WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: Patricia Aeschliman

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Patricia Aeschliman, Assistant Professor of Classics at Hillsdale College, joins Grace Novak on WRFH.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Grace Novak. With me today is Dr. Patricia Eshleman. Dr. Eshleman is the Latin professor here at Hillsdale College. Why don't you just say hello in Trucestessie's self-profest? Okay, good to see you. Good to be here with you. I am assistant professor of classics here at Hillsdale. I specialize in Latin literature, but I also have done a lot of.

lot of work on ancient language pedagogy and specialize in speaking Latin, spoken Latin as well. Okay, wait, that's so cool. And when you just write off the bat, it addressed me as gratia. I think that just that spoken Latin absolutely came out there. That's such a cool thing to just naturally say. Does it come out a lot just like when you're talking generically to people? Well, especially with my students that I normally call their Latin names. like you, you know, I can, I can think of, I think of you as gratia because of that. So, which is, of course, grace comes from the word gratia. But yes, certain, certain things come out, certain things I do think of in Latin, primarily because I speak a lot of Latin at home. And we, my husband and I both speak

Latin and we speak with our daughter as well. All right. That is really cool. And I want to get into that more thoroughly in a moment. But first, why? don't we just back up? And I think that Latin in general, I mean, it's a dead language. That's what everybody always hears, you know. And it seems like it's not very commonly studied anymore, much less spoken. So how, and maybe I'm just ignorant of the Latin field, but why don't you just tell me more about how you became such a scholar of Latin and also just so interested in it on just like a personal level as well. Well, it is a long story, but I'll try to shorten it a bit. I've studied Latin because I went to, like many Hillsdale students, actually went to a classical

academy. And I had to take Latin from ninth grade through 12th grade. I was decently good at it, thought it was interesting. I thought it was an interesting subject, but I wasn't, I wasn't particularly caught such that I would really want to go on to become a Latin professor at the time. And it was in college that I, you know, kept studying it because I didn't want to lose the skill. And I had a professor who showed his love for really Latin poetry to such an extent that I thought there must be something deeper here that I was missing. And so it was when I was when I was a sophomore and a junior in college, really, I started to become more interested in Latin poetry. simultaneously in ancient Greek philosophy, which led me to change my major to classics. At the time, I had never spoken either language. I had learned French as a young child, actually.

And I knew that I had learned it well from speaking, but it didn't really put together that it might help me with Latin to speak it because nobody was teaching it that way when I was in high school and college. When I went to graduate school, because I love, at that point, I had changed my major rather late in college and thought that I had more to learn about Latin and Greek. In grad school, though, this is where the spoken Latin starts to come in. So I didn't, I went to the Catholic University of America, which is a great, great program. But again, no one is speaking there. A few friends, though, in the grad program went to an immersive Latin event that was hosted by the University of Kentucky professors, Terence Tunberg and Milina Mnkova,

were actually the two greatest speakers of Latin in the United States. Wow. And because they enjoyed it, my friends enjoyed this, I decided I would just dabble. I would just, okay, I'll go to their summer program and see what this is like. I had no intention of becoming someone who spoke Latin. Yeah. That sounded pretty weird. To me, I remember going, I was almost a little hesitant.

I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this. But then, and I was floored very, very immediately upon arriving that I was being spoken to by someone who sounded like Cicero to me. Yeah. And I had taken Latin for 10 years at this point. Okay. I was in a master's program. Wow. Yeah.

For Latin. And I couldn't think of how to introduce myself in Latin. But I heard all these people that were high schoolers, college students, other grad students, Latin teachers were in this small world. of spoken Latin, introducing themselves. And I just imitated them. And I could hardly speak. I got really, my brain was working really hard during this. I did a week of immersion. I was really hungry. I needed calories. I remember this. And but by the end, I was able to speak in full sentences pretty well. I just had to activate my passive knowledge. Yeah. And at the end, I went home and I picked up some of my favorite poets. I can't remember if it was Virgil or Horace.

now, but the day after the program I picked up, let's say it was Virgil, I think it was, and started reading. And I found myself reading more quickly and with just that more comfort than I had ever had before. So it was really noticeable change. So fluency in any language, right, will help you to be a better reader of the literature. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's such a cool story and I think also like I think I think it makes sense just most people who have studied the languages like of course you would speak it but for Latin it is it is very unique in that sense with I suppose probably the other some of the other ancient languages but um I do think I would hazard a guess that most if not all of our listeners probably have not really heard too much spoken Latin before so not to put you on the spot but what if do you want to why don't you just say something for me in Latin just so we can hear it um Sure, well, my name is Patricia Eschlabin. Certainly, Gentilicium, nomin, not yet. But, well, Fabilia Mariti, my ex-Swetia to our father, America,

to this many years, winnied. That is so cool. And for those of you who are just now tuning in, this is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Grace Novak and I'm talking with Dr. Patricia Eshleman. Okay, that is really cool. So obviously now this spoken Latin has become a much bigger part of your life. And that kind of takes us to one of the main interest pieces specifically of the interview today, which is that you and your husband are raising your daughter now in Latin. So I'm so interested in so many different parts of this. But just starting right off, I want to know how you and your

husband, if like your Latin speakingness, like did you meet and then find out that each other spoke Latin or is this like a goal that you've grown in together or how has this like even become a goal that you both were equipped to do and excited about? Yes. So I always think it would be rather shocking if we happened to meet somewhere else and happened to both speak Latin. So no, we were introduced because we both speak Latin. It was a few years ago. I guess it was 2021. And I was finishing up my dissertation at Catholic University at a time. And I decided with some friends of mine who also spoke Latin that we were going to run a three day. immersive program ourselves. Wow. And what happened was, I wanted to be, as I say, at the top of

my game, to run a conference. And so we did this really because several programs had gone online and hadn't come back after COVID. And we thought the best way to learn Latin is it's in person, right? If you're going to do spoken Latin, you need to have someone, you can have just a good conversation with. So it was a small event that we ran at Christendom College. You know, a partner of Hillsdale in the way that it also doesn't take government funding. But we ran it there. And I asked, I wrote to a couple of people that were known to be like the best Latinists in the world to see if they could tutor me online like for a few months leading up to this program so that I would be at the top of my Latin speaking game, so to speak. Yeah.

And one of them, Antoine Haker, wrote back that he wouldn't be able to tutor me because he wasn't, he didn't have the time, but he recommended one of his best students. And that happened to be a young man who lived in California, who was a, I'm going to go into the whole story, but that was my future husband, Aloysius Eshleman. Wow. And so he and I actually spoke to each other. in Latin for probably three times a week for several months. And he essentially was, he put together exercises for us so that I could improve and become more, essentially become more fluent,

use better constructions and make my sentences more periodic, like more Ciceronian, we could say. But we don't only use Cicero as a model for those. You know, the vocabulary is too limited there. We have to look to others like Roman comedy. And we also love a lot of Renaissance Latin and looking at Erasmus and others. But essentially, we got to know each other very well through this and became really good friends. At a certain point, you know, through the Perambages, right, a sideways road, essentially, we, you know, eventually, you know, eventually my husband said, my future husband said, like, you don't have to pay for these lessons anymore and we have friends and

eventually we started dating. It was like about a year and a half, I think, after we first connected on Zoom that we started dating. Okay. We met in person about a year after we, I flew to California to visit some friends right after I, um, right after I finished my dissertation, actually. And that was when I first also met him in person. Wow. Okay. Fun story is actually that we, one of the things we did was go to the Getty Villa over in Malibu. Okay.

Which is a reconstructed, well, it's a, what do I call it? A model of the villa of papyrite in Herculaneum, which got covered by Mount Mesuvius eruption in 79 AD. It's where all those famous Herculaneum scrolls are that they were trying to open, using AI, if you heard about that. No. They had some success finding ancient works that we didn't know of. That's crazy. But in any case, we went there and we toured it and we spoke only in Latin.

So we were happy to recreate ancient Herculaneum at that moment. Wow. That is crazy. That's so cool. So maybe this is a silly question, but when did you start speaking in English to one another? Yeah. So we didn't speak English at all. essentially for about a year and a half, we did start speaking some English when we started to

discuss whether, like moving toward dating. There was some English and some, and essentially we both are native English speakers. So when, you know, I guess in matters of the heart, when you're trying to discuss feelings, et cetera, I'll just say, you know, it is easier to use your native language. Yeah, that makes total sense. Okay. So that's so cool. And so, okay, now you have a daughter and she's, how old? She's almost one. She'll be one next.

That's so exciting. And I can testify she is very, very, very adorable. But, okay, so she's about almost one. And you guys are raising her in Latin. So I am so curious. Why don't you just tell me like what that looks like, what the inspiration behind was that? And I also know, I've heard it mention that that's pretty unusual.

I mean, you named 10,000 active spoken Latin speakers. So I imagine, like, being raised from birth in the Latin tongue has got to be almost unique, right? Yes. It's pretty rare. We both are fluent in Latin. And it is, I think, like, a major part of our family culture, I think it will be. But, you know, as a couple, of course, it is very important to us. So we think for that reason, it does make sense to bring Antonia into that.

And generally speaking, you know, it is good for children to be raised bilingual. And it is my husband's, a major hope of my husband's and goal is to found a school that. wherein the students speak Latin and so we hope to give her a head start for the school that he would found it's meant to be for like starting around age nine or so so we have several years to prepare for that but this would be an imitation of Renaissance schools where the goal was to prepare students to read and to read Latin and to be active members of the of the academic world because up until the mid-1600s people were and still to some extent after that people spoke Latin in all educational settings.

So we hope that it will give her an immense head start in terms of being conversant with, not only with classical Latin poetry, Latin literature, but also with centuries of history, with the, you know, with the Catholic Church's history, with the really all, many academic. disciplines got their start with Latin in Latin literature. So we don't find it. We don't think it would only be, you know, that it would be a waste if she didn't go into classics or something like that. But rather that it could be something that gives her a head start in any number of subjects. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And this is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Grace Novak and I'm talking with Dr. Patricia Eshleman. Okay. We only have just a few moments left, but I have a few more questions that I really just, I need to know before we end. So I suppose, okay, I'll just rapid fire them at you. How unique is this to have a child?

Like, I know you touched not being rare, but like if you were to give numbers on like someone, like a baby who is being raised with two fluent parents. Yeah. Yeah. We happen to know one other couple. If there's another one out there that we don't know of, so sorry if anyone hears. But there's an Italian. named Stephanos Vittori and his wife Marina Garanin. Marina is Russian, but grew up in largely in Germany. The two of them got married actually around the same time that we did and had their child, Lucretia, just about a month before we had Antonia. So we keep in touch with them. Wait, okay, so two in the world that you know, that we know of.

There are several others we know of, I have a few friends. that the dad speaks Latin. Okay. But not a lot. Okay. Yeah. I couldn't say, maybe less than 10 that I know of.

Yeah, this is definitely small company. That is so cool. So then just practically, I'm curious what that looks like just inside of the home and how does she, like, does she respond to Latin or English? She responds, I think she responds to both. So she responds to Latin.

Yes. She, the only word, she's only one. So I can't say a lot about this. But, you know, the only word that she has that we're certain is Latin is, in fact, non, non, non, non, non, which she tends to say to herself whenever I tell her, like, it's not allowed. Non-leak it. And she's like, oh, no, no, non. But we do notice that she says, it makes sense. She says the word bye-bye, very clearly in English, bye-bye. But we think that would be less, we're not often saying bye-bye, like wale. We're not often saying in. Latin to each other. Wale, because we're not usually leaving as much as we say bye to other

people in English. So it makes sense to me that she picks up on that. But she does understand that when we say Wale, she also says bye-bye. So she's starting to be bilingual, right? Yeah. And she says Mama and Papa, which are both Latin and English, really. But Papa is what we tend to say for Alawish. Yeah. We have a lot of books for her that we've translated in, well, our working on translating into Latin. I either have written the Latin in the books. I like to keep the English. I maybe I'm a little more conservative than some people would be, but I keep the English there so that someone else could still read the book to her. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll add the Latin translation or I'll just translate it on the spot as I'm reading to her. That's so cool.

That we decided both of us would speak to her in Latin and otherwise, you know, she would hear English. Now, I think that as I understand, even though I'm not an expert on the way that Montaigne was taught Latin, as he's kind of held up as the last person to have learned it as a native language, my understanding is that his parents hired a German tutor who was fluent in Latin to kind of follow him around and make sure that he was hearing Latin, correct Latin, all the time, and that anyone that talked to Montaigne had to speak Latin as I am. understand. So his mom was sort of learning Latin from the tutor as when he was a young boy. And so we aren't doing it that way. We're not like forcing the town to learn Latin.

So be glad. But because we do want her to also, you know, have the experience of knowing English in America at this time. But we, since the two of us do speak Latin fluently, we thought this would be the best way to give her the most Latin she could get. No, that makes so much sense. Optime. Well, this has been wonderful. And our guest has been Dr. Patricia Eichelman, and I'm Grace Novak on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

Thank you.