I studied Hebrew and Ancient Greek (which differs a bit from modern Greek, unfortunately). From what I can tell of my 6 years as an ancient language student, is that we never really reached that point, but we LOVED joking around in the few bits we could formulate. Also, my professors did much the same, even if they did it at a much higher level than us. I also remember all of them lamenting the fact that they will never be as good as the rabbi in the Jewish church right across campus (who read from the Torah every Sabbath).

I would like to add, though, that this is a personal experience, and that some will obviously become more fluent than others. On the other hand, I know (from learning Dutch) that fluency comes with practice. Whenever I talk to a Dutch person for a while, I get better for a while. And when I don't it goes away. And as these old languages would have a very limited amount of people speaking them, it would be hard to become conversational-fluent in them. Rather I suppose they would be able to read it well, pronounce many words, but probably not have long conversations. Exceptions may occur.

I studied Hebrew and Ancient Greek (which differs a bit from modern Greek, unfortunately). From what I can tell of my 6 years as an ancient language student, is that we never really reached that point, but we LOVED joking around in the few bits we could formulate. Also, my professors did much the same, even if they did it at a much higher level than us. I also remember all of them lamenting the fact that they will never be as good as the rabbi in the Jewish church right across campus (who read from the Torah every Sabbath).

I would like to add, though, that this is a personal experience, and that some will obviously become more fluent than others. On the other hand, I know (from learning Dutch) that fluency comes with practice. Whenever I talk to a Dutch person for a while, I get better for a while. And when I don't it goes away. And as these old languages would have a very limited amount of people speaking them, it would be hard to become conversational-fluent in them. Rather I suppose they would be able to read it well, pronounce many words, but probably not have long conversations. Exceptions may occur.