From the Times Leader:

“No other language has its own convention. … And when people ask what language you’re taking, you say Latin, and it makes them think.”
Audree Riddle Elgin High School in Illinois

Erin Flynn looked around the hotel ballroom, where about 400 high-schoolers were studiously working.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she asked. “These are kids, on their day off, taking tests.”

Of course, these aren’t just any kids. They are Latin students — “Latin geeks,” as some refer to themselves — and they were attending the Illinois Junior Classical League convention at the Holiday Inn Select and Convention Center in Tinley Park, Ill.

Sure, there were exams — eight written tests over two days, testing their Latin skills and knowledge of ancient Rome — and there were workshops, oratory contests and the election of officers. But there were also spirit and talent competitions, a re-enactment of a Roman wedding, a Latin-flavored version of “Jeopardy!” called a certamen (“a conflict, rivalry, engagement”), a Roman banquet where a toga was the required dress, a costume contest (the Tantalus outfits killed), and an art show (when was the last time you saw a diorama of Germanicus and Arminius duking it out at the Battle of Idistaviso?).

“If someone isn’t social and likes to compete, there’s the contests,” explained Ava Caffarini, from Lincoln-Way Central High School in New Lenox, Ill. “If you like to have fun, there’s that too.”

A lot of that.

Caffarini is one of more than 700 students from 17 chapters — that’d be DCC and XVII, respectively, for those who prefer Roman numerals — in the Illinois Junior Classical League. As of January, the National Junior Classical League ( www.njcl.org) had 34,140 members in 45 states and around the world. Not bad numbers for a supposedly dead language that no one cares about.

“I’ve been involved in it since I was a student,” said Jennifer Draper, the state chairman for the IJCL and a Latin teacher at Notre Dame High School in Niles, Ill. “Back in those days it was one day at a high school.”

Now it’s three days at a convention center (the group outgrew last year’s venue, a west suburban hotel) and an increase of about 100 students in the past three years. Impressive in that at some schools, Latin is a dead language.

“The problem is more Latin programs are getting closed out,” said Laura Cassil, a student who is the national first vice president of the Junior Classical League. One of her duties is publicizing the group to other schools.

“Sometimes it’s hard to get the JCL message out there. … It’s just a case of telling them, hey, this is the JCL. This is who we are. This is what we do. We wear togas in public places.”

Not a bad selling point.

“My best friends are in Latin,” said Sarah Ferro, from Lincoln-Way East High School in Frankfort, Ill. “A couple of others who took German wish they took Latin, because we have a lot of fun.”

Often, the kids don’t need much convincing. Their parents do.

“We had a freshman open house,” said Andy Mollo of Lincoln-Way East, “and a lot of parents … you’d say to the kids, ‘You interested in taking Latin?’ And the parents, they’d … “ — here he made a laughing, snorting noise — “and they’d walk away. ‘Wait! Wait!’ And the kids, they’d want to take it.”

And lest you think Latin is a one-way chariot ride to The Land o’ Nerds, guess again.

“We have football players, we have cheerleaders,” said Flynn, who teaches at Lincoln-Way Central. “I have the sophomore valedictorian. We have all kinds of kids.”

Maybe best of all, the kids want to be there.

“They didn’t have to take Latin,” Flynn said. “They could have taken wood shop and gotten the same credit.”

But they have good reasons for their interest.

Ferro took it because it’s closest to Italian, which she speaks. Caffarini wants to be a doctor, and knowing Latin will help her in her studies. Cassil also has an interest in science, and because Latin is the basis of all the Romance languages, she said it helps her vocabulary. Mollo said it’s the basis for Western civilization, so we should study it.

It also has a certain cachet to it.

“Not a lot of people take it,” said Audree Riddle, from Elgin High School in Elgin, Ill. “No other language has its own convention. … And when people ask what language you’re taking, you say Latin, and it makes them think.”

The original article is followed by a brief quiz ... while I could guess vesperna (which is only attested once, no?), I had never heard of andabata (interestingly enough).