Anyone wanting to know more about Elvis Presley singing "Nunc hic aut nunquam" only has to put the words into Google's little-known Latin search engine to not only get a translation but also to find a little more about the way Latin is re-surfacing in some curious places.

We should be unsurprised that the Vatican is easing restrictions on the Tridentine or Latin Mass by enabling it to be celebrated without special permission or that the Vatican newspaper should suggest (as it has) that Latin should be the official language of the EU. They would, wouldn't they? But these are only symptoms of a deeper trend. Finland, which holds the current presidency of the EU, broadcasts the news in Latin on national radio to a claimed 75,000 listeners, which on a per capita basis is reported to be more than some BBC Radio 4 programmes get. "In Latin we have more listeners in the world than for Finnish broadcasts," Professor Tuomo Pekkanen, who does the translations, told the BBC. The Finnish presidency also publishes a regular news in brief column in Latin. One of the reasons is to remind people of "European society's roots stretching back to ancient times".

It ought also to remind us that Latin was once the nearest to a common language Europe is ever likely to get. It is fascinating that the internet should in this way be assisting in a modest revival of Latin even if only for hearing an audio of Aesop's fables or taking Latin-speaking holidays. You can't keep a good dead language down.