More news in spoken Latin on the war in Georgia and South Ossetia (De indutiis in Georgia)

Tondo depicting Saint Mamas from the Gelati Monastery, 14th–15th centuries

Here's another piece of news on the war in Georgia and South Ossetia from the online Latin newspaper Ephemeris. It's from August the 15th so it's not a current event but since the article is recorded as well as written it's quite good for those learning Latin. Here's the first paragraph:

Prima autocineta ex USA missa die Jovis in Georgiam pervenire coeperunt, neque desinunt auctoritates Americanae amicitiam erga populum illum confirmare pluraque adiutoria promittere. Ministra Americana rebus exteris addicta Condoleeza Rice postquam cum praesidente Gallorum Nicolao Sarkozy convenit, Tbilisim die XV mensis Augusti se confert cum Georgiae praesidente Michaël Saakashvili collocutura.

I especially like Ephemeris because the voice of the person that records Latin articles there is closest to what I imagine Latin should really sound like, as opposed to the excessively sonorous voices you hear accompanying a lot of Latin textbooks. There's no way Romans actually talked like that some two thousand years ago.


By the way, this is what Wikipedia has on the possible origins of the name Georgia for the country:

The origin of the name Georgia is still disputed and has been explained in the following ways:

1. Linking it semantically to Greek and Latin roots (Greek: γεωργία, transliterated geōrgía, "agriculture", γεωργός, geōrgós, "tiller of the land", and γεωργικός, geōrgikós, Latin: georgicus, "agricultural").
2. The country took its name from that of Saint George, itself a derivative of the aforementioned Greek root. Or, at the very least, the popularity of the cult of Saint George in Georgia influenced the spread of the term.
3. Under various Persian empires (536 BC-AD 638), Georgians were called Gurjhān (Gurzhan/Gurjan), or "Gurj/Gurzh people." The early Islamic/Arabic sources spelled the name Kurz/Gurz and the country Gurjistan (see Baladhuri, Tabari, Jayhani, Istakhri, Ibn Hawqal, etc.). The contemporary Russian name for the country, "Gruziya," is similar. This also could evolve or at least contribute to the later name of Georgia.