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From https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/23/students-learn-speak-latin-dead-language/npU5YsHGXdD3OLAiaBpUhL/story.html

Students learn to speak Latin, ‘the un-dead language’
By Zoe Greenberg
May 23, 2019

In schools across Massachusetts and the country, teachers are throwing out the memorized charts of verb conjugations and noun declensions that were once essential to a Latin education, and instead emphasizing the spoken word. The goal is to make Latin more inclusive and more engaging for kids in 2019.

...For the past 150 years, Latin was taught with a hard focus on grammar and translation (“I love the periphrastic,” one teacher said wistfully, referring to a passive construction in Latin that expresses an obligation like “ought”). Before that, spoken Latin was the norm in classrooms, according to Diane Anderson, a lecturer in classics at UMass Boston. Over the years, grammar-focused Latin gained a reputation for being stuffy and exclusive.

The “living Latin” movement aims to excise the stuffiness and bring the language to a wider audience.

Read the full article at https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/23/students-learn-speak-latin-dead-language/npU5YsHGXdD3OLAiaBpUhL/story.html