Babbling away in Latin

Montaigne was brought up as a native speaker of Latin! His father, determined that his son should have every advantage in life, and in particular a perfect education, put him in charge of a German who was totally ignorant of French and well versed in Latin. He accompanied him all day and only talked Latin to him. The rest of the household (as well as two other supervisors who were contracted to relieve the German supervisor) were not allowed to utter any words to him that were not Latin. Montaigne did not come into contact with French until the age of seven! He still became of the great masters of the French language. Montaigne later cynically claimed that everyone else had profited more from the experience than he himself. He claimed he quickly forgot all his Latin when he entered school through lack of practice. Probably Montaigne was a bit hard on his father’s experiment. Successful or not, this kind of natural language learning was quite common before 1800 with people who could afford having their children taught at home by private tutors. It was different with whole classes of learners but this did not need to be an obstacle, as was pointed out by J.S. Blackie, a mid-nineteenth century Scots professor of Latin and Greek. Blackie gives an account of a German Latin teacher of the 16th century, Nicholas Clenard,  who had tried just this method with his students. The class consisted of learners from all walks of life. Clenard was quite enthusiastic and said that within a few months, all the boys understood everyhing he said and ‘babbled Latin fluently after their fashion’. (Howatt, A.P.R.: A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 192-4)