Habeone Cheezbrger?
I nominate this for the Best Linguistic Pun of 2009.
I don’t suppose you have an example or two at hand do you?
name suggestions for dopers?
Though you spelled it wrong, it should be Auntie Diluvian =)
I was so impressed by it that I had no comeback! :o
I’ll be the first to admit that Latin isn’t useful for most people living nowadays, but (present NCIS case excepted - I have no idea what’s going on with that) most of the Latin that I’ve seen in modern TV and film is pretty darn basic, with lots of cultural relevence, or parallels to English or other modern languages. I don’t think it actually takes much/any real knowledge of Latin to follow along.
Re: pronunciation. Yes, it’s theoretical. But the letters are all still going to be in the same order, it’s not like we’d be speaking utter gibberish.
I’m going to move this from The BBQ Pit to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
You wait until an actual expert-type shows up in the thread and then move it?
'Twas a coincidence. And I didn’t *close *it, I *moved *it. Folks can still post and all.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
And all I do with it is read cereal boxes!
That’s Latium. I know someone who was born there.
Oh, sure. We all know the prejudice classicists face. Never mean enough for the Pit. Hmph.
Does this mean we can use the forbidden words and do the forbidden things if we make it sound “latiney”?
I kid, I kid. I am sure the answer to that is neverous everous.
It’s not even this sort of thing I’m complaining about. If you’re not in biology it’s just a matter of trivia that might amuse you. What I’m complaining about is the notion you get in TV shows that people would just know how to translate Latin from a cold reading or hearing. This is just tossed in as a quick way to show off how smart a character is, but in real life you don’t get that from just being smart. You have to spend a great deal of time studying the language.
Mea culpa by you is pretentious? It’s common coin, and has been for a good while.
You don’t need to learn Latin for medical school. You just memorize the terms. Hell, I had a friend who studied veterinary medicine and memorized that the right eye was called “O.D.” and the left eye was called “O.S.” She didn’t know or care why.
It depends on what you want out of life. Do you want to be able to weave baskets? Would you like to better appreciate baskets woven by others, opening up a world of perspective into not only ancient baskets, but present and even emerging baskets? And then of course there are the analytical skills you can develop from a study of basket weaving, and the effect it’s known to have on your SAT scores.
Quisquis olfēcit effēcit.
Yep. It starts with learning the Latin names for birds. Then you’re doing a few conjugations just for kicks. Next thing you know you’re mainlining I-E.
Birota invīsibilis!
One of the beauties of Victorian novels (for me) is that they say exactly what they mean to say. (ok, sometimes they’re wordier than hell, but still).
I am not fluent in Latin and therefore cannot claim any intelligence at all. This saddens me, as I had hoped to someday be able to fend for myself and eke out some kind of mundane albeit wretched existence. Or not. <resigns self to a life of burbling inanities and uselessness>
Johnny Angel, your last post makes your point far more clear than the OP did. I thought you were arguing that Latin was irrelevant (which I somewhat agree with), but it seems you are saying Latin is hard (which I agree with fervently).
Carry on.
Well, of course that’s always the danger in being ironic. But yeah, my point is that they treat it as though actually being able to sight read the language is something you just pick up in your education while you’re studying something completely different. But it’s not something that will ever turn out to be a surprising flash of depth in someone’s character. By the time you know the stuff that well, it will have had a very noticeable effect on who you are, how you think and how you express yourself every day of your life.
Don’t worry. I’ll keep you company. 
Fág an bealach!
You know how people say, “The only ____ words I know are swear words”? The only Irish I know could also get me in trouble in the wrong circumstances. 
Yabbut, does he sing opera whilst banging on the bongos?
I wonder if this is why the English translation of Asterix has no footnotes for the Latin quotes (Cesar’s Aleia iacta est and similar), while the German translation does? But they were done in the 1960s and 70s…