[tomcooks]

> One of my Latin teachers did try to teach us a proper pronuncation once, but quickly gave up.

Basically what happens in Europe when students need to learn English pronunciation, but no way to give up.

> But i wonder, what is the point?

By learning Latin you multiply the speed at which you learn romance languages, which will allow you to understand and communicate with a much larger share of the world.

Moreover, but this is a personal sidenote: why do people outside of the Anglosphere need to learn how to speak perfect English (and get the usual banter about pronunciation not being spotless), while the Anglosphere generally doesn't bother returning the favour (while at the same time complaining about being treated as uneducated, rude gringos)

[Grieving]

> By learning Latin you multiply the speed at which you learn romance languages, which will allow you to understand and communicate with a much larger share of the world.

As someone else said, you can just as well learn a Romance language and you'll have the same benefit when learning a second. My grandfather's first language was an obscure French dialect, and he's able to communicate with Mexican Spanish speakers without much trouble.

> Moreover, but this is a personal sidenote: why do people outside of the Anglosphere need to learn how to speak perfect English (and get the usual banter about pronunciation not being spotless), while the Anglosphere generally doesn't bother returning the favour (while at the same time complaining about being treated as uneducated, rude gringos)

I don't know if this holds true elsewhere in the Anglosphere, but in my experience Americans who are interested in learning foreign languages are generally eager to perfect their pronunciation (whether or not they succeed is another question entirely, though to be fair the same is true about most English learners). That "uneducated, rude gringos" are a long-standing negative trope in popular American media reflects this insecurity. And with regard to classical languages in particular, the Anglosphere has been mocked for reviving 'spotless' classical pronunciations instead of simply using, for example, modern Italian or Greek pronunciation.

[umanwizard]

I don’t think there’s any evidence that learning Latin helps you learn Romance languages any faster than learning a Romance language does. Why should learning Latin and then French be any faster than Spanish->French ?

[bshimmin]

I studied Latin and French from the age of 11. When I spent a year in Bologna as a student on the Erasmus scheme (studying Latin, in fact), I can assure you that my schoolboy French was the more useful of the two as a starting point for learning Italian.

[CaptArmchair]

I would like to add that that's not a coincidence either.

The Late-Roman republic and the Roman Empire saw the emergence of vulgar Latin next to classical Latin. Vulgar Latin developed first in Italy and was subsequently adopted throughout the Empire. Vulgar Latin also saw active evolution during late antiquity. It diverged from classical Latin to a point where both lost out being mutual intelligible (7th century). That's when classical Latin became a dead language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#Vulgar_Latin

The decline of the Roman Empire coincided with an age of mass migrations. As Roman influenced waned, people across the European peninsula fragmented. As did language development. That's where you find the common root of modern romance languages. Over the course of several centuries, local changes and influences forged distinct languages.

For sure, classical Latin and modern romance language are all of the same family. But Cicero's Latin is further removed from French then modern day Italian.

[shakow]

> Why should learning Latin and then French be any faster than Spanish->French ?

Indeed. I'm French, and I can basically read (not too literary) Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Latin, not so much. I have been told by locutors of these languages that the Italian/Spanish gap is even narrower.