LOL Caecilius est mendax means "Caecilius is lying."
Among the European universities, especially the famous ones, classical scholarship is still very traditional. You're not going to find many conversational classes there either, it mainly happens among schoolkids growing up and the method in which they are taught. I actually completed some of my classics degree at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland (famous for humanities and classics) - the students were quite amazing. We were expected to be able to sight translate 100 lines per class, and then in ensuing discussions, extrapolate all sorts of meaning and interpretations - their abilities were really amazing.
The American Classical League puts out a video every so often, of a news program completely spoken in Latin. The Sibyl comes and predicts the weather, etc, and they go so fast!
Iam, ninget. >
In Italy, Latin is only kind of predominant in the Vatican...I believe there's a McDonald's where the menu appears in Latin. But we should clarify and say there is a pretty large difference between church Latin and ancient Latin. (church latin being essentially "wrong," hehe!)
Every year, each state (or almost each state) holds a convention where high schoolers compete against each other in terms of academic knowledge (tests and jeopardy-like contests called certamina), graphic arts, and performing arts. In Ohio, 800+ students attend every year. Once you get to college, you don't have to take tests anymore but instead, help run the events. And then every year in the summer, there's a national convention that 2000+ classical scholars attend, both high school and college. It's the same thing, only much more intensified...and they add sports contests to it. This year, it's in Kentucky...last year was New Oreleans, sometime soon it's San Diego. Check out <a href="http://www.nscl.org" target="_blank">www.nscl.org</a> or <a href="http://www.njcl.org" target="_blank">www.njcl.org</a> if you want to see what's being done actively in the world of classics today
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THe college group also has an unofficial event at New Years. We pick a city every year, and it's like a 3-day drunk fest
. You do touristy stuff during the day, get drunk at night with the culmination being on new year's eve. We start toasting/drinking when Rome hits midnight (this could be anywhere from 3 pm to 6 pm depending on where in the US we are), and toast every hour until we hit midnight, and after that you drink more to see who can make Guam's midnight (because I think Guam is the last time zone to hit midnight) - that ends up being til around 6 am
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