While a tad expensive, a great way to learn Latin basics is to purchase the Latin program from Rosettastone.com. Rather than losing hair and sleep trying to memorize grammar and vocabulary from some textbook (almost all of which are apparently written by sleep therapists doing research on ending insomnia), you learn as a child learns - by associating words and sounds with images.
Once you have a basic foundation in the language, then you can go find a text book and delve into the esoterics of the grammar and expand your vocabulary, just as a child learns. The Rosettastone method is used by many Fortune 500 companies as well as lots of goverment agencies (such as NASA) to train employees quickly in a foreign language. I heard about them after reading an article about the U.S. Army signing a contract with them to provide language programs.
I'm working my way through Spanish and plan on also picking up Welsh and Latin from this. I'm not too sure how it would work with non-Latin alpabets, though. I'd love to learn Russian and Turkish and Arabic, but I'm a bit leery of using this method while trying to learn a new alphabet at the same time. They do provide those languages, as well, though.
Edit: to change link to Rosettastone.com.uk
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