UB Media Advisory: The new pope has started tweeting in Latin. Time to hop onboard

What:  Conventiculum Buffaloniense (con-ven-TIK-you-lum Buffalo-nee-ence), the University at Buffalo’s fifth annual three-day immersion workshop in spoken Latin. This year’s theme is friendship or amicitia (ah-me-KEE-tee-ah). The touchstone for discussions of friendship will be Cicero’s “De Amicitia,” selections from which will be read in the workshop.

When: June 26, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; June 27-28, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Best time for media: 1:30-3:30 p.m. June 28 in 107 Capen Hall, UB North Campus.

Where: Byblos Restaurant, 270 Campbell Blvd., Getzville, on June 26, and Honors Colloquium Room, 107 Capen Hall, on June 27-28.

Who: Moderators will be Neil Coffee, PhD, chair and associate professor in the UB Department of Classics; Kevin Roth, a PhD candidate in the UB Department of Classics; and Catherine Nicastro of East Aurora High School. The moderators all have years of experience speaking Latin and leading spoken Latin groups here and in other states and all are working with active Latin exercises in their classrooms.   

Also those who want to read the pope’s Latin tweets, Ciceronians, Latin teachers, potential Latin speakers, students, members of the general public with a yen for fun with Latin literature, games, poetry or socializing in an ancient language.

Program: Among other things, De amicitia puerile or childhood friends, cartoons and photographs (De imaginibus), readings and a discussion of a fragment of “Annales 8” by Quintus Ennius, considered by many the father of Latin poetry, and a Taboo-style game in Latin using vocabulary.  Registration is available at http://classics.buffalo.edu/events/buffaloniense/. The full program is available at http://classics.buffalo.edu/docs/Conventiculum2013SessionPlan6-6-2013.pdf.

*Hick, hike and hoke:  “this man,” “this woman,” “this thing”