Latin in the 21st century ?

An ancient Roman returning to the Rome of today might be horrified by the traffic, the mobile phones and the fast food restaurants - but at least he (or she) would be able to communicate, thanks to an up-to-date Latin dictionary.

The dictionary, the result of eight years' work by Vatican scholars, tackles the tricky question of how to translate concepts and inventions unknown (mercifully) to Horace and Ovid. Latin is still the official language of the Vatican state, but was dropped from the Roman Catholic liturgy in the 1960s. It is not much used within the Vatican nowadays except by specialists, who translate papal documents into Latin.

The dictionary's veteran editor, Monsignor Carlo Egger, 83, who has served four Popes as chief Latinist, indicated that he had found counterparts to such modern words as aerosol spray [loquor nubilogenous], motorbike [birota automataria], and stripper [sui ipsius nudator]. But the arrival of the dictionary in Rome bookshops reveals an even fuller vocabulary of the late 20-th century phenomena.

After arriving at the aeronavium portus [airport], a returning Roman could take an autocinetum meritorium [taxi], to the Colosseum or the Patheon, which he might be pleased to note are still standing despite pollution. While stuck in an in obstructione [traffic jam], listening to Roman drivers sounding their sonori autocineti indices [horns], he could use a telephonium cellulare [mobile phone] to phone ahead and explain why he is late.

On arrival, struck by the fashions of today's Rome, he might like to drop into a habituum emporium [department store] and kit himself out with a new tunicula manicata [jacket], subucula [shirt], bracae [trousers], pedules [socks] and calceos [shoes], with some new subligares [underwear]. They could then repair to a taberna Macdonaldiana for a hamburger.

Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis, published by Liberia Editrice Vaticana @ 160,000 lire.