Long Live Latin!

[Primus Pilus]

and italians are not romans, but a combination of goths, gauls, normans, and lombardians.

Well, and Italians

[haimore]

Latin didn't die...it evolved....into Italian...and French...and Spanish...and it's most direct descendent...Romani...spoken in Switzerland near the Italian border.

[Lex]

Pompeius magnus, Italians are still more Roman than most other Europeans. Anyway, Italians (or at least those in central Italy) consider themselves as the descendents of the Romans. Petrarch says it quite nicely:

 

The vital spark remains,

And Roman blood still warms Italian veins.

 

Legionarius, most of Italy used to speak a dialect of Latin, and almost every village had and still has its own dialect. The language that was adopted as Italian was the dialect of Latin that was used by Florence.

 

Personally I don

[haimore]

Church Latin sounds pretty impressive...but Latin Class in HS was a pain...glad I took it though...it made picking up Spanish a LOT easier.

[Ursus]

I admit I've come to a barrier in my own self studies. The amazing array of verb endings are just starting to flow together in my mind and I can't keep them straight.

 

Classical Latin, being an artificial language used by the elite, probably should remain in the history books anyway. However having studied a bit of Latin I now have an enormous respect for the extent to which the vulgar form influenced our own so-called Germanic language of English.

[Augustus]

Trying to revive it as a living language is pointless, however it should be used as a language in academic circles, law, religion, etc. Limited use would keep it in a sort of suppended animation, plus my major wouldn't be pointless.

[Silentium]

I