Recent reports of a boom in primary-school Latin may be exaggerated.
It turns out that the impressive-sounding 400 schools that teach the language make up a less impressive 2.8 per cent of the total. French and Spanish still, quite sensibly, rule OK.
Latin’s revival, however small, could have as much to do with politics as linguistics. The two languages it has overtaken are German and Mandarin.
I was quite surprised that German was taught much to under-13s at all, while Mandarin’s popularity always seemed
