Bob is right, of course, about the way that well-to-do or patrician children learned their language. But the mass of Roman children (well, let's say Latin-speaking children anyway) probably never went near a school. And they probably mangled the Latin language about as badly as ill-educated people do the English language today.

It's actually getting worse than it was twenty years ago. I understand they don't actually teach grammar in most schools these day because it's seen as prescriptivist and therefore totally unPC. But you can imagine what it does to the quality of the English language, can't you?


The idiot also known as Capfka ...