Hello, I’m new here, kinda wish to lurk a little at first, but I wouldn’t want to lose my account, so I’ll write something, as recommended.
I study Classics in Poland, which sadly has pretty terrible university politics towards Classical education - it “doesn’t sell”, so why bother? Let’s just close it… - but I manage. There’s a new generation of lecturers that went out in the world and back, and want to mix things up a bit, so hopefully it’ll get better.
I already know the basics of Latin and are near the end of Greek course.
I’m interested in ancient culture, philosophy and religion; sociology; ethnology; “humanities” in general.
I hope to someday get a remote job in some kind of research/translation of ancient texts. It seems rather comfy and compatible with accomplishing my own scientific activities and a healthy family life.
I had been to Poznan Summer School in 2019, and it was very professional. The instructors spoke good Latin, so my impression was that Latin teaching is well-developed in Poland.
Hmm, ok, maybe Poznań is holding up, I wasn’t there yet, but I heard good things. But imho other than that it’s still pretty mid, especially after the old-school generation of specialists have died-out without leaving proper successors.
And “good Latin” is relative, some people would die for the restored pronunciation, others are sworn to the traditional (iirc german-based) local pronunciation. I think Americans prefer the erasmian, but I’m still kinda skeptical about it. What does it matter how we pronounce it now anyway?
Particularly in Poland, I know two Latin teachers — they are siblings, but prefer different pronunciation, Ecclesiastical and Restored. Recently, I was listening to a lecturer with a strong Italian accent. It doesn’t really matter as long as all these “dialects” a mutually intelligible without prior training. Stick yourself to one of them and be consistent.
When it comes to employment, you could do worse than contact the British Museum. I heard they were looking for youngsters to get involved in translating Babylonian cuneiform tablets. A bit of post-grad training, and you might have a job for life.
I was thinking more about putting that elbow grease in something like the Herculaneum papyri. Nowadays with SWIR HSI and virtual unrolling the real problem is getting enough competent and willing people to work on editing it properly.
The Italians in charge of recovering those texts in the National Library of Naples are getting more willing to share the burden with outsiders.
Welcome here!