Here is a brief defense of Latin for your consideration
'Ask not, noble Student, what prompts us to study a "dead language," for the language is not dead. It lives in all the romance tongues, as one of the great roots of English, in the life of the Church and the West. It also lives in all those who from Ennius to Baudelaire wrote in part or entire in Latin. That is two thousand years of culture, alive today.
'We study Latin because without it we cannot know our history and our heritage. And without that knowledge, we cannot know ourselves.
Nosce te ipsum, brave Student. If one can read that, one can--in one's life--begin to do that. The link between Latin and our lives is deep, and abiding.
'We also study Latin to enrich our understanding of our language. You have already begun to learn certain etymologies. Knowing Latin teaches English. We learn what English words meant and mean still when we love their Latin roots. We also learn grammar, an ancient art and science that tells us how to put together our thoughts, and hence our lives, with clarity, dignity and gravity. Claritas, dignitas, gravitas.
The late Dr. A. Bartlett Giamatti, President of Yale
(Former Commissioner of Baseball and noted Boston Red Sox fan)