I know there are many scholars who can read Latin and use the language for that purpose, but I don't know anyone who can actually converse. Can students who study Latin, for example, communicate in Latin about everyday matters like their peers who study, say, German or Spanish can? Or is Latin today, since it is a dead language, mostly a reference language used for research, and we do not have enough information to reconstruct it for speaking purposes? I am thinking about pronunciation, but also vocabulary, grammar, sentence construction, accent and intonation, rhythm... Can a scholar who studied seriuosly Latin for many years be confident, that if he/she could go somehow back in the past, will be able to easily communicate with the citizens of that time and mutually understand each other? I know Latin evolved and changed a lot through the ages, and I am asking this in general terms, but I would be particularly interested in our knowledge of Latin as spoken by Gaius Julius Ceasar.

Looking through catalogued questions on answers.yahoo.com, I noticed that nearly half of the requests for "Language X to Latin" translations end up with Spanish replies.

I have a theory. My theory is that, like nationalistic Greek linguists who insist that the tonal accent never existed or that the second syllable of "alpha" began with a voiceless labiodental fricative, some rampant piece of misinformation has invaded the minds of Spanish speakers everywhere with the proposition "Spanish is Latin."

Am I correct?