In response to Steve Cohen:

>What I was really wondering was whether thinking that we could teach language
structure through Latin in a way that was more effective than just getting at it
through English.

Besides providing students with an understanding of roots and prefixes of Latin
words that have been borrowed into English, I guess the real benefits of using
Latin would be its straightforward spelling system and its high degree of
inflection, allowing students to see and think about how each word functions in
a sentence regardless of the word order.

My only misgivings would be that (1) it may reinforce students' understanding of
how language works only through the study of a foreign language and (2) students
may try to apply principles of Latin grammar to English, as many grown-ups have
done in the past few centuries, giving us such bogies as the split infinitive.
I put forward the first point not so much out of linguistic chauvinism as the
concern that many students may think linguistic structure is something other
languages have, not their own.  Only in studying a foreign language do they
typically learn to talk about tense, mood, or case.  By then, they already have
a great grasp on English, but might not be able explain about how it works.

--Chris LeCluyse