AUBURN – Auburn resident Mark Hazard, who teaches at Cheverus High School, was one of a handful of people who attended summer camp to improve his ability to speak a foreign language. He recently returned from a weeklong total-immersion program taught in Petaluma, Calif., where participants spent a week speaking only Latin.

Hazard says that “People learn a language by reading, writing and speaking, and practicing speaking is one of the most intense ways you can learn it.”

He’s quick to add that Latin may be dead in the sense that nobody learns it as a native language, but many people are interested in practicing conversation to develop their reading skills, and even those who do not study Latin still rely on it today, even when they’re not aware of it.

Participants in the Rusticatio Californiana (which roughly translates as California country life) stayed in a restored farmhouse, where they assisted in cooking their own meals under the guidance of one of the Rusticatio’s key teachers and its cook, Andrew Gollan. Like typical campers, the group went rafting, sang songs, and even put on plays, always maintaining the one basic rule of the workshop, Latin only.

There was also a considerable amount of formal classroom training. Each day participants attended four to five hours of workshop sessions on grammar and vocabulary, which gave them a wealth of ideas and exercises to use in their own teaching.

Like most of the other participants, Hazard currently teaches Latin, though unlike many of the participants his background is not primarily in classical literature and ancient history. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University in Medieval Literature, which he has taught at both Colby and Bates Colleges. His training in Middle English literature led to an interest in Latin commentaries on the Bible, a subject on which he has published and lectured frequently.

When asked what draws people to activities such as the Rusticatio, several of the participants mentioned the sociability of the people who practice Latin in conversation, saying they feel like they have hundreds of friends around the world.

Some people organize a monthly Latin dinner at which people have an opportunity to meet and converse in Latin. Hazard is interested in hearing from other local Latin speakers who know of or would be interested in participating in such events. He can be contacted at [email protected].