Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
When I took Latin in high school....
In retrospect it seems to me that the big advantage of taking Latin in school is acquiring superior knowledge of grammar!

I mean what other purpose is there? Ocassionally understanding the meaning of an unusual word, or being able to understand inscriptions on church walls just doesn't seem like a motivation for language studies. I find it almost impossible to learn the type of grammar skills you need for studying Russian as an adult. I wish I had learnt it in childhood like you, and Bitpicker did.

I on the other hand did close to a year of Russian in school, but the teacher took a quite relaxed view of the grammar and started with acquiring vocabulary and some other things instead. I actually dropped out and managed to switch to the "easiest" 3rd foreign language option, Spanish, instead. No 16 cases or Cyrillic letters there!