What do you think of this fact?
You walk up to an ATM and choose your language: English, German, Italian … or Latin. Sounds like a joke from Latin class, but in the Vatican it’s real.
Please insert your card, in Latin
The Vatican Bank, officially the “Istituto per le Opere Religiose,” runs ATMs with Latin menus inside the Vatican. The magazine Wanted in Rome reported on it back in 2003. The first screen greets you with “Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem,” roughly: please insert your card to start the transaction. According to Wanted in Rome, though, only people with an account at the Vatican Bank can actually use it.
Why Latin of all languages? For one, it has been the language of the Catholic Church for centuries. For another, the people who live and work in the Vatican come from many different countries. Latin is a language many of them at least have in common.
Latin for pinball and traffic jams
But how do you say things in Latin that the ancient Romans never saw? There’s a dictionary for that: the “Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis,” a lexicon of modern Latin. It first came out in 1992, compiled by scholars on behalf of the Vatican, and was originally meant for papal texts. There’s even a German edition called “Neues Latein-Lexikon.”
A few samples collected by Futility Closet:
- Washing machine: “machina linteorum lavatoria”
- Refrigerator: “cella frigorifera”
- Traffic jam: “fluxus interclusio”
- Bestseller: “liber maxime divenditus”
- Pinball machine: “sphaeriludium electricum nomismate actum,” roughly an “electric ball game operated by a coin”
Even “to flirt” has a translation: “lusorie amare,” which means something like “to love playfully.”
Dead, but very much alive
Latin is considered a dead language because nobody learns it as their mother tongue anymore. Yet the Vatican keeps it in shape and keeps adding new words. The lexicon has been reissued several times, with the most recent edition so far published in 2020.
Withdrawing cash like Cicero, just with a PIN.