Spoken Latin in the Classroom from Late Antiquity to the Present Day

Nancy E. Llewellyn (Wyoming Catholic College)

This paper's purpose is to place the nascent U.S. movement toward speaking Latin in the classroom in its wider historical and geographical context. It consists primarily of a capsule overview of the role of the spoken language in the history of Latin-language pedagogy, and concludes with a closer look at the recent history of the Living Latin movement from the end of the Second World War to the present.

In the pedagogical overview, I will trace the tradition of spoken Latin in the classroom from the age of Donatus and Priscian to the early 19th century, which saw the first serious challenges to Latin's primacy as a school subject and the rise of conditions that caused many teachers to abandon the spoken language as a teaching tool. There will follow a summary of the major practical effects of these trends on U.S. Latin classes as borne out in the 20th century and documented by two major surveys: the American Classical League's Classical Investigation of 1924 and the American Philological Association's 1991 survey of Latin in American Schools.

I will conclude with a brief descriptive "tour" of the world of Living Latin today to explain and contextualize the current renewal of interest in spoken Latin among U.S. Latin teachers and their European counterparts.