Does
writing prefaces count as fluency? Don't OCT have prefaces in Latin even today? I suggest you ask in
Hungary. I'm sure Andrew Alföldi could chat and argue in Latin, and probably
his progeny
still can. In addition, all Hungarian diplomatic discourse was in Latin at least till after WW II.
Anyhow, at Berkeley, when rarely I was taken to the Faculty Club for lunch as a graduate student, there were several, maybe more, mostly English-educated professors, not necessarily over age 50, who chatted (it sounded like gossip) in Latin over their lunch. Continuous conversation. Not all Classicists, either, but I think
Oxford or
Cambridge, and I assume they were those who
had done distinguished A-levels and
had learned earlier to chat in Latin (and Greek) at their public schools. I know for certain that H. R. W. Smith could make jokes in both languages. I'm sure that persons of my age knew many at
Harvard who
had had to have both languages to get in as undergraduates and who
still could speak Latin (as my parents used "
pig Latin") for private conversations. I think it's iffy that C. S.
Lewis could, but just consider J. R. R. Tolkien! For that matter, classicists at the
Oxford and
Cambridge women's colleges certainly could speak as well as write the languages, though they
had fewer opportunities than the
men. Lytton Strachey's formidable sister surely could. Think how Virginia
Woolf envied her brother's friends.
As I said, I rarely was taken to lunch at the U. C. Faculty Club. In the 1950s it was
still all male as well as all faculty, but a female could be taken, though only to the main dining room, by a qualified male professor. I
hope the building
still survives; it was of that Brown Shingle period. It is no longer all male (wasn't by some time in the sixties). There
had been a Women's Faculty Club, but one knew few women who would use it, and if anyone there spoke Latin or Greek, I'd be surprised (of course, quite a few may have READ the ancient languages).
Pat L.