John G. answered • 03/21/19
Grad Student with 8+ Years of Latin Experience
This question is one of the two questions many Classicists hear in their careers, alongside "Why are you studying a language nobody has spoken for almost two thousand years?" And the answer is, "There's a lot."
We'll start with "interesting." Obviously, "interesting" is highly subjective, and varies person to person. But what I can tell you is that there is a much wider range of Latin texts out there than you might imagine. Most people have heard of Caesar's Gallic Wars and Cicero's many speeches, but have you heard of Catullus's erotic poetry, which includes what is arguably the most vulgar language ever written (Catullus 16; those curse words employed by most translators are merely euphemisms for words whose strength of vulgarity have no comparison in English)? Then there's the poetry of Ovid, which includes a handbook on how to pick up women, and the letters of Pliny, which describe the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. And this is all from texts between the years 100 BCE and 100 CE; we have texts that range from the 4th c. BCE all the way to the Renaissance and beyond.
As for "unexpected," there's not as many, but there are a few. For starters, you can understand some advanced legal and scientific terminology, so that can be helpful; that said, some people study Latin for the explicit purpose of understanding these terms, so maybe that was "unexpected" primarily by me. It will definitely help your vocabulary much more than you realize, as you find that there are many more words than most people realize that have their roots in Latin.
The most odd benefit - and I would not necessarily call it a benefit - is the ability to read those random Latin sayings that appear on older buildings and that schools and other organizations place on their seals.
