Culturebox: Vivat Latinitas!

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culturebox Vivat Latinitas! My lively summer speaking a dead language. By Ted Scheinman Updated Monday, Aug. 22, 2011, at 6:48 AM ET At the beginning of the last century, A.E. Housman, that cantankerous giant of classical scholarship, was already complaining about "an age which is out of touch with Latinity." Around that time, philistines were excising classics from the popular curriculum, and the subsequent 100 years have hardly improved Latin's apparent relevance in Western society. Classicists may tout the fact that Advanced Placement enrollment in Latin doubled between 1997 and 2007, but this mini-surge brought the number of upper-level high school Latinists to a minuscule 8,654--literally 1 percent of the number of secondary school Latinists in the mid-1930s. Like its nouns, Latin continues to decline. In the face of these grim prospects, I boarded a plane to Rome this summer to join the small network of scholars dedicated to preserving the language by actually speaking it. I found myself in the company of 16 other twentysomethings, puttering about the center of the ancient world chattering not in English or in Italian but --ecce!--in Latin. To continue reading, click here. Ted Scheinman is a teaching fellow and doctoral student in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can reach him at TS@email.unc.edu. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Is the Water That Drips Out of Air Conditioners Clean? Could You Drink It? Why Is Nicholson Baker So Obsessed With Sex? Kate Winslet Rescues Richard Branson's 90-Year-Old Mother From Burning House	Advertisement
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