In middle school my foreign language choices were Spanish, French, or Latin. I picked Latin because it was cool. When it came time to talk about subordinate clauses and noun cases in English, Spanish, and French, what I'd learned in Latin was invaluable. It's like learning a purely functional style programming language versus an imperative one: they'll both inform how you think about solving problems in the other. Getting really good at another language is good because it makes you better at thinking about grammar.

I question the "like learning a purely functional style programming language" part of this but Latin did have its advantages. Many English words are derived from Latin roots (but I didn't study Greek and that is the second great source!8-(()

I likely would have been better off taking Spanish but I avoided that b/c half my class were fluent in Spanish already and I had to maintain a decent grade.

counterpoint: I did 3 years of Latin and it only helped me with SATs and/or sounding legit while playing Crusader Kings II

shoulda done French or Spanish. yeah there is some shared Latin roots there but that doesn't magically make it simple to pick up the languages. Hell, Italian might have been a better choice.