Thank you, Prof. Holger Mitterer (‘Myths about learning Latin’, The Sunday Times of Malta , September 6) for confirming to me what I have always felt – that Latin was the language of a long-defunct empire and which now has had no special usefulness in everyday life for several decades.

I was guided to choose Latin in grammar school because it was then deemed to be helpful in the study of medicine – this is not so – there is far more to medicine than a few anatomical names of Latin origin. Choosing to learn Latin instead of French was a wrong decision – I missed out on an important modern language.

I was bad at Latin and hated it with all my soul, finding a little solace in the British schoolboys’ saying that ‘Latin first killed the Romans and now it’s killing me’.