latin, polyglots and conlangs

[aokoye]

Plus high school Latin seems to be a mostly North American experience? (especially without a modern language alongside it)

In the US Latin is more a Catholic school experience than a public school (or really any other type of private school) one, or at least that seems to be the case for most people who I know who are under the age of say, 50. I'm not sure about Canada. I actually know a lot more people from the DACH countries who had to study Latin in school than from the US.

[Iversen]

Spoken Latin is not quite dead, but it has become a fringe phenomenon, and finding opportunities to speak Latin are scarce. But they exist: at the Berlin Gathering there were at least two fluent speakers present (and for the moment I'm not one of them), and one lecture was entirely in Latin while another had long periods in Latin - and everybody seemed to find that quite natural. Latin isn't a hard language to understand once you get it served in sentences that are less contrived and longwinded than those used by both classical authors and medieval chroniclers.

As for Esperanto: I have just participated in the annual Esperantist world conference, where somewhere around 1200 persons took part in something that should in principle be a purely Esperanto speaking event. I did however hear a bit of 'crocodile' French and German, and not all participants are equally good at speaking the language - at least not on day one - but generally the level is impressive, and the lectures are served at the same speed as they would have been in lectures spoken by native speakers. And by the way: some of the youngsters who participate must be defined as native speakers, albeit not monolingual ones, and then the lines between natural and conlanguages become blurred. Personally I treat it as any other language, even though that I know it was invented by a man named Zamenhof. The only difference is its geographical distribution and the relative scarcity of interesting nonfictional texts - and it shares both problems with Latin.

The idea of going to a conference to use a language is basically sick (and somewhat costly), but as the situation is it is the most efficient way to train yourself in a language that hasn't got its own country and even less an army and a fleet. There are local associations in many countries where people meet privately to talk in Esperanto, but I'm not involved in those activities here in Denmark - maybe because I am somewhat reclusive by nature, but also because I fear our local Esperantists will be talking about world peace and justice and the importance of Esperanto for international communication more than about things like science and history.

[MCK74]

At one time (5-10 years ago) studying to become a Latin teacher was actually a good career move because there was a shortage of Latin teachers in the US and UK. I'm not sure if this is still the case.

[Xenops]

Latin is on my list of languages to learn; along with ten others, but still! I'm excited that there is audio material available, and I bookmarked the Cambridge course website.

I was excited to find a Wheelock's Latin book at the thrift store, for only $1. Quite a steal.

Latin seems more approachable to me than ancient Greek: possibly because it doesn't have the long history? I imagine if I ever study ancient Greek, I would start with New Testament Greek, and work backwards.

[Cainntear]

What I like about learning minority languages is that I'm supporting the speakers and showing respect to them. Latin doesn't do that.

[Serpent]

Plus high school Latin seems to be a mostly North American experience? (especially without a modern language alongside it)

In the US Latin is more a Catholic school experience than a public school (or really any other type of private school) one, or at least that seems to be the case for most people who I know who are under the age of say, 50. I'm not sure about Canada. I actually know a lot more people from the DACH countries who had to study Latin in school than from the US.

That's why I mentioned modern langs. Did any of these people learn Latin as their first foreign language? How many of them already knew some French? Also, my impression is that German native speakers generally know very well how their L1 works.
Basically to me learning Latin at a lyceum/gymnasium is a very different experience from what the OP referred to.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Here's a podcast with the Roberto Salazar, they Latin 101 guy from Berlin:
http://actualfluency.com/afp-s2e17-robe ... ent-greek/

[Iversen]

When I saw Jeff's reference to an interview with Salazar, the man who did a full lecture in Latin at the latest Berlin Polyglot gathering, it occurred to me that I hadn't checked whether the lectures had been published on Youtube like last year - but as far as I can see they haven't.

[aokoye]

Plus high school Latin seems to be a mostly North American experience? (especially without a modern language alongside it)

In the US Latin is more a Catholic school experience than a public school (or really any other type of private school) one, or at least that seems to be the case for most people who I know who are under the age of say, 50. I'm not sure about Canada. I actually know a lot more people from the DACH countries who had to study Latin in school than from the US.

That's why I mentioned modern langs. Did any of these people learn Latin as their first foreign language? How many of them already knew some French? Also, my impression is that German native speakers generally know very well how their L1 works.
Basically to me learning Latin at a lyceum/gymnasium is a very different experience from what the OP referred to.

Any of these people as in the people that I know from the US or from other countries? Most of the people that I know who spent most of their schooling in the US just didn't learn Latin period. The ones who did learned it before taking a modern foreign language. I've also heard, anecdotally, from people who grew up in the US that taking a foreign language class in high school taught them more about the grammar of their L1 (normally English). That said that's totally anecdotal and it would be hard to correlate that to how much English grammar they were taught. My English teachers actually spent a lot of time on grammar when I was in middle school and I hated it (which is amusing when we fast forward all of these years).
As I explained in another thread, it's very hard to make accurate curriculum assumptions across the United States unless you have data from all of the school districts in the United States. The curriculum is handled at a local level (as opposed to a national level) and while there are some changes towards a more national curriculum (common core), not all states have adopted those changes, they only affect math and language arts (English), and I think there's likely still some latitude as to what's being taught (though not as much as prior to the common core standards).

[Xenops]

Plus high school Latin seems to be a mostly North American experience? (especially without a modern language alongside it)

In the US Latin is more a Catholic school experience than a public school (or really any other type of private school) one, or at least that seems to be the case for most people who I know who are under the age of say, 50. I'm not sure about Canada. I actually know a lot more people from the DACH countries who had to study Latin in school than from the US.

That's why I mentioned modern langs. Did any of these people learn Latin as their first foreign language? How many of them already knew some French? Also, my impression is that German native speakers generally know very well how their L1 works.
Basically to me learning Latin at a lyceum/gymnasium is a very different experience from what the OP referred to.

Any of these people as in the people that I know from the US or from other countries? Most of the people that I know who spent most of their schooling in the US just didn't learn Latin period. The ones who did learned it before taking a modern foreign language.

I know of two high schools in my state that actually teach Latin; one was a Latin club, where the students could actually speak it, and the other was a formal course. I'm not sure about the details of either approach.

Until about ten years ago, the local university had a Classics department; at this time I think it disappeared. I don't know of any university in my state that teaches Latin, though some Christian and Catholic colleges might teach NT Greek and Latin.