[jejones3141]

OTOH, were it not for bad Latin speakers, we wouldn't have the Romance languages. A John Simon/William Safire of the era is an important source of data on their development--he wrote a list of proper Latin terms and the corresponding words in the bad Latin he was seeing and/or hearing. Dang it, it's not caballus, it's equus!

[mtVessel]

So you're saying that when I correct someone publicly, I'm not being an insufferable pedant, I'm contemporaneously documenting usage for future linguists!

Ooh, I'm gonna get so much mileage out of that one.