Big increase in Latin enrollment in Canadian universities

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Globe and Mail just came out with an article here a few hours ago that has a fair amount of new and Canada-specific information about how well Latin is doing there. As in many parts of the world, Latin is enjoying a surge in popularity compared to perhaps a decade or so ago, and many university students that have begun learning the language are a bit miffed that they weren't offered the option in high school as well. Here are some facts and numbers from the article.

- Twitter is being used to help revive the language. For an example of this see the search results for habeo.
- According to the Classical Association of Canada (Société canadienne des études classiques), enrollment across the country at the college/university level is up.
- The introductory Latin course at the University of Montreal was so popular last year that students had been turned away, and this year enrollment has grown to 60.
- York University doubled its introductory Latin courses a few years ago, and is starting a course next year to train high-school Latin teachers.
- (I mentioned this fact in a post here last year) Canada's first history was also written in Latin - the Historia canadensis from 1664.
- High schools in Ontario have also seen an increase in those learning Latin, while those in Quebec are more interested in languages like Chinese or Spanish.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Here is a very interesting project to motivate children from many parts of Europe to learn Latin-derived languages:
http://www.chainstories.eu/index.php?id=17&L=0

Me said...

Yeah, just noticed that on an Interlingua group a few hours ago. Looks interesting.

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