#I would have thought Latin since it would be a more official diplomatic language

[marytudorqueenofengland]

https://www.tumblr.com/marytudorqueenofengland/773523668463681536?source=share stupid question, what language did she use here? i'm sorry i can't read her handwriting😭

Not a stupid question at all ! The handwriting is quite hard to read but it is written in the English language. The letter starts with “most reverend father in God” .

[worlds-shortest-astronaut]

Ateez Pirate Headcanons

Because I love adding my two cents. Also they have Powers. Also also I’m writing this fic lmao

Hongjoong

Captain, obviously - a firm leader. He always has a plan up his sleeve (though Seonghwa hates 93% of them). He would die for his crew (and almost has, several times, as Seonghwa never lets him forget)

No powers

Is the shortest of the crew - a fact which they never left him forget

Has too-long hair which, for an unknown reason, is an ashy blonde

Is usually calm and steady but tends to shout when he loses his temper

Wears a red cropped jacket - this originally belonged to his father and was too big for him but Seonghwa altered it to fit him and embroidered the Twilight’s emblem, a silver eight-pointed star, onto it

Was voted Captain of the Twilight after his dad was killed in a skirmish with the British Navy

 Lost part of his left ear to the British navy (though he can still hear fine). Seonghwa often feels guilty that he couldn’t Heal it properly but Hongjoong doesn’t mind.

Has a large scar on the left side of his abdomen, over his ribs, from a fight with the British 

Joined the Twilight when he was 16 after his mum died 

The Twilight used to be a legitimate merchant vessel but turned to piracy after being raided by corrupt Korean navy officials

Can speak and read English besides his native Korean

Plays piano, especially when he’s upset about something. Occasionally tries to use it to woo Seonghwa (it works).

Weapons - two flintlock pistols (he’s the best shot of the crew)

Seonghwa

Quartermaster (equivalent of First Mate, Hongjoong’s right hand) and Ship’s Doctor

Power - Healing

Rarely gets angry but, when he does, he tends to get quiet and vicious

Because of his Healing Power and his intelligence, he was something of a prodigy and went to medical school early. He was also selected to go abroad to England to complete his training where he joined the British Navy as a Surgeon.

Seonghwa became disillusioned with military life after seeing his crew massacre the indigenous people of an island. The Twlight was caught in the fray and the crew was captured.

Seonghwa helped Hongjoong and the surviving crew escape and recapture the ship.  Hongjoong, always merciful, allowed Seonghwa to stay.    

His family is murdered by the British Captain he once served under

Speaks English

Teaches Wooyoung and Jongho to read along with San

Is very close to Hongjoong as well as Yeosang. 

Has black hair

Sings

Everyone knows he and Hongjoong are in love and are exasperated by how long it takes them to realise it

Eventually becomes Quartermaster after Mingi resigns from the position

Weapons - Hates fighting but is the best with a dagger – he won’t tell any of the crew where or how he learned to fight (only Hongjoong knows) but he carries an intricately-carved dirk (also from John) and a simple dagger, sometimes fighting with both simultaneously.

Yunho

Ship’s carpenter - Loves the Twilight to pieces and is constantly in despair at the number of repairs he has to complete

No powers

Talks to the dragon’s head on the Twilight’s bow

 A genius engineer – he’s always coming up with ways to improve the ship and make it run more efficiently (Yeosang complains that Yunho’s inventions will kill them but Hongjoong is always delighted by them)

Jongho and Wooyoung help Yunho with his inventions and carpentry. Jongho is interested in learning how to a good carpenter and Wooyoung just enjoys testing out Yunho’s crazy ideas.

Also doubles as a gunner – he and Mingi work terrifyingly well together

Everybody’s favourite (gives the best hugs) (always positive and hopeful)

Surprisingly light on his feet.

Has been friends with Mingi since they were children - he and Mingi had to leave their town after running into trouble with a local gang. Several gang members had been threatening Yunho’s father, a blacksmith, and Yunho had fought them off with an anvil from the forge, nearly killing one of them. 

Has brown hair 

Weapons: Yunho is an all-rounder when it comes to weapons and fighting. For close combat, he uses an axe and a buckler (shield). He can also use a cutlass. He helps Mingi with the cannons - he can prepare a cannon as fast as a Master Gunner though his aim is not as fine. .

Yeosang

Helmsman - undoubtedly the steadiest and most level-headed of the crew, Yeosang is an obvious choice for helmsman

Power - Weather Manipulation. He’s actually extremely powerful but he downplays his Power (he mostly uses it to predict the weather)

Has been at sea the longest - comes from a long line of mercenaries but ran away from his family at fifteen. Worked his way up from cabin boy to Helmsman on Bang Si-hyuk’s ship the Danger. Left that crew when he was eighteen after half of his crew was killed - they were betrayed to the navy by another crew member

Missing his left eye - wears an eye-patch or a glass eye

Joined the Twilight before Hongjoong became Captain.  They were both young so they stuck together. They tend to butt heads because they’ve known each other for a long time and understand each other well.

Knows Wooyoung from his days on the Danger - feels guilty for leaving Wooyoung to fend for himself after leaving Bang’s gang (Wooyoung eventually forgives him)

Can speak Mandarin

Could have been a navigator if he’d had the patience to read maps – Yeosang relies almost entirely on the stars, the weather and his compass to navigate but finds maps frustrating (they’re not realistic, San, the sea and the land don’t actually look like that)

Has dark brown hair and a birthmark next to his left eye

Weapons: Highly skilled fighter thanks to his family but hates fighting - probably the best shot after Hongjoong and was once very good at hand-to-hand combat. Now, he only uses a wooden staff because it allows him to control whether he maims or kills a person.  

San

Navigator - a genius Navigator who can use both the stars and maps. He draws his own maps and has memorised hundreds of sailing routes. He’s also brilliant at improvising a route when the Twilight is in need of a quick, creative getaway. 

Powers - apparently none (suspicious music)

When the Twilight is not being chased by multiple navies and other pirate crews he begs Hongjoong to let them make pit-stops at new islands and ports so that he can improve his maps. Keeps a rutter/navigational books where he writes down his routes/observations. 

Works closely with Yeosang – Yeosang has been a pirate for much longer and often reviews his maps, pointing out errors or helping him fill in missing details.

Comes from an aristocratic family (the only son) but ran away from home after his father beat him and tried to force him to take the yangban exams.

He was captures by slavers and sold to a merchant who recognised his talent for navigating and his skill with languages. But the merchant died and he was sold to a cruel mapmaker.

Was rescued by Hongjoong and Yeosang. 

Has dark brown hair with a bright green streak which he dyed himself (to piss off his father). Helps Wooyoung dye his hair purple, cementing their friendship    

 Is fluent in Korean, English and Japanese and is learning Mandarin (Yeosang teaches him). Consequently, he frequently acts as interpreter/translator for the crew. He can also read Latin.

His gift for languages and his aristocratic upbringing make him useful on diplomatic missions 

He and Wooyoung hated each other at first (Wooyoung thought San was a mean, spoiled snob and San thought Wooyoung was rude, uneducated and annoying) but they eventually became very close. Now, they’re basically inseparable   Everyone’s pretty sure there’s something going on between Wooyoung and San but nobody ever talks about it. 

Also close to Yunho and Yeosang.

Sings – San, Jongho and Seonghwa tend to sing throughout the day. Plays the flute (sogeum)

Weapons: The crew’s best swordsman – coming from aristocracy, San was taught swordsmanship from a young age. Tends to fight with two scimitars but recently acquired a katana.  Is learning hand-to-hand combat from Wooyoung

Mingi

Master Gunner - Mingi’s talent lies in blowing things up – he makes his own gunpowder, grenades and other bombs.

Between Mingi and Yunho, Seonghwa is certain that they’re all going to die because of an invention or experiment gone wrong.

San likes to help Mingi with his experiments.

Very close to Yunho - they grew up together and he insisted on leaving town with Yunho after the Carpenter ran into trouble with the local gang. Yunho tried to stop him from leaving but Mingi can be extremely stubborn when he wants to be.

Also very close to Hongjoong

Was originally Quartermaster but resigned from the position after recognizing that Seonghwa was needed in the role.

Has dark brown hair but San helped him dye some parts of it a bright, dark blue.

Is usually kind of quiet but is also very affectionate. Gets noisy around Yunho.

Is absolutely terrified of heights and refuses to go up into the rigging despite Wooyoung’s coaxing.

Playes the janggu (a traditional Korean drum)

Weapons: Cannons – Mingi can set up a cannon in the blink of an eye and is famous for his aim.  Many consider him the greatest gunner of their generation. He can also construct a bomb from just about anything. He learned a lot from Yunho’s dad, who was a blacksmith, and taught himself some pretty interesting chemistry to make his own explosives/gunpowder. Uses a Cutlass  for close combat

Wooyoung

Rigger - the quickest of the crew and ridiculously light on his feet, an excellent climber and acrobat, definitely crazy, enjoys giving the rest of the crew (especially San and Yunho) heart attacks with his recklessness

Powers - Invisibility (I have SUCH good reasons for this - it’s a really dynamic Power and it thus in keeping with Wooyoung’s high energy levels, I think it goes well with his ability to switch between stage and off-stage personas, it also seems kind of contradictory which is the POINT - i wanted Wooyoung to have a Power that lets him hide when needs a break from the world)

Was an orphan and a street hat - was picked up by Bang’s gang at a very young age and learned how to fight, pick pockets and, later, was part of the Danger’s crew

Is learning how to read from San and Seonghwa, though San is initially very impatient with him and they kept bicering.

 Fell from the rigging during a battle after being shot in the back and nearly died (he was unconscious for five days but San never left his side).  Is mostly recovered but his back still hurts occasionally.

Has purple hair thanks to San

Initially hated San but now they’re inseparable

Close to Yeosang because of their days on the Danger

Also close to Jongho

Weapons: The best at hand-to-hand combat thanks to his time on the street. He’s also extremely scrappy in a fight and tends to use anything within his reach.  Learning to use a sword from San

Jongho

Able-Bodied Sailor and youngest of the crew

Powers: Super Strength

Lost his parents to a flu epidemic and left his extended family for the circus. His strength was exploited and he eventually ran away from the circus and was picked up by Hongjoong’s father

Everybody has adopted him as their own and each crew member teaches him something different

Hates lessons, particularly maths, but Hongjoong forces him to take lessons with San and Seonghwa (they teach him how to read and write both Korean and English)

Loves learning carpentry from Yunho

Learns how to read the weather from Yeosang

Learns how to prep a cannon from Mingi

Learns hand-to-hand combat from Wooyoung

Basically, he’s going to be the most well-rounded member of the crew because a) he’s good at pretty much everything and b) everyone has adopted him

Has dark brown hair

Initially seems quiet but is actually the craziest of them all

Close to Wooyoung 

Likes to tease Mingi

Sings

Weapon: Curved cutlass – he’s left-handed but can fight with both hands which he uses to his advantage. He’s also the strongest of the crew and is rapidly improving at hand-to-hand combat thanks to Wooyoung’s training. Probably going to be an good well-rounded fighter like Yunho.

[sciencespies]

Father Reginald Foster Used Latin to Bring History Into the Present

https://sciencespies.com/history/father-reginald-foster-used-latin-to-bring-history-into-the-present/

Father Reginald Foster Used Latin to Bring History Into the Present

The death of Latin has been greatly exaggerated.

Of course, Latin is no longer the default language for European learning and diplomacy, as it was from the Roman Empire through the early modern period. Since the implementation of Vatican II in the early 1960s, even many priests don’t speak the language in a meaningful way. Still, despite Latin’s decline in political and ecclesiastical circles, hundreds of folks around the globe continue to speak it as a living language—and no teacher is more responsible for the world’s remaining crop of latineloquentes (“Latin speakers”) as Friar Reginald Foster, the Carmelite monk who served as Latin secretary to four popes from 1969 until 2009, translating diplomatic papers and papal encyclicals into Latin, which remains the official language of the Holy See. Foster died on Christmas Day, at the age of 81.

In 2007, Foster himself lamented to the BBC that he thought the language was on its way out altogether. He worried that a modern world, illiterate in Latin, would lose contact with crucial portions of history, and half-jokingly recommended that then-Pope Benedict XVI replace Italy’s traditional siesta with a two-hour daily Latin reading.

The Pope never took up Foster’s suggestion, but the irony is that Foster had already managed, almost single-handedly, to reverse some of the trends that so troubled him. His deepest passion was teaching Latin at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, starting in 1977, and running his famous spoken Latin course nearly every summer, beginning in 1985. Through these courses, Foster launched multiple generations of classicists who have used his techniques to bring their students into closer contact with a past that, until recently, had seemed to be vanishing.

Foster is well remembered for his boisterous, generous presence in the classroom and on field trips. He was beloved among students, and distrusted by Vatican grandees, for his eccentric habits, which included dressing in a blue plumber’s suit and issuing caustic statements about church hypocrisy. When he was teaching—in Rome until 2009, thereafter in Wisconsin—he often nursed a glass of wine. Known by the Latin sobriquet “Reginaldus” to his legions of pupils, who in turn refer to themselves as “Reginaldians,” Foster was a hero and a jester, a pug-nosed provocateur with a satirical streak who would have fit right into a comic epistle by Horace or Erasmus. “Like Socrates, his default mode in public was ironic,” says Michael Fontaine, an administrator and professor of Classics at Cornell University.

A portrait of Foster by artist Lucy Plowe

(Courtesy of Michael Fontaine)

Fontaine, who first met Foster in the spring of 1997, makes no bones about the extent of Foster’s legacy.

“Reginald Foster succeeded in reversing the decline in living Latin. He actually, really, genuinely did it. Reggie’s success is total: There is a burgeoning movement and critical mass of young people who have now learned Latin [as a spoken language]. Reggie taught some, his students taught some, those people are teaching some, and on and on. Some of the best Latinists in the world are in their 20s or early 30s”—a remarkable development that Fontaine credits squarely to Foster’s peerless influence.

Leah Whittington, an English professor at Harvard University, who first met Foster during a summer Latin course in 1997 when she was 17, recalls the friar’s “phenomenal, ebullient energy.” “He never sat down, never seemed to need rest or eat or sleep,” Whittington says. “It was as though he was fueled from within by love for Latin, love for his work, love for his students. I had never been pushed so hard by a teacher.”

Like all of Foster’s students who spoke with Smithsonian, Whittington recalls his visionary dedication to preserving Latin by keeping it alive in everyday conversation.

“For most classicists trained in the United States or in Great Britain, Latin was a learned, non-spoken language; it was not a language that one could converse in, like French or Spanish. But for Reginald, Latin was an everyday functional language that he used with his friends, his teachers, his colleagues, with himself and even in his dreams.”

Foster went to extraordinary lengths to make sure he was keeping his students as engaged as possible with their work outside the classroom, which the friar referred to not as homework but as ludi domestici—”games to play at home.” This playful approach often proved a revelation to students used to more staid ways of teaching a language they’d been told was dead. “It’s so rare to have an immersion experience in Latin that it couldn’t fail to improve and deepen your knowledge of the language and history,” says Scott Ettinger, a Latin and Greek teacher in the Bronx, who attended Foster’s summer course in 1996.

Daniel Gallagher, who in 2009 succeeded Foster in the Latin section of the Vatican Secretariat and today teaches the language at Cornell University, still marvels at Foster’s “extreme dedication to his students.”

“He told us, ‘Call me at 2 in the morning if you’re stuck,'” says Gallagher, who began studying with Foster in October 1995. “He said, ‘I’ll even come to your house to teach you Latin.’ And I learned that he wasn’t kidding—he really would come to my house.”

Foster launched multiple generations of classicists who have used his techniques to bring their students into closer contact with a past that, until recently, had seemed to be vanishing.

(Courtesy of Michael Fontaine)

Classicist Jason Pedicone recalls his first course with Foster in 2004: “He made me feel like learning Latin was a key that would unlock endless beauty and wisdom of history, art and literature.”

“Studying Greek and Latin with Reginald was spiritually enriching,” he says. “I don’t mean that in a doctrinal way; it was just really life-affirming and made me stand in awe of humanity and civilization.” In 2010, Pedicone co-founded the Paideia Institute with Eric Hewett, another of Foster’s students; the organization offers immersive courses in Latin and Greek.

Tales of Foster have long been common among anglophone classicists. Even those who never visited him in Rome had often heard something about this eccentric priest who gave free, immersive Latin lessons.

“I had heard for some time that there was a priest in Rome who spoke Latin and gave free summer courses where you actually spoke Latin,” says Alice Rubinstein, a now-retired Latin teacher living in Virginia. “I remember some woman telling me he was like a priestly version of Don Rickles.”

“[Foster] reminds me of the humanists I study in the 15th century, especially Lorenzo Valla,” says classicist Chris Celenza, a dean at Johns Hopkins University who took courses with Foster in 1993 and marvels at the friar’s unerring ability to bring the past into the present, to make old texts new. “Foster could almost ventriloquize the authors we were studying. He was a living anachronism, and I think he knew it and kind of delighted in that.”

In his obituary for Foster, John Byron Kuhner, who is writing a biography of the friar, sounded a similar note about Reginaldus’ uncanny ability to make ancient writers seem intimate and accessible—a closeness that he fostered in his students: “The writers and artists of the past seemed to be equally [Foster’s] friends. He loved them in a way we could see, the way we love our living friends who happen to be far away.”

Foster’s famous summer Latin course was full of day trips. Traditional jaunts included the site in Formia where Cicero was assassinated by Mark Antony’s men in 43 B.C. (“Reginald would weep while reciting Cicero’s epitaph,” Whittington recalls); the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence, where students sang Latin songs to “papal bulls”—that is, cows grazing outside the Pope’s house; to the port town of Ostia; Pompeii and Naples; the spot at Largo Argentina in Rome where Julius Caesar was assassinated; the castle in Latium where Thomas Aquinas was born.

“Walking with Reggie through these Italian sites made Rome come alive in a way that it couldn’t have without someone of his encyclopedic knowledge of Latin,” says Alexander Stille, a journalism professor at Columbia University, who profiled Foster for the American Scholar in 1994.

“Foster used to tell us that ‘Reading Augustine in translation is like listening to Mozart on a jukebox,'” Stille says, “and that being in Rome without access to Latin was to see an impoverished version of it. He made the city come alive.”

Foster is well remembered for his boisterous, generous presence in the classroom and on field trips.

(Courtesy of Michael Fontaine)

There are many classicists (I am one of them) who never met Foster but who benefited from his teachings by studying under his protégés, many of whom use techniques pioneered by Foster.

“When I led student trips to Italy, I modeled them on the field trips Foster used to take with us,” says Helen Schultz, now a Latin teacher at a private school in New Hampshire. “On one memorable occasion, he joined me and a group of my students to talk about their studies and his work at the Vatican. He didn’t just love Latin; he also loved and cared deeply about every one of the students who learned from him and were inspired by him to do our best to keep his legacy alive.”

Like many of Foster’s students, Ada Palmer, a European history professor at the University of Chicago, says the friar opened up a whole world of post-Classical Latin literature for his charges. Rather than falling back on the typical, and almost entirely ancient, canon taught in most classrooms, he introduced scholars to the Latin of St. Jerome’s autobiography, or medieval bestiaries, or Renaissance books of magic, or rollicking pub songs from the 17th and 18th centuries, Palmer says, and thereby widened the possibilities for Latin studies across the world.

“Reggie’s enthusiasm was for all Latin equally,” Palmer says, “and he encouraged us to explore the whole vast, tangled and beautiful garden of Latin, and not just the few showpiece roses at its center. He trained scholars who have revolutionized many fields of history and literary studies.”

Celenza agrees, referring to the millions of pages of Latin from the Renaissance onward as “a lost continent” that Foster played a central role in rediscovering.

Foster was famous for many of his one-liners, perhaps none more so than his frequent reminder to students that “Every bum and prostitute in ancient Rome spoke Latin.” (In one variant on this line, “dog-catcher” takes the place of “bum.”) His point was that one needn’t be an elite to appreciate the riches of a language that began, after all, as a vernacular. But Foster’s interest in bums and prostitutes was not merely rhetorical. “He did a lot of good for the prostitutes of Rome,” Ettinger says. Foster was known for giving what little money he had to the city’s downtrodden, even though, by keeping his classes free, he ensured that he had practically no income. (He was also known sometimes to pay a student’s rent in Rome for a semester.)

“In one’s life, if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a certain number of people who are genuinely extraordinary and who try to change your life in some way. Reggie was one of those people in my life,” Stille says. “There were few people on the planet who have the relationship to Latin that he did.”

In his final weeks, Foster’s friends say, he was as boisterous as ever, even after testing positive for Covid-19: He continued working with Daniel P. McCarthy—a Benedictine monk who began studying with Foster in the fall of 1999—on their book series codifying Foster’s teaching methods. And he maintained lively conversations with protégés, often in Latin, via phone and video calls.

Today, classicists, philologists and anyone else who wishes they had taken a Latin immersion course with Foster can console themselves with several options offered by his former students. Each summer, you will find Ettinger helping organize the annual Conventiculum aestivum (“summer convention”) in Lexington, Kentucky, an 8- to 12-day immersive program that welcomes 40 to 80 attendees a year. Other Foster protégés, including Whittington, Gallagher, Fontaine and Palmer, have taught immersive classes through the Paideia Institute. Foster may be gone, but his dedication to Latin as a living language, one that puts us in direct conversation with our past, continues to thrive against all odds.

#History