I'm well aware of Latin declensions and lack of word order (although noun object verb seemed to be the most commonly used). My point was, if you knew who the subject of a story was, you could often figure out the rest of it. At least to the point where you have the general idea of what's going on, even if you couldn't translate word for word. I wasn't trying to suggest that knowledge of grammar was meaningless, just that it was possible to understand with just shaky grasp of grammar (knowledge of nominative and ablative, for example, without needing to know dative). Then you can figure out when something is possessive based on the fact that it isn't a declension you know and the fact that it makes sense based on everything else you've read in context.
), but Italian has some nice rhythms to it. Plus hey, Sergio Leone films. If that's not poetry on film, I don't know what is.
), every word in the sentence could equally be subject, object, or any complement. Word order is also useless. So, while it would be easy to judge meaning from context in “Tullia malum manducat” (Tullia eats an apple), it would be impossible to understand who is sending whom to whom in “Tullia Corneliae Iuliam mandat” without declensions (Tullia sends Iulia to Cornelia).
