Oh, I see, Jayles the Unready. You mean you are blessed for I rail against thee, but you say it is the case that I say all manner of evil against thee falsely whereas I would argue that I do so truly, for Yea, your grammar's all to hell because it contains errors which are all to do with number and with case, which is to say, the functions of the words within the sentence concerned, with the added frilly bit being the three (on a good day) different declensions involved, and their own internal variations from one word to the next in the manner in which each declines down the list according to its function. Shows you the way for German, Russian, and Yea, Xhosa and Zulu and all their relatives too. Get cracking on one and soon you can easily master the lot. Piece of cake. Not Afrikaans, though. It is simple and has no grammar worth mentioning, I gather. I was advised that if you want to pronounce it properly you must aspire just to make it sound as disgusting as possible, with much in the way of gargling and retching noises. Bizarrely I could not master this noisy and noisome tongue which is a shame, for it is bloody good fun gargling in it.

And as for our learned friend WW, indeed I am up to date on 1066 and all that stuff, and can picture the illustration as we speak. You are correct in observing that the schools round these parts like to pronounce it as they please, partly to help the poor wretches who have enough to cope with in this immensely instructive medium, many of whom might give up the ghost if nothing at all is as it seems. And partly because I bet it was never pronounced like these weird ways suggest. How the hell do we know how they pronounced it? We don't even know how Queen Victoria pronounced her English. I believe it has something to do with the noises and rhythms and rhymes which emerge from a really deep study of the poetry. But v rhymes with u rhymes with w and they all float in and out of one another all the time, not that I know all about that, or indeed anything at all about it. It wasn't my department.

Well indeed, Jayles the Unsteady, I have consulted the Good Book and Yea, there is something about great being my reward in heaven, and some chaps being prosecuted. I know this sounds somewhat unlikely, but in a previous incarnation I used to be the chap who was meant to prosecute the criminals in Cape Town's magistrate's court. It's a long story. We had to do a Latin exam as part of the qualification, for the law in those parts was based on Roman Law. Not criminal law, mind. Another in the local version of Dutch which the criminals favoured. Some richly comic fellows there were the gentlemen who translated the stuff the criminals and witnesses said out of the local African lingo into whatever lingo the prosecutor favoured (or whoever was bullying these folk into speaking up for themselves). It was the only chance you got to employ English if you fancied.
Surely, Jayles, you do not refer to that fearful episode I endured in that frightful place where I was winning my education? You cannot, for you did not know of it. I thought it was going to prove to be that chap who had cast his star in the firmament to whom you alluded, but no, it is to do with the beatitudes about which I was instructed many moons ago. Whatever are you on about?

nil lamentandum sed gaude et exulta quod merces vestra copiosa sunt in caelis propter plurales latinos, ...

... you mean, surely, Jayles the Unsteady.

gaude and exulta are singular imperative commands, singular because I am one such, vestra is 2nd declension adjective in agreement with merces, 3rd declension neuter noun it seems, despite an ending which would make a chap plump for masc/fem, both nom. masc. plural. I like quod for because=on the grounds that: quoniam means 'since/whereas/because' which is not what we are after here, because the 'whereas' aspect is not at all what we want

5 errors. 11/16, or perhaps 15/20 to round it up a bit. Jolly good for a beginner, in my view. These days they'd give that an A grade after three years' work if you could reproduce this quality across a few sentences. Perhaps the equivalent of five in all. Piece of cake! I say go for it and add another arrow to your quiver.

Thanks, Skeeter Lewis, for the reminder. I had forgotten all those things that chap said, shamefully.

Excuse me, Skeeter Lewis - am I taking your statement too literally? Is it perhaps sent with humorous intent? I am not aware of anyone attempting to pluralise these good ladies, or rather, their names. It must be a joke, I suppose.
iungo, iungere, iunxi, iunctum, if I recall accurately. Means join. Change i to j and you have the roots of con-jugate, junction ... you name it. Stuff to do with joining. Shagging is joining. That's your lot, unless you want to join Jayles the Unsteady in signing up for Latin lessons. Funny how no one likes to do that, isn't it? How else do you plan to learn English?

Good god! A convert! I think I'm going to cry.

Hairy Scot, he'd have absolutely loved it. I had a lad like that and he and I were great mates.
As for you, Jayles the Unsteady, your method is just a copout. There's a fellow on these pages who'd have us all using only Anglo-Saxon words. You and he could be great mates too, if you wanted, but it isn't following the rules of the game.

The third bit there's very funny. I would pay gold to have heard one of my pupils tell me that.

I never could understand why Dr Sherwin-White of St John's College Oxford, who taught me a think or two about Latin, insisted on spelling it with a u.

The British like to say it with a w, but then, they're English, aren't they? And veni vidi vici are Latin. And the continental experts say it with a v, I understand, and so do I.