"should English speakers also have a rudimentary knowledge of all those other languages? Or is Latin a special case?

John"

Interesting.
When I read your post JS I was thinking about the influence aboriginal Americans had on American English.

Biloxi, Tillamook, & Pontiac, are words genuinely American in origin. Sadly, they're place names; so much of native American culture lost with the Peoples that practiced them.
We do have a few other American words; "skunk" I suspect; though I imagine the verb forms are post aboriginal.

In considering your question JS I realized how modular ancient Latin is.
I was going to comment before about how pseudo-Latin we are with (for example) taxonomic classification, etc.
Perhaps it is that modularity that suits it.

I first gained insight into this when I was taught the Latin meanings of two words fundamental to philosophy: subjective, & objective.

"Ject" means to throw: as in ejection seat.
"Sub" means beneath, or under. Thus subjective literally translated means -thrown under-.
Objective means -thrown upon-.
One of my favorites is conspire; meaning "to breath together".
"A prudent question is one half of wisdom." William James

So JS, with aboriginal American words, we can't peel back the onion much. Pontiac was an Ottawa leader who led a large Native American revolt against the British in the 18th Century. It was (is?) also a division of GM. But I gather most of our aboriginal American vocabulary is names.

In contrast, deconstructing the Latin roots of "English" words can give us insight into their original meaning, and even the process of their origin.
"It's like the old cliche "the question is only easy if you know the answer"." JS

& it's educational if you don't?

Thanks JS.

"when the bigots of this world have been privileged for as long as they have, to them equality feels like discrimination." shiftless2