looking for online, fully transferrable Latin courses

[Johann]

Are you assuming that Latin will be the easiest language for the student to learn? Spanish shouldn't be that much harder, but the grammar is rather different from English grammar. English is actually a Germanic language and several people have told me that German is really easy for English speakers to learn.

I've taken all of 'em mentioned - Latin, German, Spanish and of course, English. And a few others, besides, over the years. OK , English is basically a Germanic language, but due to several causes, the vocabulary has undergone much Latinization - to about 65%, in fact. A benefit of Latin is that it will improve a person's English - both vocabulary knowledge and the precision that comes from knowing grammar in an absolute sense.

German grammar actually resembles Latin Grammar much more than it resembles English grammar - and it's very precise. There are more noun-cases than in English, though a bit less than Latin. (No ablative case in German, thankfully!) It has three genders - and inanimate things can belong to any one of them - and you're going to be memorizing case-endings, verb-endings etc. galore. Yes, speaking it can come easier than some other languages, as some words will be familiar.

You won't have so many complexities to deal with in Spanish, where grammar is a lot simpler. There are still conjugations and verb-endings to learn, but they are less complex and numerous than in Latin. Also only two genders - no neuter. I'd say it's the simplest of the bunch mentioned, to learn as a second or subsequent language.

Learning Latin gives a good extra entry key to modern Romance languages - Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian etc. And if you know Latin grammar - you know grammar, period! The principles you learn, you can apply to all sorts of languages - whether the vocabulary is familiar or not.

And of course, there's always classical Roman literature to read, or a whole range of Medieval writing.

Johann