At some of the main public schools (by British word usage), e,g Eton, there was formerly a rule that the schoolboys must converse only in Latin. About when did that rule become disused?
A textbook which teaches a language contains 2 languages, which I here call X and Y. X is a language that the reader is already literate in, and Y is the language which the book is teaching. E.g. in a Latin grammar which I have, X is English and Y is Latin.
I found on the internet a scan-in of old Eton College issue Greek textbook where X is Latin and Y is Greek, showing that the schoolboy who had the book was expected to be already literate in Latin before he started to learn Greek.
I also found a statement that seemed to say that in the Eton Collage Latin textbook, in very old times, the X and Y languages were both Latin, as if the boy was expected to be already able to read and understand Latin before he formally learned Latin grammar. That seems to mean that the boy, on entering the first-year class at Eton, was expected to pick up enough Latin to get by in it, at school by picking it up by ear, in the same way that he earlier learned English from his parents at home. Is that correct?
I read that Linnaeus the well-known Swedish botanist picked up Latin at home by ear from his parents, to the extent that he could speak Latin before he could speak his vernacular language Swedish.
One of my Seminary Professors (Concordia Lutheran Seminary St Louis) studied in Germany for a couple of years (in the 1920’s?) and his lectures were in Latin. And there is the scene from the Okay Coral movie where the two cowboys speak Latin (1881).
1 C.S. Lewis wrote in Latin to Don Giovanni Calabria 1947-1954 "The Latin Letters of C. S. Lewis 1998.
2 And Arcadius Avellanus, born Mogyoróssy Arkád (6 February 1851 – 16 June 1935), was a Hungarian American scholar of Latin and a proponent of Living Latin. He is said to have spoken Latin as a child before he was fluent in Hungarian. You can find many book by him on Amazon.
3 Two biographies of George Washington in the Library Of Congress’s general collections, both published in 1835, demonstrate the widespread use of Latin during the early Republic. Both were written in 1835: “Washingtonii Vita” was written by Francis Glass, a schoolteacher from Ohio, and “Georgii Washingtonis Vita” was written by William Lance, an attorney from Charleston, South Carolina. The existence of these biographies indicates the facility with which those who were educated could compose in Latin. https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/09/latin-at-the-library-colonial-and-early-american-writings/
Maybe an easier question to get an answer for. When did PHD and masters theses or dissertations no longer have to be written in Latin. At least you could go to a University library and get an answer for this question. And when did medical journals and scientific journals stop being written in Latin.
Check this thread “PhD theses in Latin” in this section
As I recall, the shift begins in the mid 18th century and is complete by the mid-19th. I remember hearing that the Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield’s (1851-1921) Master’s thesis was hand written in Latin, but I could find no support for that. I remember finding the occasional journal article, particularly from Poland, written in Latin with publication dates through the later 19th century, but nothing after that.
Hi, I understand the last dissertation written in Latin (10,000 words on atque in Latin poetry) was submitted at Cambridge less than two decades ago, by a previous member of this forum. See this topic: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/composition/11105/1
As for the original post in this thread, I think the best place to check would be memoirs of people who attended classes. It would be risky to infer from the language of learning materials to the language of classroom teaching and discussions: e.g. the learning materials we use in Italian classes are written completely in Italian—even the A1 book is written completely in Italian, even though the classes back then (at the complete beginner stage) had to be conducted mostly in English.
Incidentally, the last person I’ve heard about as having been raised with Latin as their first language was Montaigne. Someone may have done it since then however (not sure).
Although not dealing with the UK, this discussion reminded me of some paragraphs from a recent remembrance of Father Reginald Foster. It tracks with other things I’ve read about Latin being a living language in Catholic Church until the 1960s.
Reggie represents the last of a breed. He was thirteen years of age when he began a life fully immersed in Latin during his two years at St. Francis Minor Seminary in Milwaukee (1953-1955). Instruction, exams, notices on the bulletin board, chores about the house and cutting the lawn were all in Latin. He continued his studies for three years at St. Joseph’s Minor Seminary in Peterborough, New Hampshire (1955-1958), again all in Latin.
I say that Reggie was the last of a breed because in each seminary and college where he studied, all instruction was given in Latin. Thirteen years of education of full immersion in the Latin language. But after he left each school, it soon dropped the Latin curriculum and switched to English language instruction