The Yle public broadcaster has told its 'carissimi auditores' (dear listeners)
that "everything passes, and even the best programmes reach the end of the road.
This is now the case with our world-famous bulletin, which has broadcast the
news in Latin on Friday for the past 30 years".
The core members of the
'Nuntii Latini' (News in Latin) team - Professor Tuomo Pekkanen and lecturer
Virpi Seppala-Pekkanen - have been with the five-minute bulletin since it was
first broadcast on 1 September 1989, although other newsreaders and writers have
joined since.
Professor Pekkanen took gracious leave of Yle, saying that,
"judging by the feedback, Nuntii Latini will be missed around the world - and we
send our warm thanks to you all for these past years!"
'Started as an
experiment'
Reijo Pitkaranta of Helsinki University's Classics Department
was involved in the project from the start, and told Yle that "what started as
an experiment has become an international phenomenon in modern Latin studies,
while also reporting on major events like the Asian tsunami and the Twin Towers
attack in New York".
Yle's own creative director, Ville Vilen, also
praised the programme's "unique cultural contribution", but concluded that
ultimately the broadcaster's limited resources had to be focused on Finland
rather than the 500-800 Latin enthusiasts who not only regularly tune in but
actively engage with the bulletin around the world.
The last bulletin
went out last Friday evening, although broadcasts going back to 2011 will be
available on Yle's Live Archive site.
The growth of the internet has made
far more spoken Latin resources available to listeners.
Germany's
F.R.E.I. Erfurt runs a 15-minute fortnightly show, Radio Bremen Zwei does
something similar, and in the US there is the weekly podcast put out by Western
Washington University's Latin class, among others.
This is one of the
reasons Yle gave for deciding to shut Nuntii Latini down in 2017, until an
international outcry persuaded them to push the leaving date back to this
summer.
The legacy of Yle's innovative broadcasts lives on in the spoken
Latin community, where it has helped coin terms the Ancients could have had
little concept of - such as the 'interrete' (internet) itself.
'The Pope's
Week'
Latin news addicts won't have to suffer withdrawal symptoms for
long, as the language's greatest remaining bastion, the Catholic Church,
launched its own weekly news bulletin in Latin the same week as Yle's programme
went off air.
The key difference is that Yle offered a broad world news
agenda, rather than Vatican Radio's more focused 'Hebdomada Papae' (The Pope's
Week) - not to mention the fact that the Catholic Church uses its own,
Italian-influenced pronunciation, rather than the Classical version preferred by
scholars.
Despite the demise of Nuntii Latini, Finland's special
relationship with Ancient Rome is far from over.
During its presidency of
the European Union in 2006, for example, the country put out a newsletter in
Latin, which picked up more subscribers than the French version.
Reporting by Chris Greenway and Martin Morgan (via DXLD)
