I’ve been told a fun thing to do in Rome is to walk up to one of the tourist trap restaurants that has a tout at the door. Those guys know like 5 or 6 different languages, and they try to lure unsuspecting tourists to sit down at their restaurant. Anyhow, the play is to walk up to one of these touts and to start speaking Classical Latin at them. Latin is close enough to several Romance languages they do know that it seems familiar, but it’s not quite intelligible. And it’s really confusing to them to figure out which one you are speaking.
Of course it helps if you’re conversational in Latin.
I’ve been told a fun thing to do in Rome is to walk up to one of the tourist trap restaurants that has a tout at the door. Those guys know like 5 or 6 different languages, and they try to lure unsuspecting tourists to sit down at their restaurant. Anyhow, the play is to walk up to one of these touts and to start speaking Classical Latin at them. Latin is close enough to several Romance languages they do know that it seems familiar, but it’s not quite intelligible. And it’s really confusing to them to figure out which one you are speaking.
Of course it helps if you’re conversational in Latin.
Not knowing Latin: it’s more fun to see if you can get them to tell you how much they charge for a bottle of water before they seat you