u/4DimensionalToilet

Obviously, there are other Romance languages descended from Latin, but I’m going with standard modern Italian since it’s spoken where Latin was originally spoken, just as modern Greek is spoken where Ancient Greek was spoken.

This is really a multi-part question, so I’d break it up into:

(1) How well could a literate native speaker of standard modern Italian, with no prior exposure to Classical or Ecclesiastical Latin, understand someone speaking in Classical Latin? How well could they understand a text written in Classical Latin (e.g., something by Cicero)?

(2) How well could a literate native speaker of modern Greek, with no prior exposure to Ancient Greek, understand someone speaking in Ancient Greek? How well could they understand a text written in Ancient Greek (e.g., Plato’s Republic)?

As a native English speaker, so much of our vocabulary has been borrowed from other languages over the past thousand years that it’s hard to know how much of Old English is confusing because words/grammar evolved, and how much is confusing because words were outright replaced. So, for languages that I presume have a far greater share of native words than does English, I’m curious about their mutual intelligibility with the languages they’re descended from.

In a landslide, Barack Obama is the “Modern Era” US president who looks most like an “Modern Era” US president! Now, which “Early Era” (1789-1861) US president looks most like a “Modern Era” (1945-now) US president?

Is Ancient Greek as different from Modern Greek as Classical Latin is from standard Italian?

Theodore Roosevelt is the “Middle Era” US president who looks most like an “Middle Era” US president! Now, which “Modern Era” (1945-now) US president looks most like a “Modern Era” US president?

George Washington is the “Early Era” US president who looks most like an “Early Era” US president! Now, which “Middle Era” (1861-1945) US president looks most like a “Middle Era” US president?

Why is Grover Cleveland counted as the 22nd & 24th president instead of the 22nd president twice? Who decided this? When? How?