Latin verb placement
Peter Dickinson is probably best known in sf circles for the fictional-science book The Flight of Dragons and the kids' books The Blue Hawk and Emma Tupper's Diary, plus the Heartsease trilogy. But he's also written a bunch of other stuff, including mysteries. I'm not a big mystery fan, but I very much like his novel Hindsight, which is the source of the following bit of dialogue about Latin. I typed in this quote years ago, but I apparently never got around to using it anywhere on my site, not even in the wordplay columns.
"What kind of people do you imagine it must have been who felt so powerful a need to place the verb at the end of the sentence?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Imagine yourself in the House of Commons. You are listening to that eloquent ass, Sir Mark Cicero. He is just getting into his stride about the unspeakable behaviour of Mr Catiline. This villain, he tells you, nineteen virtuous matrons, more about their virtue all in the accusative so you know he's done something to them but what, for heaven's sake? Robbed them? Raped them? Taken them sailing? But, aha, here's an adverb, whatever he's done he's done vilely, it looks as though we're getting somewhere, but oh, no, here's a quia and we're plunging into the villain's motives when we still don't know whether the matrons are dead or alive..."
--Peter Dickinson, Hindsight, p. 46.