashers, discos and miniature golf in Roman times.
The Vatican's publishing house has just come out with a combined edition of the Latin-Italian dictionary after two earlier volumes, one covering the letters A-L and the second M-Z, sold out. Five hundred copies have been printed with a sale price of about $115.
"There's still life out there," said the Rev. Claudio Rossini, director of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
The two volumes contain some 15,000 modernized Latin words, many of them compounds of existing Latin words.
And a committee is now working on a new volume, adding mainly words from the computer and information fields. Publication is expected in two or three years.
Behind the project is the Vatican's Latin Foundation, which was set up by Pope Paul VI in the 1970s to help keep Latin alive in the Roman Catholic Church as its use began seriously to wane after the Vatican decreed that Mass could be celebrated in local languages. [continue]
Related links:
Vatican breathes new life into Latin - BBC
Vatican Volume Updates Latin - Zenit