The number 1 reason I took Latin over any other language was so that I wouldn’t have to learn how to pronounce the words. Interestingly (this may be redundant, I haven’t read the link yet), no one is really positive how Latin was pronounced. They have to backtrack though the modern Romance languages, and also check out poetry-- specifically the rhythm schemes-- to figure out an approximation of how people spoke...

Complicating maters, of course, is the fact that pronunciation shifted over time, as well as regional dialects...

And it's further complicated because Latin remained a semi-live language long after Rome fell. Aquinas lectured in Latin, and his Latin of the Latin Quarter was something rather different than Classical. And the Church kept Latin in use until recently, with its own pronunciation...

Oh, yeah. I had a friend who took a non-ecclesiastical Latin course, and brought us all to laughter when she related the fact that she was supposed to say, "weni widi wiki."

Thwow him, centuwion! Thwow him to the fwoor!