Latin is also big in certain segments of the homeschooling population. In the more formal, “Classical” homeschooling families it’s considered almost mandatory. Often it’s ecclesiastical Latin as many of those families are Christian (Catholic but mostly literal American Protestants). Ancient Greek (often Koine) is also big.

We aren’t classical homeschoolers in my house. We’re more Ecclectics, meaning we’ll take from different hsing sub-cultures what works for us. My 12 yr old daughter is currently learning Latin, French and a bit of Ancient Greek. She loves mythology, Homer and Ovid so her interest comes more from wanting to approach the classics in their own language (although Harry Potter has had a bit of influence). This also means we’re studying classical Latin and Attic Greek as opposed to the other forms.

We’ve also found that Latin is it’s own motivator. Study a bit and English seems to open up. Not simply in terms of word meanings but grammar as well. It gets a bit addicting.

I don’t think homeschoolers learning Latin has any wider effect. Except perhaps that there’s now a fair amount of excellent resources and curriculum available for children thanks to publishers trying to serve our market.

I think it is interesting to note that it seems like there has been latin offered at more public high schools and at least when I was in school we were heavily pressured to take it. It was an extra academic course we could fill in a slot with instead of coursed like art, ceramics, chorus or shop. It would boost our GPA because it was worth more and it was supposed to make us look better to colleges.

As someone who has retaken latin in the past 2 years I will say that I use it very regularly. Not like the classics/philosophy PhD students who go speak latin at Bertucci’s once a week but in my comprehension of how words are put together, remembering and learning romance languages, and of course because I’m in the field on Botany where I actually have to read latin at least once a week. (Which of course means I am a geek.)

For every person who takes up Latin in college because they’re actually interested in classical antiquity, I’d expect to find at least one person who’s interested in Latin in part because of the way that it’s been marked through things like the DaVinci Code and the Harry Potter books as a kind of arcane and specialized knowledge which provides initiation into an elite class of the truly informed. And that desire for and/or veneration of specific and detailed knowledge seems to me to have a lot to do with our present notion of “geek”, whether we’re talking conspiracy theories, video game cheats, or just an encyclopedic knowledge of Battlestar Galactica.

Harry Potter Geeks–The Latin-like language used to name the spells ?

Lord of the Rings Geeks–The Elfish language also has some latin roots? (I’m not sure of that, but I think it might be)

Roman Catholic Revision Geeks? There’s a fair number of conservative Catholics and several groups dedicated to brining back the Latin mass.

I think that interest in the Bible might have sparked it as well. (ie, as more people begin to be interested in studying the Bible, they’ll evenutally end trying to learn more about Latin.) ?

i dunno…I think its a patchwork of geek groups? I would guess.

Chris

(Fancy party trick: Tell people what the Greek god name equivalents are for a few of the planets in our solar system. Somehow I recently learned that this is geeky enough that some people are actually surprised by it, but sufficiently of general interest that people seem genuinely interested.)

Latin is one of those things that’s always there if you stop to look for it. It informed a large portion of English (mostly via French) and has benefits for a variety of professions from law to pharmacology.

It does have its fans, and it’s probably safe to say a fandom. Especially when they start to translate Elvis songs (http://www.drammondt.com/english/index.php?page=story) or Harry Potter books (http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-Philosophers/dp/1582348251).