What is spoken Classical Latin for today? Is it just a hobby or a pastime? Can it be used to enable Latin learners to learn to read original texts in Classical Latin more easily, effectively and enjoyably? Can spoken Latin enable students to acquire Classical Latin as if it were a first language and to read Latin as they read their own language, rather than to translate it? Can it enable people to learn the grammar and syntax of Latin, which they will need to know at some stage? The form of Latin used was not a first language ever and was not ‘acquired’ as a first language is. It had been developed and elaborated for reading and writing literary, subliterary and official administrative texts, for which the language of conversation was not considered to be appropriate.
Various names have been given to the use of spoken Latin as a pedagogical tool: ‘direct method’, ‘immersive Latin’, ‘conversational Latin’, ‘communicative Latin’. The one that is receiving most attention currently is ‘Comprehensible Input’ (‘CI’). This uses spoken Classical Latin extensively, and, like the others, is a way of teaching Classical Latin that eschews the student's native language as a language of instruction. The aim of CI is to reproduce as far as possible the way in which the student acquires their native language, as modern foreign languages are taught. So the native language is dispensed with and the only language the student is exposed to is Classical Latin. Note that this is not the way that a native Latin speaker learned Classical Latin. Classical Latin for a native Latin speaker was based, in the Classical period itself (less so in later periods), on the (highly) educated form of the contemporary Latin that was in use, spoken and written. This fact made it (much) easier to learn to read and write the Classical form that we call Classical Latin. And clearly this not the case for a student of CI, whose native language is not any form of Latin. The ‘input’ of CI is made-up spoken or written Classical Latin provided to the student by the teacher for the student to read or listen to. It is Latin that the student will be enabled by various pedagogical strategies to understand and assimilate and respond to. The student gradually ‘acquires’ a growing facility in the language without having set out to learn the language in the traditional way, in much the same way as the student acquires his/her own native language. The aim is for the student to read Classical Latin as he/she reads their own language, i.e. without having to translate it in order to understand it. Knowledge of the morphology, syntax, phonology, lexis and other formal features of the language will be acquired incidentally by usage, as required, and by direct instruction where necessary.
All well and good so far then. But, if I understand it correctly, students of CI do not actually get to read the originals of most Classical Latin texts. It is acknowledged that these are too difficult for them.1 What they engage with is more comprehensible input based around these texts composed by the teacher. Is this really a satisfactory goal for a Latin teaching programme? In what way is it an advance on traditional methods if it does not make reading original Latin texts easier? How do CI students fare who study Latin at university? Surely, they have to engage with the original texts?
Using spoken Latin as a language of instruction is nothing new. Quite apart from its use in modern times it, and written learning materials, were used in forms of Classical Latin during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, because of the perceived inadequacy of the contemporary vernacular languages. This situation lasted beyond the Renaissance in fact. So there is nothing new either about Ørberg's written Latin-only language learning materials, which were the norm for centuries. What may be new is the use to which they are now put, and the principle guiding this use, that ‘immersion’ in Latin, spoken or written, is the most effective and enjoyable way of enabling the student to read canonical Classical texts. Enjoyable, perhaps. Effective, perhaps not. I think the jury is still out on the latter, and we may have to accept a majority vote in the end.
[The sources of information about CI that I have used are the articles that can be found in the issues of the Journal of Classics Teaching from 2019 onwards, in particular the article by Robert Patrick (Patrick Reference Patrick2019).]
What is called ‘Krashen's Theory’, the foundation for CI, comprises six principles. I conclude this article with a list of seven important points about Classical Latin and its bearing on spoken Latin:
1 Classical Latin (CL) was not a first language (LI)/‘mother tongue’.
2 CL at all times, including the Classical period, was learned, not acquired as a L1 is.
3 In the Classical period CL was more similar to the L1 of those who learned CL, whatever this was like — we don't know. One assumes that the L1 was more like CL than ‘sub-elite’/‘non-standard’ Latin.
4 In subsequent periods CL became less and less similar to the L1 of those who learned CL. The L1 changed as ‘natural’ languages do, but CL remained the same in essentials.
5 The less similar to CL the L1 became, the more difficult it was to learn CL.
6 After Latin ceased to have any native speakers and was nobody's L1, it became even more difficult to learn Latin in the form of Medieval and Neo-Latin. Any spoken Latin was based on the written form.
7 Insofar as CL was always a learned language and not an acquired one, reading Latin always contained an element, greater or smaller, of translation, as it does today. Nobody can claim to read Latin in the full sense of ‘read’, in the way in which they read their own language.
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