Hashimi wrote:Imagine there is a country where all children's shows were in Latin. Do you think that the children who watch these shows would be fluent in Latin? ...
For the purposes of this discussion, let us agree that the
imaginary country of which you speak is
Tibet. I do not believe that
passive exposure alone via children's television shows to a dead language such as
Latin, one of which no one else in the country would have any knowledge and one which is very remote from the local languages would be would lead to anything even closely resembling fluency.
Passive exposure to Latin
might have a measure of success, short of fluency, in a country where one of the Romance/Latin languages predominate as this would afford the children with the opportunity of making associations with their Latin-derived native tongues. It is possible that they would develop their own version(s) of "pig Latin" provided they had opportunities to converse with other children (output). However, I doubt that exposure to even ten years of such televised programming alone (input only), in the absence of any other form of reinforcement or linguistic development, would provide the children with the ability to read Classical Latin literature anymore than they would be able to give a dissertation, in Latin, of Ovid's works. At best, they would develop an appreciation for the sounds of this dead language which they would not encounter elsewhere and, depending on what they decide to do with this narrow ability, the possibility exists that the would develop a certain facility with the pronunciation of Latin.
Perhaps this proposition should be compared to the oft-reported
dismal "real world results" following years of second-language instruction in Western elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities even in cases where the L2 is one of the FIGS. In other words, if attempts at second-language acquisition (fluency) seem to fail frequently despite the employment of the latest communicative methods and the use of native materials and technologies, I do not see how reducing the students' contact with the L2, be it for Latin or any other language, would produce better results.
EDITED:
Subsequent comment on the results of second-language instruction in Western educational institutions.