[schoen]

I've done spoken Latin stuff as well as taking Latin classes, and I tentatively agree with my friends who are Latin teachers and use immersion in the classroom that it should help and that it's a big gap not to have it.

I also agree that the Vergil and Cicero constructions are harder than what you would hear at a spoken Latin gathering (or probably in a Latin-immersion class). The word order people usually use when speaking is more like modern Romance languages (with some tendency to put the verb at the end, but not, say, chiasmus!). That did make me think that ancient Romans probably didn't talk like Cicero or Vergil either. :-)

I always remember this line from Cicero

Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo custodi huius urbis, gratia ...

in which "magna" 'great' modifies "gratia" 'thanks', which is the subject of "est habenda" 'should be given'. That's tricky, or at least a lot to keep in your head when trying to parse it.