Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's certainly true that an author (in Britain, at least) 50 years ago could assume a reasonable grasp of Latin on the part of his or her readership, because it was a subject taught in every British school. I'd guess it was probably around the early 1970s that it stopped being universally taught.
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I took Latin in high school, though I can't really say that I remember more than a few words. I don't know that one can say that most readers in the US had a reasonable grasp of Latin 50 years ago or even 100 years ago. though most who had an elite education did.
The US has never really had as much of a focus on languages as England or the various European countries. The old joke about Americans and languages is for the most part true and has been for a while. (Someone who speaks two languages is bi-lingual, someone who speaks three languages is tri-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American).