Last benefit of a classical education......?

That happened to us in Italy. We were staying near Lago Maggiore, had an appartment. Unfortunately we didn't have the key to the main front door with us, only to our flat.

AT nearly midnight we rang all the bells in the hope of someone letting us in and spoke to someone on the door telephone. DH remembered the word for key in Latin and kept repeating it and the door opened and we were in.

I agree with what you say Terribull (I can still recite most of it verbatim) I, like your DH learned Latin at school so something somewhere stuck.

As a student I had a holiday job in a psychiatric hospital as an assistant nurse. Most of the others were Italian immigrants, a lovely crowd. I found I could communicate with them in a mixture of french and latin (O level)
We weren't much good with most of the patients though, who were Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

My Latin teacher was called FOSSIL.

Possibly one of the few advantages of being brought up a Catholic when the mass was in Latin, I feel I picked up a smattering through osmosis. My husband did Latin at his grammar school and he convinced me that Latin is not only a straightforward logical language but a great help with languages derived from it, which of course all these years later I can see.

23% for O level Latin

My dad was once given a prescription after brain surgery for which the leaflet and instructions were written in Portuguese. Between us we had enough, Latin, Italian, French and Spanish to work it all out. We did mention the problem to the pharmacist though!

I guess the dosage and times a day instruction was comprehensible but dad wanted to read the leaflet.

I loved Latin and also liked Greek. I took both up to first year at University but decided to take my degree in English. I can remember quite a lot of Latin (7 years) but not quite so much Greek (4 years). Good for crosswords and spelling.

Hated having to take Latin at school and managed to 'drop' it after mock GCEs. However it has helped to understand some words and link things together by their latin roots. We have lots of german-rooted words in english, from the Hanoverian kings, and french words from earlier kings too. We seem to have absorbed a lot from our past immigrants

I only know 'Illegitimi non carborundum' which is mock Latin.

I'm a product of the comprehensive system lol.