>>>Our old professor (who retired next year)
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>>He retired next year????
>
>Sorry, the following year. We use the word "following" in both senses. Language brain fart :).
>But then we never use this word to mean "the immediate neighbor of".

Oh, I thought you meant he retired in 2006!!! Thought he was exhibiting extreme longevity of career! :-)
>
>>Do you have the "w" sound in your own language though?
>
>No. Slovenian has it in some dialects (including the official), that's how they pronounce the final -l in verbs ending with it in past tense.

Well that might explain why you don't pronounce the latin "v" as "w".

>
>But then, why would we need a "w" sound for Latin. Listen to Italian priests. Italian language also has no W.
>
>
>In English, however, it takes me sometimes quite a while to recognize the Latin I hear. Take "ee coal eye"... didn't recognize escherichia coli until the fifth time, and that was from context only. Or, "ewe station" - for Eustachian. And then the vanishing first consonant in words starting with ps-, gn- kn- pn-. Takes a stretch of imagination to recognize "noo matics" as "pneumatics".


It would only bother a latin scholar. It's the norm to anglcise latin pronunciations. Irks me a bit. e.g. why say "Ad infi-NITE-um" instead of "ad infinitum"?