especially two languages that are very similar…
I have Latin and Italian right now. Whenever I need Italian vocab, the Latin word pops into my head. Whenever I need Latin vocab, the Italian word pops into my head. Usually I catch myself… but I actually got a question wrong on my Latin test the other day because I put “ieri” instead of “heri”.
I know what you mean: some time ago I tried to learn Spanish and French at the same time and after some weeks I drop Spanish. But you seem to me very passionate about both languages and I am sure you can manage them.
May be, you will have some troubles in understanding the following sentence: is it Italian or Latin?
I VITELLI DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI
Ciao
Misopogon
This is wonderful for you! If you stick to it, you will gain the ability to turn the languages on and off like a light switch. It’s a huge challenge at first, but you will be so pleased with the results. Have faith, and stick to it.
I took Italian, French, and German every day a few years ago, every other day, in that order. It was wonderful, an enormous challenge, and I am so grateful for it.
Also, if you wish to exercise your Italian:
I totally feel your pain. There are a lot of obvious helpful connections between Latin and Italian, but for a while it’s just confusing. Sometimes you’ll be stuck and unsure whether the word you want is Latin or Italian.
I keep thinking of Italian examples when in Persian class. They aren’t that similar, but on some level I can’t shake it. There are enough cognates to trick my brain for a few seconds.
I’m also studying Italian with the Learn Italian Pod website someone else mentioned here (and German, with Deutsche Welle). I haven’t had any difficulties yet in confusing Italian and Latin. I do, however, have trouble sometimes while doing my Ancient Greek exercises. For some reason, Latin words pop into my head when I’m trying to remember Greek words! 
Amadeus, I just check out Italian pod and it looks really useful. Thanks for the suggestion! As someone just studying it on my own the audio practice will really come in handy.
Is there anything like this for German, or other languages? What’s Deutsche Welle?
Well, I can’t take credit for it. Someone else already mentioned it in another thread. 
Is there anything like this for German, or other languages? What’s Deutsche Welle?
Yes. Deutsche Welle is a German TV station. They have a several German courses. You can find them here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,2142,2547,00.html
The first three (E-learning, Adventure and Audio Course) are new. I’m following an older course, which you can find below, where it says “Beginner.”
Vale!
that happens to me, too! And once in awhile a Spanish word will pop in too… which is funny because I don’t even know spanish, lol!
ps: I had my “first” latin midterm today (apparently we have 2?) and I think I used all Latin words… no Italian.
It doesn’t help that I have 155 new Italian words to learn this week alone! Yikes.
I tried doing the same thing, and I ended up dropping both Latin and Italian. Now, I want to start learning Latin again. There’s something that’s stopping me, though: I have to start from Chapter 1; I’ve forgotten all of the vocabulary/grammar.
I’m reading Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit this semester, which is not as confusing as studying Latin and Italian, I’m sure, but I had an amusing moment in class last week.
We’ll start reading Sanskrit selections in the devenagari script this week, but we’ve been doing exercises in transliteration, and there are sound changes which are manifested in the spelling of words, one being that a word in final -as (short a) becomes -o if the next word begins with a short a- or a voiced consonant. So, in my Latin class, my mind was wandering in the general direction of a certain ἑλικώπιδα κού?ην, and I was called upon to identify a word which happened to end in -o, and my mind immediately restored it to -as, before I could orient myself, and I chuckled a little bit before answering, but my professor wasn’t as amused as I was.
they have no sense of humour! I didn’t even get part marks for putting ieri instead of heri, lol! Obviously my latin prof doesn’t know Italian…