Does Latin have any usefulness nowadays?

It's not too complex from their perspective. The flexions give structure and freedom to their language we don't have. It's only harder for us who use prepositions.

No no no. You can actually compare Classical Latin to Classical Arabic. Nobody spoke it anymore at a certain era, except elitists in their literary language. This is much alike how standardised Arabic isn't spoken by no Arab, though it's written by the elite.

It makes sense, even in English the written language tends to differ from the spoken one, though to a far lesser extent.

<<Most of the more unfamiliar words in English have Latin and Greek origins.>>

Not always Brennus. Not even most of the time.

Most of the Graeco-Latin elements in Modern English--though stemming from Latin and Greek--bear little resemblance in either form or meaning to the original Latin or Greek word.

Take the English word 'focus' for example. In Latin it meant "hearth" and only hearth. Our word 'focus' is never used to mean "hearth", but a central place or object of concentration.

And to your example above "foliverous"--(folivorous?)
I've known for a long time that folia meant "leaf" and vorare meant "eat", but encountering "foliverous" wouldn't remind me of either of those words to be honest. Now that you point it out, yeah, it seems obvious, but casually reading that word with no prior explanation would never lead me to see it as foli- + an altered form of -vorare. Who knows, it might mean "foliferous" instead. But that's an easy one. What about "pulchritude".

That's the argument "they" give us. Doesn't work though.

<<Few people study Latin or Ancient Greek today but the advantage to knowing both of them is that you seldom need to use the dictionary. Most of the more unfamiliar words in English have Latin and Greek origins. For example if you hear the words "foliverous insects" you can ignore the dictionary because you already know that folia means "leaf" and vorare means to "eat, swallow or devour." If you hear the word Electrocardiogram you know that "electro-" refers to electricity, "cardio" refers to heart and gramma means "picture.">>

Most Romance speakers know that without having ever studied Latin and Greek though. It works for many other words too.

Except there's no reason to learn those ancient languages when you can just learn English! You'll have to use the dictionary more when learning Latin than just when learning the words straight in English.

Very useful when you already know English. NOT!

<<"Vorare" left few if any traces in the Modern Romance vernaculars. Spanish comer, French manger, Italian mangiare all come from other Latin roots i.e. *comedere, *manducare etc. usually classified as "Vulgar Latin" sometimes "Low Latin" or "Popular Latin." It all depends on what level of political correctness you care to use.>>

"Vorare" gave "dévorer" in French, "divorare" in Italian, "devorar" in Spanish

Those comes from Latin devorare.

<<,"Vorare" gave "dévorer" in French, "divorare" in Italian, "devorar" in Spanish >>

Yes, those were later borrowings directly from Classical Latin--not inherited through natural progression from popular Latin. Same as English borrowing of "devour".

^but still you have "voraz" in Portuguese as well.
"Devorar" means eat it all and fast, you can take the hint, "de" is the prefix. Not difficult, people would have guessed.

Latin is great for improving your English and Romance vocabulary, and for gaining access to the zillions of Latin phrases people throw around a lot.

<<Latin is great for improving your English and Romance vocabulary, and for gaining access to the zillions of Latin phrases people throw around a lot. >>

But is the benefit gleaned from a few thrown around phrases, and some Romance vocabulary worth spending time learning all of Latin (i.e. the cases, the conjugations and tenses, the moods, the idiomatic expressions, the spelling, etc?). The answer is simply a resounding No. It isn't.

As someone stated above, you don't need to learn a super hard language (Latin) in order to help you better learn a relatively easy one (Italian). Just go straight to the easy one (Italian). In the end, you'll be glad you did ;)

Sure, it may help you learn the meanings of some obscure pretentious phrases, but why learn Latin to learn the phrases? Why not just go to the Wikipedia article "list of Latin phrases" and memorise them?

Sure it may help you learn some obscure pretentious English words like "folivorous", but why learn Latin to learn these words? Why not just buy an English dictionary or a book about biology?

Well, learning a language like Latin is a worthwhile endeavor in itself -- all the other things are just bonuses. And it's not just obscure and pretentious words that Latin will help you learn, but many that are commonly used in writing or are in the common parlance of educated people. But, yes, you'll be able to figure out the obscure and pretentious ones too. :P

<<Well, learning a language like Latin is a worthwhile endeavor in itself -- all the other things are just bonuses. And it's not just obscure and pretentious words that Latin will help you learn, but many that are commonly used in writing or are in the common parlance of educated people. But, yes, you'll be able to figure out the obscure and pretentious ones too. :P >>

What you could also do is to take all that time and energy in your Latin endeavor and apply it to learning Chinese instead. That way, you would have people to talk to and you could actually carry on a conversation with others from another country and learn about their culture.

It would even help you if you travel to the Far East!

If you're a native english speaker, and wish to study an old dead language, by all means, study OLD ENGLISH and not Latin. The benefits of studing of O.E (the roots of your own language), far outweigh anything you would ever get from Latin. After gaining a firm grasp of O.E, everything about modern English will make more sense, you'll find that all of the peculiar "irregularities" of english follow regular patterns, and you'll have deeper understanding of grammar.

The idea of studying Latin to improve ones ENGLISH, is probably the most ridiculous concepts ever promoted, and its a shame that anglophone academic institutions still encourage the study of Latin for this misguided purpose.