One thing that I really should make clear before continuing: I think each of us has a different style of learning, and I respect them all.Carola wrote:I'm not really convinced we should speak Latin in the classroom, after all, it's not like a modern language where you can practice on one of the native speakers (always a good test of how well you really know the language!) However, I do think the texts and especially the poetry should be read aloud.
Carola, personally I strongly disagree with the first half of your statement; though we no longer have native speakers, in a sense it doesn't really matter anymore: we do have an agreed upon restored classical pronunciation: that vowels may be a bit Anglicised, Hispanicised, Italicised, Swedicised (:D) etc. doesn't really matter: the rules are there and do make sense for us who want to speak it today. More importantly, there are ways to learn the language well enough (at least grammatically) to be confused with a native. I know several people who learned Spanish when they were older and grammatically are no less competent than a native (even better than many natives). Their pronunciation is also almost perfect.
This may seem contradictory to another post that I just wrote in Learning Latin, but it's really not (!)
And it may be just Kynetus' suggestion working on my subconcious over the last few days, but I've decided to go out and buy a microphone and make CDs of myself speaking Latin That way I can listen to it and get aurally conditioned, the same as happened when I learned Spanish - it makes it more living, more immediate, and more present, I feel.