Updating Latin

Latin scholars at the Vatican (“New Tricks for an Old Tongue,” Feb. 19), who are trying to update their language, are going at it all wrong. Their new terms are entirely too lengthy and verbose. There is no reason, for instance, why fog lights should be “pharus adversus nebulam,” or hot pants “brevissimae bracae feminae.”

Such unwieldy phrases contrast with words of living languages such as English, in which words of everyday use are usually short and snappy. A Washington bureaucrat may write of a “personally owned vehicle,” but most of us call it a “car.”

The Vatican’s Latinists would do better by working with today’s Latin-descended languages such as French and Italian, and to start by noting the words they use for “fog lights,” “hot pants” and the like. These scholars then could render those words into Latin form. The constructions that result might look more like “foghornum” or “hotpantsae.” But they would have the marked advantage of actually corresponding to the words people use. T. A. HEPPENHEIMER Fountain Valley