I've decided that I want to learn Latin, because I am growing increasingly fascinated by Rome and the Latin language. However, what would be the practical benefits of such a thing? After all, it is a dead language. And where do I begin? I haven't been able to find anything on learning Latin as a language; I don't want to learn phrases here and there, but the full on language.
Seems like a very strange thing that you want to do. You can learn much about early Rome with translations instead of learning a whole new language. http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/latin/ http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html#latin
The practical benefits include the fact that you'll probably come out with a much better understanding of grammar in general and also a better ability to understand the origins of words in languages that have evolved from Latin, like English, French and Italian.
Unless you're a sculptor, musician, etc., most of your thoughts are formed in words. Therefore it stands to reason that the language you speak has an immense influence on the way you think. Being able to think in two languages gives people an immeasurable advantage: They can review their own thoughts internally from a second perspective. The problem with Latin is that unless you move to Vatican City there are no communities of Latin speakers, so you may not ever really become fluent enough to think in Latin. (The key is when people speak a language in your dreams, you are thinking in that language.) Admittedly the benefits would be much greater for a living language, especially one that has a community where you live that you can talk to. Also, the more "foreign" or unrelated it is to English, the more different the thoughts will be, which will increase the benefits. Latin is better on that score than one of the Germanic languages which are closely related to English. But still Latin is an Indo-European language and there are many commonalities that run through the entire family. Ideally I would recommend a totally unrelated language with totally different paradigms and patterns, such as Chinese, Arabic, Bantu, Japanese, Turkish, Hungarian, Navajo, Malay, one of the Australian tongues, etc. It won't be easy, you're right about that. Any decent university teaches Latin, so perhaps you can find it in an extension course. If you just want to try doing it on your own, there must be a zillion books for that. Latin has been studied longer than any other European language except Greek, so it has a long academic tradition. Just look harder.
Learning Latin for me was no practical speaking use, but my knowledge of English grammar improved and it also made learning Spanish and French much easier. Its a strange language, theres a strange satisfaction in learning it, the structure and dsicipline associated with it. Or that could have been my strict Latin teacher at school.
Most definitely. I was forced to take two years of Latin my first two years of high school which I hated by the way. Latin was hard. However, I also discovered that while I could not speak or understand any spoken romantic language, I could read them. When I was on top of my Latin I could read Spanish, Italian, and French (which is a language I had little exposure to). I thought it was a pretty neat discovery, when I found out I could read signs written in French at the airport. If you really want to truly learn it, you might just have to buckle down and take some classes at a local college.
I am going to purchase the Rosetta Stone Latin program and hopefully start learning this year. So far I have found a few on-line Latin tutorials, though.