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Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained wide usage as the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. An inflectional and synthetic language, Latin relies little on word order, conveying meaning through a system of affixes attached to word stems. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely used alphabet in the world.

Although now widely considered an extinct language with very few fluent speakers and almost no native ones, Latin has had a major influence on many languages that are still thriving, and continues to see wide use in areas such as academia. Six out of every ten English words used in common language are derived, at least indirectly, from Latin, and an even greater proportion of scientific words are derived directly from Latin. All Romance languages are descended from Vulgar Latin, and many words adapted from Latin are found in other modern languages, including English. Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was the lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, eventually being replaced by French in the 18th century. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used—drawing heavily on Greek roots—to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is part of the Classics.

History

Latin is a member of the family of Italic languages, and its alphabet, the Latin alphabet, is based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is in turn derived from the Greek alphabet. Latin was first brought to the Italian peninsula in the 9th or 8th century BC by migrants from the north, who settled in the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where the Roman civilization first developed. Latin was influenced by the Celtic dialects and the non-Indo-European Etruscan language in northern Italy, and by Greek in southern Italy.

Although surviving Latin literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin, an artificial and highly stylized and polished literary language from the 1st century BC (most notably by the greatest Roman prose writers and poets like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and Caesar, among others), the actual spoken language of the Roman Empire was Vulgar Latin, which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar, vocabulary, and eventually pronunciation. Also, although Latin remained the main written language of the Roman Empire, Greek came to be the language spoken by the well-educated elite, as most of the literature studied by Romans was written in Greek. In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which became the Byzantine Empire after the split of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires in 395 AD, Greek eventually supplanted Latin as both the written and spoken language.

Legacy

The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe, and over time Vulgar Latin evolved and dialectized in different locations, gradually shifting into a number of distinct Romance languages beginning around the 9th century. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296, when it was replaced by Portuguese. Many of these languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian, flourished, the differences between them growing greater over time.

Classical Latin and the Romance languages differ in a number of ways, and some of these differences have been used in attempts to reconstruct Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance languages have distinctive stress on certain syllables, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words, except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and a vocative.

There has also been a major Latin influence in English. Although English is Germanic rather than Romanic in origin—Britannia was a Roman province, but the Roman presence in Britain had effectively disappeared by the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions—English borrows heavily from Latin and Latin-derived words, drawing from ecclesiastical usage and through Romance languages like French. In fact, after the Battle of Hastings, the new King of England, William the Conqueror, spoke French, and French became the accepted language of the court and nobility, drastically changing the pre-invasion English tongue. However, English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules—such as the prohibition against the split infinitive—have not worked successfully in regular usage.

From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. It is said that 80% of all scholarly English words are derived from Latin, in a large number of cases by way of French.

Grammar

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, a process called declension. Affixes are attached to fixed stems of verbs to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect, a process called conjugation.

Nouns

Latin nouns are part of one of five declensions, each of which has specific endings to denote number and case, or grammatical role within the sentence. Each case has unique characteristics, such as a more common gender and a vowel common between many of the endings.

There are seven noun cases. Each case has several uses which are less common and therefore are not noted below:

1. Nominative: used when the noun is the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative
2. Vocative: used when the noun is used in an address (usually to a person)
3. Genitive: used to indicate possession
4. Dative: used when the noun is the indirect object of the verb, usually with verbs of giving, showing, helping, trusting, or telling
5. Accusative: used when the noun is the direct object of the verb or object of certain prepositions
6. Ablative: used when the noun shows separation, source, cause, agent, or instrument, or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions
7. Locative case: used only with certain nouns (including names of cities, towns, small islands among others) to denote location, movement from, or movement to

Verbs

Nearly all verbs in Latin comprise four conjugations, or groups of verbs with similar inflected forms. The first conjugation is typified by infinitive forms ending in -are, the second by infinitives ending in -ēre, the third by infinitives ending in '-ere', and the fourth by infinitives ending in '-ire'. However, there are a few exceptions to these rules. There are six general tenses in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), a few grammatical moods (including indicative, imperative and subjunctive), three persons (first, second, and third), each in singular and plural, a few voices (including active, passive, and occassionally middle), and a few aspects. Verbs are described by four principal parts:

1. The first principle part becomes the first person, singular, present tense, active voice (if possible), indicative mood form of the verb
2. The second principle part becomes the infinitive form of the verb
3. The third principle part becomed the first person, singular, perfect tense, active voice (if possible), indicative mood form of the verb
4. The fourth principle part becomes the first person, singular, perfect tense, passive voice participle form of the verb. The fourth principle part can show either one gender of the participle, or all three genders (-us for masculine, -a for feminine, and -um for neuter).

The conjugation of just a few verbs explicates the rules for conjugating most other verbs in the language. The first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") can be conjugated in part this way:

There are many other forms of each verb besides what is shown here, and there are many exceptions to the rules of conjugation.

Education

Although Latin language was once the universal academic language in Europe, in recent years it has been supplanted by the study of many other languages; it is a requirement in relatively few places, and in some schools is not even offered. However, in Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools such as the Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico, which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico, ancient Greek is also a compulsory subject. In France and Canada, Latin is optionally studied in secondary school. In Germany, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, Latin is studied at the highest level of high schools called Gymnasium. Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings—perhaps 25% of the total. However, the requirement to learn Latin for admission to university for professions in law and medicine was gradually abandoned, beginning in the 1960s. After the introduction of the Modern Language General Certificate of Secondary Education in the 1980s, Latin was gradually replaced by other languages.

The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in secondary schools and in universities is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it for the purpose of oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely practiced. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, i.e. as a means of both spoken and written communication. This approach to learning the language assists speculative insight into how ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; patterns in Latin poetry and lireature can be difficult to identify without an understanding of the sounds of words. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Great Britain, the Classical Association encourages this approach, and Latin language books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus have been published. In the United States, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts) encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the National Senior Classical League encourages college students to continue their studies of the language.

Many international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua is a modernized and simplified version of the language.

Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat are intended to bolster interest in the language.

See also

Latin language articles

• Latin grammar
  • Ablative absolute
  • Latin declension
  • Latin conjugation
  • Word order in Latin
• Latin spelling and pronunciation
• Latin alphabet
  • Latin-1
• Latin literature
• List of Latin phrases
• Greek and Latin roots
• Latin profanity
• List of songs with Latin lyrics
• List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
• List of Latin words with English derivatives
  • Latin verbs with English derivatives
  • Latin nouns with English derivatives
• List of Latin place names in Europe

Latin culture articles

• Ancient Rome
• Brocard
• Carmen Possum
• Internationalism
• Loeb Classical Library
• Romance languages

References

• Bennett, Charles E. Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
• N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0195208293
• Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1859844022; translated from the French by John Howe.
• Wheelock, Frederic. Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0060784237

External links

• Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum, a database of Latin texts and translations
• The Perseus Project, a resource for classical languages and literature
• Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar, from the University of Notre Dame
• Dictionary of Latin phrases
• Nuntii Latini, weekly news of the world in Classical Latin published by Radio Finland
• omniamundamundis, Latin texts from fourteen ancient Roman authors
• Latin Vulgate, Latin and English translations of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible
• Memoria Press, editorial articles about the benefits of the study of Latin

Template:Link FA

• Ancient languages
• Classical languages
• Fusional languages
• Languages of Italy
• Languages of Vatican City
• Latin language
• Italic languages