Nuntii Latini is the name of several news services that broadcast in Latin.
Finnish Nuntii Latini
The Finnish Nuntii Latini was a Finnish news service broadcast in Latin between September 1989 and June 2019 by the Finnish national broadcaster Yle (Radiophonia Finnica Generalis) on the Yle Radio 1 channel. The name Nuntii Latini is Latin for Latin News[1] or News in Latin.[2]
Station output
There was a five-minute long weekly broadcast of recent world news and human interest.[3] The program was eventually made available on the Internet and had about 40,000 listeners according to RTÉ in 2019,[3] compared to 75,000 reported by the BBC in 2006.[4] Articles were usually alternately read by a male and female announcer, in Latin. Pronunciation was, for the most part, "classical" and listeners could follow a written transcript of news items. A "Glossarium programmatis" was provided for each program translating 6 to 10 of the key Latin terms into Finnish, English, and German.
The program was founded by Tuomo Pekkanen, a professor of Latin.[1] As of 2013, Laura Nissinen was one of the announcers.[5] The program has been described as one of several ways in which Finland has been a bastion of Latin, such as the translation of the works of Elvis Presley into Latin by Finnish academic Jukka Ammondt.[3]
Shutdown
In November 2017, Yle announced that they would be shutting down the broadcast in December of that year.[6] Yle cited the availability of other Latin-language media on the internet as one of the reasons for the shutdown.[7] Another reason was the difficulty in finding suitable replacements for the programme's ageing producers.[3] The announcement resulted in a public campaign to save the program.[2] More than 3,000 listeners wrote to the station in protest, resulting in the show being extended through 2019.[8] The final broadcast was on 14 June 2019.[9]
External links
- Finnish Nuntii Latini: Official website
- FR-German Nuntii Latini: Official website
- Vatican Nuntii Latini: Official website
- Italian Nuntii Latini or Nuntii Latini Italici: Official website
- American Nuntii Latini or Nuntii Latini Occidentalis Studiorum Universitatis Vasintoniensis: nuntiilatini.com