Where would one learn Latin short of going back to uni? I’m fascinated by the language and there doesn’t seem to be many non-lawyerly resources available
You could start with a beginning textbook to get basic grammar and vocabulary, then eventually move up to advanced grammar and then actual ancient texts. These would probably be transcribed to a familiar font with hints to help through things like common abbreviations.
There are some conventions to learn before being able to read actual artifacts - when you’re paying to have stone carved by the letter, abbreviations are going to be frequent.
Or I guess seminary school will teach you if law isn’t your thing…..
Sure most roots are the same (so you can recognize most words, if taken singularly) but the construction and use of cases and the various declinations makes it tough to read a whole sentence and translate it correctly, also because there may be "false friends".
On the other hand, with some (possibly better than the ones I did) Latin studies, a whole number of Latin derived languages (Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian) become more accessible, at least in written form, because they all use the same (but somnetimes different) Latin roots, i.e. two different Latin words (meaning the same thing or even the same word in a different case/declination) may have become used in different languages, so knowing the "common ancestor" helps.