Some general comments about Latin

The first thing I noticed about Latin when I got into the books is how precise it is - you can say a lot with just a few words. Take verbs, for example.
Latin verbs have six conjugations (first person singular, second person singular, third person singular, first person plural, second person plural, third person plural). The second person plural is something English doesn't have (except in the South; I call 2nd person plural the "y'all" conjugation, and always think of it as if Paula Deen were speaking to a group...).
Anyway, Latin verbs can convey who the subject is (1st, 2nd, or 3rd person), number (singular or plural), time (e.g. present, past, future), mood (as in a simple indication of fact, or an order if in the imperative - I always see F Lee Ermy from "Full Metal Jacket" when I consider the imperative), and voice (active or passive). All of that from 1 word!
How does it do all of that? Well, take the infinitive for "to love": amare. The root/stem of the verb is ama, and to describe all of the above you find the relevant ending. For example, there is a present indicative active verb, so you can pick that if you want to convey a simple statement of current fact in active voice; there's the mood, time, and voice components. To get the number and subject, pick the relevant conjugation form ending. So, if I wanted to say "we love" I take the stem ama and tack on the first person plural ending -mus to get amamus. But it turns out that can mean "we love" or "we are loving" or "we do love" depending on context.
So Latin is extremely efficient and logical. Efficient because it says so much with so few words, and logical because you can figure out all that a word means by looking at the stem and the ending. The downside is that if you don't know Latin, you will have a hard time translating it because if you try to look up amamus it won't be there. You could find amare or amo (first person present indicative active) but you may not know to look there. But once you know the rules, you can subtract off the ending (which you know is a first person plural ending for a present indicative active verb) and then look up the infinitive of the stem ama (which you would know falls into verb class I, which end with -are.) Thus, amare.
Yes, there are 4 verb classes (-are, -ere, -ire, and one set that end with -ire but is somewhat irregular). In practice, though, the endings for all 4 classes are pretty similar, so you can usually tell which is meant even if you don't know that verb.
To conclude, Latin verbs are busy! They tell you a lot, by doing a bunch of work. But that's fitting, since verbs are intended to convey action anyway.

Blogging about learning Latin

Back in college I bought a book called "Teach Yourself Latin" from a bookstore on a visit home. I thought at the time that I was going to go to graduate school for marine biology, and that Latin would help me with the vocabulary portion of the GRE. It turns out that I decided not to go to grad school for marine biology, so I the books stayed on my shelf for a while.

Years later, I went to graduate school for biostatistics, and forgot all about my Latin for GRE success strategy (but passed the GRE despite that). The books remained collecting dust on the shelf a bit longer.

Yet more years later, I saw them on the shelf and decided to finally do it. A while ago I broke it out and got to chapter 3 before losing steam, getting distracted and forgetting about it. This time I decided to go straight through and finally learn Latin.

Why? I am not sure. Partly because I have the book and dislike having bought but not used it. And partly for something to do, and partly for the challenge. Partly so I can finally read the cryptic Latin dedications some authors put in the front of the book. And partly so I can read some of the classic texts (like Virgil's Aeneid) in the original language. But mostly, because I thought it might be a fun adventure.

So, here I am. I am starting this blog to chronicle my adventure through learning Latin for fun!