Elvis Rex

In case you missed it, this past week has been Elvis Week- 30 years since the (rumoured) death of Elvis Presley. I'm not much of a fan, but someone who is, is Jukka Ammondt, who has released a recording of Elvis' songs in Latin. Why? In his own words: "Latin is an eternal language and therefore I believe it is important to document Elvis' songs also in this eternal language." You can order his CDs (including his most recent hit 'Three Songs in Sumerian') from his website.

These are a few of the songs he has covered; see if you can work out their English titles:

• non adamare non possum
• tenere me ama
• ne saevias
• glaudi calcei

Not dead, just sleeping

I found an interesting article during the holidays. Finland (which has always struck me as an odd place) is running the European Union for the next six months, and has decided to publish weekly news bulletins in Latin. Why? I'm not quite sure, but it sounds fun to me. Here's what Dr Pitkaranta (who translates these bulletins into Latin) said: "Latin is not dead- it is still very much in use in different forms across the world today... Italians, French and Spaniards all speak a new form of Latin. I hope EU documents are soon translated into Latin which is such a clear language." The Finns have actually been broadcasting the news in Latin for over 15 years, which is a bit odd as the Finnish language itself is not a descendant of Latin. But as Dr Gibson (a Latin professor from England) said in the same article "perhaps the Finns realise Latin still provides a common linguistic and cultural heritage to Europe." You can subscribe to the news bulletins by going to this website.