I know that bancarrota means bankruptcy, me llamo Miguel means my name is Michael, donde estas means where are you from, and casa means house or home.  After all that, besides a few curse words, my Spanish expertise runs out.  I took two Spanish classes in high school and then again in college, but I don’t remember much of it at all.  I never used the language in any real context outside of school.  My guidance counselors all told me it was a really important class and it was a big deal that I did well in it, but it all seemed pointless to me.  Originally, they wanted me to take Latin, but I saw no point in learning a dead language.  At least people still speak Spanish in the world today.  How many times have you seen two friends wandering down the street, conversing about their lives, jobs, sports teams, or whatever else in Latin?  It’d have been even more useless to me than Spanish ever was.  At least, potentially, I could have gone around and had conversations with people in Spanish.  That’s not true at all with Latin.  They said it would help me do better on my SATs, but I did just fine without knowing any Latin at all.