One question, Why?

Unless you want to be a classical scholar and read virgil and plutarch in their original languages or study the history and litergy of the catholic church, I'm not sure why you would want to speak latin.

As for help, well it's not really something you can just learn like that, I'd recommend finding a classics course if your interested and doing the thing properly, though be certain you know what your getting into.

Regarding latin as a spoken language, well Latin was! a spoken language for  several hundred years (by the romans if nothing else), and it's possible to learn, although nobody  actually speaks it as an everyday language anymore and it's only really used for historical purposes sinse it became the language of scholarship for so many years.

Occasionally modern books are still  translated into Latin, I even heard there is a Latin  translation of Harry potter, but these are usually more a novelty than anything else sinse it's not as if anyone actually speaks latin as a first language anymore.

So, if you want to learn latin, I'd recommend doing the thing properly, but be certain you know why and what your getting into first.

Hi Paddy.

interestingly enough, while I've never studdied latin, I did spanish at school, and am currently learning to speak Italian, in order that I can sing in it convincingly.

Both languages have a very similar scheme of altering the endings of all verbs and most nowns as you describe, although Italian uses more pronowns than Spanish, and often has some quite formal ways of saying things. For example, for most Italian verbs if you are talking about events in the past you can't just say "I went home" you would need to say "I have traveled home"

There is also similarly an imperative form of each verb which you would use in giving orders to people directly as well, for example when in the Simpsons episode set in Itally side show bob says "Manjate" for lets eat, that is actually incorrect, what he said ws "you eat" he should've said "Majete" (note I might have my italian spellings wrong sinse I'm learning it primarily to converse in).

I don't actually find it that difficult, though I imagine if I hadn't been familiar with the way spanish works I wouldn't have found Italian as easy. All I need now is a decent English/Italian dictionary, preferably on the Iphone that can give me the odd words and bits of vocabulary I might need, sinse my teacher has gone through a lot of the gramma with me.

Hi. I am also learning latin in school, and as paddy said, it is rather difficult.
Since i am listening to the band Powerwolf who use latin in there lyrix i am more and more interistet in the way, latin was used in the church.
I was in the same event with paddy playing the inquisitor in latin.
In nomini patri et spiritus sanctus hoc damium malus esse deletam.

@Camochek, about Iramic and old russion it's something I've simply not heard of, heck regular Russian is likely hard enough for an English speaker . Though as I said if there are works from the  Russian orthodox church you wish to study fair enough, just the same way latin would be useful if you wanted to studdy original works from the Roman catholic church.

Latin does seem to have made it's way into a lot of things, from final fantasy 7, (the sephiroth one winged angel), to epic metal performances like Luka Terreli. Indeed I believe that as for so long it was used purely as a language of litergy and sacred works the sound of latin has become a signifyer for something powerful or important.

One thing that particularly amuses me is when latin is used for names of related things. my favourite of these is the main character's sword in Gene wolfe's shadow of the torturer series, it's name is terminus est, which according to a friend of mine literally translates as "it ends here" which is a good name for an executioner's sword .

hi dark.
you didn't hared of aramic/iramic?
it is a language like arabic and hebrew, but today are not speaking in this language.
only a serian orthodox liturgies are in aramic, and some jewish prayings are in aramic.
also some books from the old testament or the tanah, are in aramic like book of ezrah.
and i don't going to learn catholic works, because i'm a messianic jew, and i don't want to confuze myself with all these things.
but i think: if i was the pope of the whole catholic world, i told to cancel the prayings to saints and also if i was a pope i could tell to remove the pictures and the statues from the churches, and then the catholic church became like the first jewish christianity.
what do you think of this idea?
kamochek.

About the pope thing, even if it's off-topic:
As a protestant christian myself, I disagree to a few things the pope is doing, like forbidding gay-marriage, which is definitely discrimination for gay people. I don't want to discriminate anybody, being gay is definitely nothing to be ashamed of!
Anyway, as a pope, you cannot just go and remove christian pictures and other signs. It's rediculous, let's go and tell the muslems to live like the Christians or the Jewish either.
The thing is: I respect the Jewish, the Muslems, the Buddhists and any other religions, as long as they are harmless and don't follow any goals terrifying anybody. So, why should I go and destroy parts of their religion and any of their sacrifies? This doesn't make sense in any way.

@Dark
I was thinking about learning Italian some day. We have a volunteer Italian group at school, but I don't think joining in the middle of the year would lead to success, since they are already a little further experienced, so I might try joining it in my next grade and learn from the beginning with all the other beginners.

So what? They are all believing in their own way, so why should I try to stop them believing in different gods so they all believe in only one god?

About the type of protestant, we believe in Martin Luther, who founded the protestant Christianity because he disagreed about the catholics, which is understandable. So I think I am a Lutheran, that would make sense to me.

The language is actually called Aramaic, not aramic. But the facts are right... think of it as the semitic latin, in that it was the original language which influenced many languages including Modern Hebrew. Butt it's still spoken by very isolated Jewish and certain Christian groups all over the world. Probably the most well-known representation of the language is the film The Passion of the Christ, which has reconstructed Aramaic and Latin as the primary languages.

Disclaimer: Read the next part only if you're open-minded about the views that may appear biased. I don't mind discussion... but I am not trying to start a flame war here. Only to encourage civilized conversation.
Paddy, you bring up some interesting ideas. Though I have to disagree about other religions being harmless... I respect other peoples' beliefs and don't shove my beliefs down peoples' throats, but I believe that the religions you mentioned do have golals that do in fact go against biblical teachings. As a Christian who came to faith two years ago when I was 19, it's grown apparentl to me that if you believe all of the teachings held by Christian belief... then other religions such as Buddhism can be considered idolotrous, because of the worship of statues or ancestor worship. Having said that though, each person has the right to what they believe. Just because I've chosen to base my life on a personal relationship with god doesn't mean everyone will... and though my wish and prayer is that all the people around me come to see the Truth and light of Christ, practically I realize that that may just never happen. As to your question why you should tell people about God and pray for their conversion... again, if you hold to all the beliefs, then anyone who hasn't accepted God's gift of salvation is separated from God and not going to a good place after death.

Kamochek, I'm not a Buddhist myself, but I have studied Buddhism in college and one thing I can say is that your perception of them is not correct. As Dark outlined in a post above Buddhists follow the teaching of Buddha and try to come to a sense of peace with themselves and the universe around them through meditation and by avoiding personal attachment to people, places, and things. Its an altogether different belief system than Christianity and should not be judged without knowing more about it.

Likewise regarding your ideas of being the Pope I think you need to realize there are boundaries of what you should or should not do when dealing with others beliefs. Regardless of if your religious beliefs are right or wrong what right would you have to take over the Catholic church and get rid of their belief in intercessory prayer or to discard statues, paintings, and other religious art which decorate many Catholic churches and cathedrals?

The point I want to make here is its not an issue of being right or wrong, but an issue of respect. It is the greatest form of disrespect to walk into someone else's church and order someone to change their beliefs based on some self-righteous claim that your beliefs are better than theirs. Even if your beliefs end up being more valid or can be proven to be true that does not grant you a right to force those beliefs onto another human being. If anything history has proven that forced conversion does not work, and only causes more problems than it solves.

I don't know how much history you have studied, particularly European history, but during the Protestant Reformation the Catholic church tried to stomp out Protestantism by torturing Protestants, burning bibles, and in extreme cases burning Protestants alive for heresy. As we can now see all of those efforts failed, and a lot of people suffered unnecessarily. I don't think you are advocating anything that extreme, but you can't just tell people what to believe or how to live and expect them to not resist your attempt to change their beliefs.

I also think burning the Talmud or any other religious text is a great sign of disrespect. Not only to its religious followers but it is also a loss of knowledge. A wise person studies things, tries to understand others points of view, and weather they agree with them or not they will use that knowledge to improve themselves or to argue more effectively as to why that other person is wrong about something. Burning someone's religious books does nothing to understand the points of views expressed in it, and arrogantly assumes that your beliefs are absolutely right. It is a very immature and uneducated way of looking at others beliefs, and what good would it really do to destroy someone else's religious texts anyway?

For example, I assume you have a bible. It might be braille, on audio tape, on CD, an electronic format like txt. Now,assume I come to your house and destroy it. Would that really do me any good, and would it actually change your beliefs?

Of course, it wouldn't. All it would do is destroy your copy of the book and prevent you easy access to it. Further more my intentional destruction of your religious books would make you angry at me and cause you a legitimate reason to dislike me. So any objective I may have had of converting you to my point of view would have been a failure. So don't burn the Talmud or any other religious book because that just is the wrong way to go about dealing with others of a different religious upbringing than you.

I don't know any audio latin but you will probably find stuff if you look around.

As regards whether people actually believe in many gods today, some people might, but in terms of major religions I've not heard of many. Hidnuism as I said as far as I understand it is the idea of God in different aspects, similarly with celtic or wicken beliefs. of course you always get minority religions who believe some very odd things, I for example once met a chap who belonged to a modern day temple worshipping the god Mithras, a God who many of the roman army believed in although Mithras wasn't derived from the roman or griek gods like Zeus, Aphrodite etc and I believe came from somewhere in persia.

Certainly in terms of major religions though i can't think of any with multiple gods, though I admit I don't know as much about say siekhism or certain eastern beliefs like Shintoism or confusionism.

hi assault-freak.
which christian you are?
i mean: which confesion of christianity you are?
if you are a protestant, which protestant you are inside the protestantism?
kamochek.

hi assault-freak.
oh! i think it's grate!
so please if you want: pray for my father that he'll let me to go to the messianic congregation (they are doing almost the same things like the pentacostalist, but jewish things are added like the urly christianity).
please pray for my father that he'll let me to go to there, because he is a traditional jew and he doesn't let to me and my mother to go to there, and also he taking the wyfy if seeing me visiting pentacostalists website.
and also please pray for that the god will make me sighted, will give me a tees and solv my other problems in the body.
do you believ that the god can do that?
and i have a question:
2 days ago, i listened to a pentacostalist, and he told that the baptism by the holy spearit can't be without speaking in a strange language.
i'm never spoke that, so it means that i still didn't baptised by the holy spearit?
and please pray also for that.
kamochek.