I don’t think there’s any evidence that learning Latin helps you learn Romance languages any faster than learning a Romance language does. Why should learning Latin and then French be any faster than Spanish->French ?
I studied Latin and French from the age of 11. When I spent a year in Bologna as a student on the Erasmus scheme (studying Latin, in fact), I can assure you that my schoolboy French was the more useful of the two as a starting point for learning Italian.
I would like to add that that's not a coincidence either.
The Late-Roman republic and the Roman Empire saw the emergence of vulgar Latin next to classical Latin. Vulgar Latin developed first in Italy and was subsequently adopted throughout the Empire. Vulgar Latin also saw active evolution during late antiquity. It diverged from classical Latin to a point where both lost out being mutual intelligible (7th century). That's when classical Latin became a dead language.
The decline of the Roman Empire coincided with an age of mass migrations. As Roman influenced waned, people across the European peninsula fragmented. As did language development. That's where you find the common root of modern romance languages. Over the course of several centuries, local changes and influences forged distinct languages.
For sure, classical Latin and modern romance language are all of the same family. But Cicero's Latin is further removed from French then modern day Italian.
> Why should learning Latin and then French be any faster than Spanish->French ?
Indeed. I'm French, and I can basically read (not too literary) Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Latin, not so much. I have been told by locutors of these languages that the Italian/Spanish gap is even narrower.
