How Latin works

The short version

• You are learning to read, not to speak. That changes the whole method: comprehension before production, and no shame in it.
• The endings carry the grammar, so word order is free. Learning to stop reading left to right is the single biggest hurdle.
• Learn every noun with its genitive. rex, regis. Without it you cannot decline the word, because the third declension hides its own stem.
• Most surviving Latin is not classical. Ecclesiastical and medieval Latin dwarf Cicero by volume, which is why deus and dominus sit so high in any frequency list.
• There are two pronunciations, restored classical and ecclesiastical, and nobody tells beginners this until they have already picked one by accident.