# Email



## Angelo di fuoco

What is the Latin name for email?

I'd use "epistula electronica" for the message, but I'm not sure what they call it in Vatican,


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## Cagey

This thread contains several suggestions for 'email', including yours.  
Verba volant, scripta manent [except for emails].


I don't know which term is used by the Vatican.  It seems to me a research question. I was not able to find a Vatican website in Latin that included an email address.


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## Kevin Beach

Vatican Latin for "email" seems to be _inscriptio cursus electronici_: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/31/pope-benedict-latin-academy


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## Angelo di fuoco

Thanks!

I wanted to inform (via SMS) a friend of mine who is a Latin teacher that I would write him an email, so I wrote him "tibi epistulam electronicam scribebo", but I wasn't sure if that was correct Latin, since I never really learned it.


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## CapnPrep

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I wrote him "tibi epistulam electronicam scribebo", but I wasn't sure if that was correct Latin, since I never really learned it.


_Epistula_ is just fine. The problem is that the verb should have been _scribam_.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Wrong future form?


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## Angelo di fuoco

It's not about communicating with the Vatican (I would use Italian for that objective, because I'm not able to communicate in Latin when it gets even slightly more complicated than basic grammar and words), it's about Latin, as correct, elegant and stylish as possible. "Email" isn't correct, nor is it elegant and stylish, but, what is worse, it even isn't Latin.

The word "electronic" existed at that time, but it meant "related to amber" or "made from amber" (a loanword from Greek). And, by the way, why shouldn't you I use the word in a translation when the Vatican specialists for concepts and objects of modern life used the adjective "electronicus" when they translated "email" to Latin?


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