When I started Latin at school, I wondered why I should learn a language which nobody spoke anymore. To me it made no sense and my grades where accordingly. At that time it was very posh when a girl learned Latin that's why I had to learn it too. Besides the pope and some priests there was nobody I could chat with and these old guys were not very interesting for a young girl. At least I learned one sentence which I liked "Quo Vadis". Apparently it refers to Saint Peter who met Jesus while fleeing from Rome and asked him "Quo vadis ?" He probably didn't ask in Latin but more logically in Hebrew, but that was inacceptable for the Roman catholic church.
From the one year Latin lessons I suffered at school there is not much left. Still some vocabularies.
Later I learned about the Roman empire and I thought that today's languages like French, Portuguese, Spanish, etc must be a dialect from Latin and especially the Italian one, because they were the old Romans.
I kept "Quo vadis" in my mind and occasionally I ask when somebody intends to go to the toilet "Quo vadis" ? Then of course people think that I am a very savant woman !
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