Living Classical Languages Society
Try out an exciting way of learning and fully absorbing Latin or Greek or Akkadian! Living Classical Languages is all about enjoying our languages by speaking them.
SALVÉTE! XAÍPETE! LŪ ŠULMUM!
Welcome to Living Classical Languages. Whether you want to begin learning classical languages (Latin, Greek, Akkadian), or you already know them to any level, with us your confidence and fluency will soar as you practise expressing yourself in the languages, meet lots of like-minded Latinists, Hellenists, Akkadologists, and certainly have loads of fun. Our sessions are free and open to all, including students from other universities and non-students, so why not give it a try?
Who we are
We are a group of students, researchers, lecturers, and language enthusiasts, seeking to cultivate the active use of perennial Latin, classical Greek, ancient Akkadian. Established in 2017 following the success of the first UCL Living Latin Workshop, led by Dr Emily Chow-Kambitsch, UCL Living Latin, then Living Latin & Greek, and now Living Classical Languages, provides a space to actively learn and practise the fascinating languages to which we are devoted.
What we do
Mostly we facilitate free living classical languages instruction with the communicative approach at various levels, from complete beginners to advanced, and particularly for those who have no previous experience speaking them. The sessions are in-person in the main UCL campus, bear no credit, and are open to everyone!
For details on our provision, please refer to the section below. If you are interested in any of our groups, please contact us (email addresses hyperlinked above) indicating which one you would like to join and that you would like to be added to our mailing list; please make sure you give us some idea of your level and background in the language as well.
Apart from our language sessions, we also occasionally provide open lecture nights on various academic topics, and even lecture series like one in Latin on Virgil in 2020-2021 (online) and the one in Greek on Comparative Philology (language and literature) in 2025-2026 (in person).
Not only that, we also organise various socials, including celebratory dinners per language and across languages several times a year, as well as a first ever Guided Tour of the British Museum in Latin, Greek, and Akkadian, in 2024-2025, that we look forward to repeating in 2025-2026.
Why we do it
We know from research on second-language acquisition in general and for our languages in particular [cf. Lloyd & Hunt (edd.), Communicative Approaches for Ancient Languages (2021)], and indeed from our very personal experience, that actively engaging with and immersing ourselves in Latin or Greek or Akkadian, just as we do with the modern languages we learn, enables us to develop a deeper and more enduring mastery of those languages, in a fraction of the time. All the benefits of traditional composition practice are enhanced by the immediacy of conversation, which forces us to absorb in advance the information that we otherwise passively rely on grammar books and dictionaries to retrieve. It is composition, but on your feet! This in turn boosts the ability to read spontaneously, not just painstakingly translate, the literature with greater ease.
Philological intensive reading is at the core of academic research. The communicative approach fosters an ancillary extensive reading fluency [cf. Aurora, “Spoken Ancient Greek and Latin Today” (2022)] that allows us to cultivate more confident appreciation of the literature in its wider sense (of interest also to philosophers, lawyers and historians) and even engage with the scholarship and commentary produced across the ages directly in those languages (most of which remains untranslated) as we likewise discuss the texts in the very same languages too. The absorption and degree of acquisition of the languages that active mastery ensures is finally a guarantee that we will never now forget them or grow unable to access them for the rest of our lives.
We are a community of like-minded people who all share an interest in the classical languages, and, whether that be for academic reasons, or to freely access the wealth of their perennial literature, or because we simply find enjoyment in expressing ourselves in the languages we love, find tremendous joy speaking Latin and Greek and Akkadian in the friendly company of each other.
Come and join us!
Schedule for 2025-26
- Latin 1: Not running in Spring 2026
- Latin 2 (Intermediate) with Matthæus et alii: Mondays 6-8 pm
- Greek 1: Not running in Spring 2026
- Greek 2 with Ἄϊτος: Tuesdays 3-5 pm
- Greek 3 lectures on Comparative Philology with Ἄϊτος: Tuesdays 5-6 pm
- Akkadian 1 with Awīṭ: Wednesdays 5-7 pm. No more applications are taken until September 2026
- Akkadian 2 with Awīṭ: Not running in 2025-2026