Anyone here speaking Latin?

[Kirsten]

So do I!! I'm a retired nurse, and there is so much of Latin in medical terminology.

That is true! I was working for an oncologist in the 90s, and I also had to learn the medical terminology. I still remember a lot of that!

I wondered about the German. I took German, 2 years, in high school. Can't speak it, but for a few phrases - Wie geht's? - but am amazed at what I remember when hearing it spoken in a movie, for instance.

Yes, I guess we keep more of the learnt stuff in mind than we would imagine. Had the same experience with French lately. Btw, I'm also wondering how German sounds to people from other countries. I figure it sounds awfully hard and stiff... And I think it's difficult to learn.

Re. the gender of nouns: I figure that this is hard to understand for someone who doesn't have something like that in his language. But many languages have that, the French language has masculine and feminine nouns, and so does Spanish... German even has a third gender, neuter. "Time" for example is feminine, so you would say "die Zeit".

We were told that learning
Latin helps to understand English.We were a Catholic school so we
used Latin in church services.

Yes, I can see many words of Latin origin in the English language. But after all, the Romans spent several centuries in Great Britain and had a strong influence on their culture (like everywhere else in Europe as well).

I took one year of Latin in junior high school. I rmember the teacher seemed old enough to have been around when Latin was still spoken..

LOL!! Good one!

The problem with Latin as a spoken language, unless you plan on visiting the POPE/Vatican you are going to be hard pressed to practice actually speaking the language

That was the reason why everyone talked into me to take French instead of Latin when I had to chose back at school! But I love reading medieval novels and stories, and they often contain Latin quotes. Like the one I'm reading right now, Pope Joan by Donna W. Cross.
Besides, I'd love to visit the Vatican and Rome one day, even though I'm not Catholic. But it must be such an interesting place, so full of history...

Kirsten