As for 'why all the Latin?', I cheated my way through a couple years of it in high school, and actually rather liked it. But what with the unfortunate collapse of the Roman Empire and all that, I don't get to use it as much as I'd like.
And while it still gets plenty of airtime in serious scholarly works, I feel like its overblown-goofball-pretentiousness skills aren't getting the attention they deserve.
