Contrary to Albert Cilia-Vincenti (‘Useless Latin’, The Sunday Times of Malta, September 13), I heartily thank those people who guided and helped me to study Latin, which I not only enjoyed but also cherish to this day and will hopefully continue to do so in the future.

Latin has not only fascinated me as a language but has opened up to me such a wealth of beautiful literature with works by such great giants as Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Ovid and Virgil, to mention but a few.

With regard to usefulness, Latin provides one with a key to learning better and more easily other modern languages which were directly or indirectly derived from it, such as Italian, French and Spanish.

So far as English is concerned, although it is not strictly a Romance language, it has, after the Norman conquest of England, imported from Latin a huge percentage of its vocabulary, besides the fact that some of its linguistic syntax can be better understood and mastered by those who have studied Latin in depth.

Something else that is often forgotten is the fact that diligent students of Latin have certainly benefited from a logical discipline that was gradually and unconsciously instilled in them through going deeply into the language.

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