Summarize the following:
Alright, so you might be feeling the weight of this endeavor you've planned to embark upon right now -- after all, this is a language that certainly has a lot to take in. But if you're a speaker of any Romance language and even English, you're pretty set, at least lexically. All the Romance languages stem from Vulgar Latin -- vulgar here meaning common, not disgusting or objectionable. But English, too, though it's of Germanic origin, has a vocabulary that is 58% Latin-influenced. That includes French (if you were cocking a brow), which is a Romance language and thus heavily Latin. English is full of Germanic/Latin doublets. That basically means it has two words for everything; generally, the Germanic one is seen as more common (and you can hear the difference, too). With "begin" and "commence," which one do you think is Germanic and which one is Latinate? How about "ask" and "inquire?" "Aware" and "cognizant?" You'll find plenty of Latin words in English's fancier alternatives. English's root words that are from Latin are practically innumerable. Once you see the Latin word, your mind will fill with words that all of a sudden make sense. Brev- is the Latin word for "brief" or "short." So now, "brevity," "brief," and "abbreviation" make sense, don't they? Neat! This will make the vocabulary a piece of cake (and up your English one, too). Latin is a fusional language which, by definition, makes it heavily inflected. If you have any experience with European languages, this won't come as a surprise to you. Though Latin puts Spanish, French, and German to shame with its complexities. Verb inflection in Latin can be defined in four conjugation patterns. However, it must be noted that the grouping is only based on how the verb behaves in the present tense; how it behaves in others cannot be inferred through its grouping. Unfortunately, you'll need several forms of the verb to know just how it acts and to form it in all the possible contexts. While most verbs belong to one of the four patterns, some (like esse ("to be")) do not. It's always the most common verbs that don't -- I am, you were? Je suis, tu es? Yo soy, tu eres? Same thing.If you found that slightly confusing, just know that there are 4 verb families and most verbs fall into one and follow the pattern of that particular grouping. All tenses use personal endings. In the active voice, they are all the same, minus the perfect tense, which has chosen to be a nuisance. Here's the pattern the 5 tenses follow: Present tense, etc.: SingularFirst person o, mSecond person sThird person tPluralFirst Person musSecond person tisThird person nt Perfect:SingularFirst person iSecond person istiThird person itPluralFirst person musSecond person istisThird person erunt That's a fancy term for noun conjugation (and pronouns and adjectives while we're at it). In Latin, there are five declensions. This is just like verb conjugation in a way -- each noun fits into a category and its endings fit the patterns of that specific family of nouns. Declension gets a bit tricky because nouns (and adjectives and pronouns...) come in not only singular and plural, but also masculine, feminine, and neuter. Each noun can fit into 7 different cases, giving them all different endings. Water (aqua, -ae) is feminine, can be singular or plural, and thus has 14 different possible endings. In case you're curious, aqua is a first declension noun (those generally end in -a). Latin borrowed a few Greek words that are quite common and they often decline to the beat of their own drum. However, some have been regularized. On the upside, first and second pronouns can only be masculine or feminine. That's good, right? On the downside, adjectives' gender is determined by the noun they describe, so they have endings for all cases and all genders. But there are only three declensions of adjectives, thank our lucky stars. There are seven cases (five major ones) and, if you're not nauseated just yet, the same ending is often used for more than one case. You just like a good challenge, don't you? When you're studying you'll find that they are often abbreviated to the first three letters. You know how in English it's "book" and "books" but "child" and "children?" What's that all about? English used to have cases, too, but has vastly gotten rid of them. In case (haha!) you're a bit scruffy on your terminology, cases are seen on endings put on a word (nouns and adjectives, namely) that mark its grammatical function. Here's the list: The nominative case: This marks the subject of a statement. It is used to denote the person or object that is performing the verb in the sentence. The accusative case: This marks the direct object of the verb. It does have other functions, but that's generally it. Certain prepositions can determine it. The genitive case: This expresses possession, measurement, or source. In English, its equivalent would be "of." In Old English, nouns in the genitive used to be marked with "-es" in the genitive. Wonder how that evolved.... The dative case: This one marks the indirect object, or the receiver of an action. In English, "to" and "for" would mark this case, at least in some contexts (they are very common words). The ablative case: This case indicates separation, indirection, or the means by which an action is performed. In English, the closest indicator of this would be the prepositions "by," "with," "from," "in" and "on." The vocative case: This is used in direct speech to address someone or something. In the sentence, "Jane, are you coming? Jane!" Jane is vocative. The locative case: This is used unsurprisingly and a little ridiculously (who needs to know this?) to express where an action takes place. In early Latin this was used frequently, but in Classical Latin they finalized realized this was superfluous information and it eventually died out, only being applied to the names of cities, small islands and a few other isolated, probably unimportant, words. Because English lacks adequate conjugation and declension, word order is absolutely imperative. But in Latin, for example, the sentence "The boy loves the girl" does not have to be written "Puer amat puellam" -- literally translating to "the boy (puer) loves (amat) the girl (puellam)." In fact, "Puellam amat puer" means the same thing -- it's all in the endings. Even though it looks like the second example says "the girl loves the boy," it doesn't. "The girl loves the boy" would be "Puella amat puerum." See how the the endings change places? That's the beauty of cases! In fact, in Latin, the verbs generally drift toward the end of the sentence. It doesn't follow SVO (subject-verb-object) order like English, though it may be tempting to do since the order doesn't matter. "Puer puellam amat" is an authentic replication.

Summary:
Use your present knowledge. Know how verbs work. Study up on your declensions. Nail down the cases. Forget about word order.