Latin (ˈlætɪn; Latin: , laˈtiːna) is an Italic language originally spoken in
LatiumLazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
and
Ancient RomeAncient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. It, along with most
European languagesIndo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
, is a descendant of the ancient
Proto-Indo-European languageThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
. Although it is considered a
dead languageIn linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and many schools and universities continue to teach it. Latin is still used in the process of
new word production in modern languages of many different families, including English. Latin and its daughter
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
are the only surviving branch of the
Italic language familyThe Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
. Other branches of the Italic languages are attested in documents surviving from early Italy, but were assimilated during the
Roman RepublicThe Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
.
The extensive use of elements from vernacular speech by the earliest authors and inscriptions of the Roman Republic make it clear that the original, unwritten language of the Roman Monarchy was an only partially deducible
colloquialA colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
form, the predecessor to
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
. By the late Roman Republic, a standard, literate form had arisen from the speech of the educated, now referred to as
Classical LatinClassical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
. Vulgar Latin, by contrast, is the name given to the more rapidly changing colloquial language spoken throughout the empire. With the Roman conquest, Latin spread to many Mediterranean regions, and the dialects spoken in these areas, mixed to various degrees with the autochthonous languages, developed into the Romance tongues, including
AragoneseAragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
,
CatalanCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
,
CorsicanCorsican is a Italo-Dalmatian Romance language spoken and written on the islands of Corsica and northern Sardinia . Corsican is the traditional native language of the Corsican people, and was long the vernacular language alongside the Italian, official language in Corsica until 1859, which was...
,
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
,
GalicianGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
,
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
,
RomanianRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, Romansh,
SardinianSardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
,
SicilianSicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
, and
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. Classical Latin slowly changed with the
Decline of the Roman EmpireThe decline of the Roman Empire refers to the gradual societal collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many theories of causality prevail, but most concern the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, in tandem with foreign invasions and usurpers from within the...
, as education and wealth became ever scarcer. The consequent
Medieval LatinMedieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
, influenced by various Germanic and proto-Romance languages until expurgated by
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
scholars, was used as the language of international communication, scholarship and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernacular languages.
Latin is a highly
inflected languageA fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
, with three distinct
gendersGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, seven
noun casesIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
, four
verb conjugationsIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
, six
tensesA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, six
personsGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, three
moodsIn linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, two
voicesIn grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments . When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice...
, two
aspectsIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
and two
numbersIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
. A
dual numberDual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...
is present in Archaic Latin. One of the rarer of the seven cases is the
locativeLocative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
, only used with nouns that signify a location. The
vocativeThe vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
, used in direct discourse, is identical to the nominative except for words of the second declension. Though various authors have proposed differing totals, there are only five fully productive cases. Adjectives and adverbs are compared, and the former are inflected according to case, gender, and number. Although Classical Latin has
demonstrative pronounsIn linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
indicating varying degree of proximity, it doesn't have
articlesAn article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
. Later Romance language articles developed from the demonstrative pronouns; e.g.,
le and
la from
ille and
illa.
In terms of vocabulary, however, Latin tends to preserve the original forms of many
Indo-EuropeanIndo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
roots. Compared to other Indo-European languages of antiquity, such as
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, the word forms in the Classical era are far more reflective of their etyma. Languages such as Sanskrit, however, tend to be more conservative with regards to grammar.
Legacy
Latin's heritage has been passed down through these broad genres:
- Inscriptions
- Literature
- Scientific and legal terms in modern languages
- A centuries-long tradition of Classical education
Inscriptions
Most inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed-upon, monumental, multi-volume series termed the
Corpus Inscriptionum LatinarumThe Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum is a comprehensive collection of ancient Latin inscriptions. It forms an authoritative source for documenting the surviving epigraphy of classical antiquity. Public and personal inscriptions throw light on all aspects of Roman life and history...
(CIL). Authors and publishers vary but the format is approximately the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of
epigraphyEpigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
. There are approximately 270,000 known inscriptions.
Literature
The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part, in substantial works or in fragments to be analyzed in
philologyPhilology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
. They are in part the subject matter of the field of
classicsClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
. Their works were published in
manuscriptA manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
form before the invention of printing and now exist in carefully annotated printed editions such as the
Loeb Classical LibraryThe Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...
by
Harvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
or the
Oxford Classical TextsOxford Classical Texts , or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, is a series of books published by Oxford University Press. It contains texts of ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, in the original language with a critical apparatus...
by
Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
.
Influence on English
In the medieval period, much borrowing from Latin occurred through ecclesiastical usage established by Saint
Augustine of CanterburyAugustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597...
in the 6th century, or indirectly after the Norman Conquest through the
Anglo-Norman languageAnglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words. These were dubbed "
inkhorn termAn inkhorn term is any foreign borrowing into English deemed to be unnecessary or overly pretentious.- Etymology :...
s", 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 which proved useful survived, such as
imbibe and
extrapolate. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin, through the medium of
Old FrenchOld French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
.
Classical education
Throughout European history, an education in the Classics was considered a must for those who wished to join literate circles. In today's world, a large number of Latin students in America learn from
Wheelock's Latin: The Classic Introductory Latin Course, Based on Ancient Authors. This book, first published in 1956, was written by
Frederic M. WheelockFrederic Melvin Wheelock is the author the Latin book, Wheelock's Latin. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Haverford College, Harvard University, the College of the City of New York, Brooklyn College, Cazenovia Junior College, the Darrow School for Boys, the University of...
, who received a PhD from Harvard University.
Wheelock's Latin has become the standard text for many American introductory Latin courses.
Formal support for the study of Latin
The Living Latin movement attempts to teach Latin in the same way that living languages are taught, i.e., as a means of both spoken and written communication. It is available at the Vatican, and at some institutions in the U.S., such as the
University of KentuckyThe University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
and
Iowa State UniversityIowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University , is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced astronauts, scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a host of...
. The British
Cambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
is a major supplier of Latin textbooks for all levels, such as the
Cambridge Latin CourseThe Cambridge Latin Course is a series of textbooks published by Cambridge University Press, used to teach Latin to secondary school students. First published in 1970, the series is now in its fifth edition, and has sold over 3.5 million copies...
series. It has also published a subseries of children's texts in Latin by Bell & Forte, which recount the adventures of a mouse called
MinimusThe Minimus books are a series of school textbooks, written by Barbara Bell, illustrated by Dr. Helen Forte, and published by the Cambridge University Press, designed to help children of primary school age to learn Latin...
.
In the United Kingdom, the
Classical AssociationThe Classical Association is a British learned society in the field of classics, and a registered charity.The association was founded on 19 December 1903, and its objects are defined in its constitution as:...
encourages the study of antiquity through various means, such as publications and grants. In the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the
American Classical LeagueFounded in 1919, the American Classical League is a professional organization which promotes the study of classical civilization at all levels of education in the United States and Canada...
supports every effort to further the study of classics. Its subsidiaries include: the
National Junior Classical LeagueThe National Junior Classical League is a youth organization of secondary school students sponsored by the American Classical League...
(with more than 50,000 members), which encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the
National Senior Classical LeagueThe National Senior Classical League is an organization — mostly of college students — which promotes the study, appreciation and advancement of the Classics. It is the college-level affiliate of the National Junior Classical League , and both organizations are sponsored by the American Classical...
, which encourages students to continue their study of the classics into college. The league also sponsors the National Latin Exam.
Latin is taught as a mandatory subject in
gymnasiumA gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
and other so-called classical high schools, located chiefly in Europe. In the United States, although once offered nearly universally, Latin is limited to elective status in a steadily declining number of grade schools, both public and private. The ordinary student can no longer count on being able to take Latin, but there are, however, extracurricular means. The
College BoardThe College Board is a membership association in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board . It is composed of more than 5,900 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. It sells standardized tests used by academically oriented...
examinations, which serve as an educational tool for the admission of students into colleges, still features one Latin examination on a voluntary basis: Advanced Placement Latin: Vergil.
Latin translations of modern literature
Latin translations of modern literatureA number of Latin translations of modern literature have been made to bolster interest in the language. The perceived dryness of classical literature is sometimes a major obstacle for achieving fluency in reading Latin, as it discourages students from reading larges quantities of text . In his...
such as
Treasure IslandTreasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
,
Robinson CrusoeRobinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
,
Paddington BearPaddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He appeared on 13 October 1958 and was subsequently featured in several books, most recently in 2008, written by Michael Bond and first illustrated by Peggy Fortnum....
,
Winnie the Pooh,
TintinThe Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
,
AsterixAsterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...
,
Harry PotterHarry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
,
Walter the Farting DogWalter the Farting Dog is a series of children's books by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, and illustrated by Audrey Colman. All the books in the series star Walter and his many flatulent adventures. In 2007 the fifth book in the series, Walter the Farting Dog: Banned From the Beach, was released...
,
Le Petit PrinceThe Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....
,
Max und Moritz,
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and
The Cat in the HatThe Cat in the Hat is a children's book by Dr. Seuss and perhaps the most famous, featuring a tall, anthropomorphic, mischievous cat, wearing a tall, red and white-striped hat and a red bow tie. He also carries a pale blue umbrella...
and a book of fairy tales, "fabulae mirabiles", are intended to garner popular interest in the language. Additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as
Meissner's Latin PhrasebookMeissner’s Latin Phrase-book is a nineteenth century book of phrases in Latin for students of composition or those wanting to learn spoken Latin.-History of the English text:...
.
Constructed languages based on Latin
Many
international auxiliary languageAn international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
s have been heavily influenced by Latin.
InterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, which lays claim to a sizeable following, is sometimes considered a simplified, modern version of the language.
Latino sine FlexioneLatino sine flexione , or Peano’s Interlingua , is an international auxiliary language invented by the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano in 1903. It is a simplified version of Latin, and retains its vocabulary...
, popular in the early 20th century, is Latin with its inflections stripped away, among other grammatical changes.
History
Latin has been divided into historical phases, each of which is distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, morphology and syntax. In addition to the historical phases,
Ecclesiastical LatinEcclesiastical Latin is the Latin used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in all periods for ecclesiastical purposes...
refers to the styles used by the writers of the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, as well as Protestant scholars, from
Late AntiquityLate Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
onward.
Archaic Latin
The earliest known form is Archaic Latin, which was spoken from ancient times up to the middle Republican period, and attested in several inscriptions, as well as some of the earliest extant literary works. During this period, the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
was first introduced by Rome's Etruscan rulers. The writing style later changed from an initial right-to-left or
boustrophedonBoustrophedon , is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern English, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in...
to a left-to-right script. Archaic Latin is attested through thousands of inscriptions from the Roman Republic, and through the writings of early authors such as
PlautusTitus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
, whose comedies are the earliest substantial works written in Latin.
Classical Latin
During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, a new
Classical LatinClassical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other literate men, who wrote the great works of classical literature, which were taught in
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and
rhetoricRhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to these
schoolsIn music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced...
, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech.
Vulgar Latin
Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as
Plautus'Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
, which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, which has from ancient times been called
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
(
sermo vulgi by
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
), the language of the
vulgus or "commoner", existed alongside the literate Classical Latin. Since this language, by virtue of its informality, was rarely written, philologists have been left with individual words and phrases cited by Classical authors, as well as those found as graffiti.
As vernacular Latin was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to expect that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. Just the opposite must have been true, as Romanized European populations developed their own dialects of the This is the situation that prevailed when the
Migration PeriodThe Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...
, ca. 300-700 AD, brought an end to the unity of the Roman world and removed the stabilizing influence of its institutions upon the language. A post-classical phase of Latin appeared,
Late LatinLate Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
, which was far more influenced by the everyday parlance.
One of the tests as to whether a given Latin feature or usage was in the spoken language is to compare its reflex in a Romance language with the equivalent formation in classical Latin. If it appeared in the Romance language but was not preferred in classical Latin, then it is most likely vulgar Latin. For example, the
noun-case systemIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
is present in classical Latin, but not in the Romance languages, apart from remnants in
RomanianStandard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, viz...
. One might conclude that case endings throughout most of the Roman world were already vanishing in the spoken language, even while their use continued in literate circles. In addition, much Romance vocabulary arose in vulgar Latin, rather than classical. The following examples adhere to this formula: classical Latin/vulgar Latin/Italian/French/Spanish/Portuguese: ignis/focus/fuoco/feu/fuego/fogo, equus/caballus/cavallo/cheval/caballo/cavalo, loqui/parabolare/parlare/parler/hablar/falar (from fabulari). In each case, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese use terms that are derived from vulgar Latin (although classical
equa gave rise to Spanish
yegua and Portuguese
égua, all meaning "mare"). Thus, we can deduce the everyday vocabulary of late Roman times.
The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe and N. Africa. Vulgar Latin already began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the very latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the Dark Ages, confined to everyday speech, as medieval Latin was used for writing.
Medieval Latin
The term
Medieval LatinMedieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
refers to the written Latin in use during that portion of the post-classical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed. The spoken language had developed into the various incipient Romance Languages; however, in the educated and official world Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful as a means of international communication between the member states of the
Holy Roman EmpireThe Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
and its allies.
Cut loose from its corrective spoken base and severed from the vanished institutions of the Roman empire that had supported its uniformity, medieval Latin lost its linguistic cohesion; for example,
suus ("his/her own"),
sui ("his/her own") and
eius ("his/her") are used almost interchangeably, a confusion not resolved until the Renaissance, in works such as the tract of
Lorenzo VallaLorenzo Valla was an Italian humanist, rhetorician, and educator. His family was from Piacenza; his father, Luciave della Valla, was a lawyer....
,
De reciprocatione suus et sui. In classical Latin
sum and
eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use
fui and
fueram instead. Furthermore the meanings of many words have been changed and new vocabulary has been introduced from the vernacular.
While these minor changes are not enough to impair comprehension of the language, they introduce a certain flexibility not in it previously. The style of each individual author is characterized by his own uses of classically incorrect Latin to such a degree that one can identify him just by reading his Latin. In that sense medieval Latin is a collection of individual idioms united loosely by the main structures of the language. Some are more classical, others less so. The majority of these writers were influential members of the Christian church: bishops, monks, philosophers, etc.; however, the term "Ecclesiastical Latin" does not accurately apply. There was no uniform language of the church. Late Latin is sometimes classified as medieval, sometimes not. Certainly many of the individual Latins were influenced by the vernaculars of their authors.
Renaissance Latin
The Renaissance briefly reinforced the position of Latin as a spoken language, through its adoption by the Renaissance Humanists. Often led by members of the clergy, they were shocked by the accelerated dismantling of the vestiges of the classical world and the rapid loss of its literature. They strove to preserve what they could. It was they who introduced the practice of producing revised editions of the literary works that remained by comparing surviving manuscripts, and they who attempted to restore Latin to what it had been. They corrected medieval Latin out of existence no later than the 15th century and replaced it with more formally correct versions supported by the scholars of the rising universities, who attempted, through scholarship, to discover what the classical language had been.
Phonology
Pronunciation of Latin by the Romans in ancient times has been reconstructed from a variety of data, such as the evolution of features of the Romance languages, the representation of Latin words in other languages, such as Greek, the metrical patterns of Latin poetry, and more. This reconstruction is known as
(pronuntiatio) restituta "restored pronunciation" among Latin speakers of today and widely adopted for reasons of perceptibility. The table below lists the consonant phonemes of Classical Latin (1st century BC, beginning 1st century AD)
| |
Labial Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
|
Dental |
PalatalPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
|
VelarVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
|
GlottalGlottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
|
| plain |
labial Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.The most common...
|
| Plosive |
voiced |
b |
d |
|
ɡ |
|
|
| voiceless |
p |
t |
|
k |
kʷ |
|
| aspirated |
pʰ |
tʰ |
|
kʰ |
|
|
| Fricative |
voiced |
|
z |
|
|
|
|
| voiceless |
f |
s |
|
|
|
h |
| Nasal A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
|
m |
n |
|
ŋ |
|
|
| Rhotic In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
|
|
r |
|
|
|
|
| Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
|
|
l |
j |
|
w |
|
Latin spelling of the Classical period seems to have been largely
phonemicIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
, with each letter corresponding to a specific phoneme in the language, save for some exceptions. In particular, all vowels varied in pronunciation depending upon their vowel length, the letter "n" represented either a
dental nasalThe dental nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the dental nasal:- Occurrence :...
, a
velar nasalThe velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
, or lengthening and
nasalizationA nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
of the preceding vowel if an "f" or "s" follows, and the letters
i and
u represented either consonants or vowels depending on context. Although Classical Latin did not have a distinction between either
i and
j or
u or
v, in later publications,
i and
u can represent solely the vowel form while
j and
v solely the consonant form.
Most of the letters are (after this reconstruction) pronounced the same as in English, but note the following:
- Consonants:
- c = /k/ (never as in nice; without aspiration, as in Italian peccare)
- g = /ɡ/ (never as in germ)
- i (j) (consonantal i) = /j/ (like English y in you) The "i" is pronounced as a consonant if in the beginning of a root
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
before a vowel or between two vowels(e.g. iucundus = /juː'cʊndʊs/ ~ yookundus ("pleasant"), periucundus = /peɾjuː'cʊndʊs/ ~ peRyookundus ("very pleasant")).
- l existed in two different allophonic variants: l exilis before l and i, and l pinguis in all other positions. The precise phonetic nature of these two allophones is unknown, so they are represented by a single consonant in the table above.
- n = /n/ or /ŋ/ If n occurs before c, g or x or directly after a g, it is pronounced /ŋ/ ("ng" as in "sing"). Otherwise, it is pronounced /n/ or before f or s represents a nasalization/prolongation of the preceding vowel(e.g. "consul" = /ko˝ːsʊl/).
- ph = /pʰ/
- r if beginning a syllable = /ɾ/ (as in Spanish pero); r if finishing a syllable and rr = /r/ (as in Spanish perro)
- t = /t/ (never as in English nation; without aspiration, as in Spanish tentar)
- th = /tʰ/ (analogous to ph; never as in English thunder or the)
- u (v) (consonantal u) = /w/ The u is pronounced as a consonant also if beginning a root
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
and before a vowel or if placed between two vowels(e.g. uehebantur = /weheː'bantuɾ/ ("they were driving"), inuehebantur = /inweheː'bantuɾ/ ("they were attacking verbally"), amauere = /amaː'weːɾe/ ~ amaaweyRe).
- x = /ks/
Long consonants are represented by doubled spelling:
puella = /pu'elːa/ ("girl"; similar to Italian
nella),
littera = /'lɪtːɛɾa/ ("letter", "character"; as in Italian
petto),
accidere = /akːidɛɾɛ/ ("to happen"; stress on the second syllable; as in Italian
ecco),
addere = /'adːɛɾɛ/ ("to add"),
pessime = /'pesːimeː/ ("very/most badly") and the like.
It is also notable that consonants at the end of syllables close these syllables clearly, that means the latter are pronounced longer: e.g.
amare = /a'maːɾɛ/ ("to love") has the quantitative structure
short-long-short, whereas
armare = /ar'maːɾɛ/ ("to arm") shows
long-long-short. This feature of classical Latin is crucial to the understanding and retracing of Latin poetical rhythms of classical and ensuing times, which are mainly based on syllable lengths, less on the word stresses.
- Vowels:
- a = /a/ when short and /aː/ when long.
- e = /ɛ/ (as in pet) when short and /eː/ (somewhat as in English they) when long.
- i = /ɪ/ (as in pin) when short and /iː/ (as in machine) when long
- o = /ɔ/ (as in British English law) when short and /oː/ (somewhat as in holy) when long.
- u = /ʊ/ (as in put) when short and /uː/ (as in true) when long.
A vowel followed by an
m or
n (maintained later by French and Portuguese), either at the end of a word or before another consonant, is
nasalA nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
, as in
monstrum /mõːstrũ/.
Orthography
Latin was written using the Latin Alphabet, derived from the
Old Italic alphabetOld Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages...
, in turn drawn from the
GreekThe Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
and ultimately the
Phoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
. This alphabet has continued to be used throughout centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic, and many Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian and Czech), as well as for others as
IndonesianIndonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
,
VietnameseVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, and
Niger–Congo languagesThe Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
.
The Latin alphabet has varied in number of letters. When it was first adopted from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21. Later, “G”, representing /ɡ/, formerly included under “C”, was innovated to replace “Z”, which was non-functional, as the language had no
voiced alveolar fricativeThe voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
at the time. The letters “Y” and “Z” were later added to represent the Greek Upsilon and Zeta respectively in Greek loanwords. “W” was created in the 11th century from VV. It represented /w/ in Germanic languages, not in Latin, which still uses “V” for the purpose. “J” was distinguished from the original “I” only during the late Middle Ages along with the letter “U” from “V”. Although some dictionaries use “J” it is for the most part eschewed for Latin text as non-original, although other languages use it.
Classical Latin did not contain
punctuationPunctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
, macrons (although
apicesIn written Latin, the apex is a mark roughly with the shape of an acute accent which is placed over vowels to indicate that they are long.The shape and length of the apex can vary, sometimes within a single inscription...
were used to distinguish length in vowels), lowercase letters, or interword spacing (but the
interpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
was used at times in Latin’s history). So, a sentence originally written as:
- LVGETEOVENERESCVPIDINESQVE
would be rendered in a modern edition as
- Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque
or with macrons
- Lūgēte, Ō Venerēs Cupīdinēsque.
and translated as
- Mourn, O Venus
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
es and CupidIn Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
s
The
Roman cursiveRoman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old cursive, and new cursive.- Old Roman cursive :...
script is commonly found on the many
wax tabletA wax tablet is a tablet made of wood and covered with a layer of wax, often linked loosely to a cover tablet, as a "double-leaved" diptych. It was used as a reusable and portable writing surface in Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages...
s excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on
Hadrian's WallHadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian, it was the first of two fortifications built across Great Britain, the second being the Antonine Wall, lesser known of the two because its physical remains are less evident today.The...
in
BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. Curiously enough, most of the
Vindolanda tabletsThe Vindolanda tablets are "the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain". They are also probably our best source of information about life on Hadrian's Wall. Written on fragments of thin, post-card sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd...
show spaces between words, though spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era.
Grammar
Latin is a
syntheticIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
,
fusional languageA fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
:
affixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es (often suffixes, which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express
genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
,
numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and
caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
in
adjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s,
nounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, and
pronounIn linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s—a process called
declensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
. Affixes are attached to fixed stems of verbs, as well, to denote
personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, number,
tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, voice,
moodIn linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, and
aspectIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
—a process called
conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
.
Nouns
There are seven Latin noun cases. These mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in some other languages, such as English. Words can typically be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, although the emphasis may have been altered.
True order of nouns is
1 nominative used when the noun is the
subjectThe subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
or a predicate nominative. The thing or person acting; e.g., the
girl ran:
puella cucurrit, or cucurrit puella
2 genitive used when the noun is the possessor of an object (e.g., "the horse of the man", or "the man's horse"—in both of these instances, the word
man would be in the genitive case when translated into Latin). Also indicates material of which something greater is made (e.g., "a group of people"; "a number of gifts"—
people and
gifts would be in the genitive case). Some nouns are genitive with special verbs and adjectives too. (e.g., The cup is full of
wine.
Poculum plenum vini est. The master of the
slave had beaten him.
Dominus servi eum verberaverat.)
3 dative used when the noun is the indirect object of the sentence, with special verbs, with certain prepositions, and if used as agent, reference, or even possessor. (e.g., The merchant hands over the
stolaThe stola was the traditional garment of Roman women, corresponding to the toga, or the pallium, that were worn by men.Originally, women wore togas as well, but after the 2nd century BC, the toga was worn exclusively by men, and women were expected to wear the stola...
to the woman.
Mercator feminae stolam tradit.)
4 accusative used when the noun is the direct object of the sentence/phrase, with certain prepositions, or as the subject of an infinitive. The thing or person having something done to them. (e.g., The slave woman carries the
wine.
Ancilla vinum portat.) In addition, there are certain constructions where the accusative can be used for the subject of a clause, one being the indirect statement.
5 vocative used when the noun is used in a direct address. The vocative form of a noun is the same as the nominative except for second declension nouns ending in -us. The -us becomes an -e or if it ends in -ius (such as filius) then the ending is just -i (fili) (as distinct from the plural nominative (filii)). (e.g., "
Master!" shouted the slave.
"Domine!" servus clamavit.)
6 ablative used when the noun demonstrates separation or movement from a source, cause,
agentIn linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...
, or
instrumentThe instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
, or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions; adverbial. (e.g., You walked
with the boy.
tu cum puero ambulavisti.)
- Locative
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
, used to indicate a location and services (corresponding to the English "in" or "at"). This is far less common than the other six cases of Latin nouns and usually applies to cities, small towns, and islands smaller than the island of RhodesRhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...
, but not including Rhodes, along with a few common nouns. In the first and second declension singular, its form coincides with the genitive (Roma becomes Romae, "in Rome"). In the plural, and in the other declensions, it coincides with the dative and ablative (Athenae becomes Athenis, "at Athens").
Latin lacks
definite and indefinite articlesAn article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
; thus
puer currit can mean either "the boy is running" or "a boy is running."
Verbs
Verbs in Latin are usually identified by four main
conjugationsLatin verbs have four main patterns of conjugation. As in a number of other languages, Latin verbs have an active voice and a passive voice. Furthermore, there exist deponent and semi-deponent Latin verbs , as well as defective verbs...
, groups of verbs with similarly inflected forms. The first conjugation is typified by active infinitive forms ending in
-āre, the second by active infinitives ending in
-ēre, the third by active infinitives ending in
-ere, and the fourth by active infinitives ending in
-īre. However, there are exceptions to these rules. Further, there is a subset of the 3rd conjugation, the
-iō verbs, which behave somewhat like the 4th conjugation. There are six general
tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
s in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three
grammatical moodIn linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
s (indicative, imperative and subjunctive, in addition to the
infinitiveIn grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
,
participleIn linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
,
gerundIn linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
,
gerundiveIn linguistics, a gerundive is a particular verb form. The term is applied very differently to different languages; depending on the language, gerundives may be verbal adjectives, verbal adverbs, or finite verbs...
and
supineIn grammar a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages.-In Latin:In Latin there are two supines, I and II . They are originally the accusative and dative or ablative forms of a verbal noun in the fourth declension, respectively. The first supine ends in -um. It has two uses. The first...
), three
personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
s (first, second, and third), two numbers (singular and plural), two voices (active and passive), and a few
aspectIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
s. Verbs are described by four principal parts:
- The first principal part is the first person (or third person for impersonal verbs) singular, present tense, indicative mood, active voice form of the verb (or passive voice for verbs lacking an active voice).
- The second principal part is the present infinitive active (or passive for verbs lacking an active) form.
- The third principal part is the first person (or third person for impersonal verbs) singular, perfect indicative active (or passive when there is no active) form.
- The fourth principal part is the supine form, or alternatively, the nominative singular, perfect passive participle form of the verb. The fourth principal part can show either one gender of the participle, or all three genders (-us for masculine, -a for feminine, and -um for neuter). It can also be the future participle when the verb cannot be made passive. Most modern Latin dictionaries, if only showing one gender, tend to show the masculine; however, many older dictionaries will instead show the neuter. The fourth principal part is sometimes omitted for intransitive verbs, although strictly in Latin these can be made passive if used impersonally.
There are six tenses in the Latin language; these are
presentThe present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, future, future perfect, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. They each have a set of endings corresponding to the person and number referred to. The endings assign the verb to these particular person and number to be translated as such even if there is no subject to accompany the verb. For instance, if you wanted to say "he walks in the field" you could (but you wouldn't have to) put in a personal pronoun to justify the pronoun "he" instead, you could write "ambulat," the word meaning to walk in the present tense, third person singular. These six tenses are described in greater detail below.
What follows is the six tenses with their six persons for first and second conjugations in active. This is the more common form. For the imperfect, present, and future tenses, the way in which you reach the finished word is by removing the -re ending from the second principal part of the verb being conjugated and placing at the end of the word the most appropriate ending given. For the other three tenses you do the same, except you remove the -i ending from the third principal part of the word being conjugated.
| Tense | 1st singular ending | 2nd singular ending | 3rd singular ending | 1st plural ending | 2nd plural ending | 3rd plural ending | |
| Future Perfect |
-ero |
-eris |
-erit |
-erimus |
-eritis |
-erint |
|
| Future |
-bo |
-bis |
-bit |
-bimus |
-bitis |
-bunt |
|
| Present |
-o |
-s |
-t |
-mus |
-tis |
-nt |
|
| Imperfect |
-bam |
-bas |
-bat |
-bamus |
-batis |
bant |
|
| Perfect |
-i |
-isti |
-it |
-imus |
-istis |
-erunt |
|
| Pluperfect |
-eram |
-eras |
-erat |
-eramus |
-eratis |
-erant |
|
Vocabulary
As Latin is an Italic language, most of its vocabulary is likewise Italic, deriving ultimately from
PIEA pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....
. However, because of close cultural interaction, the Romans not only had adapted the Etruscan alphabet to form the Latin alphabet, but also had borrowed some
EtruscanThe Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
words into their language, including
persona (mask) and
histrio (actor). Latin also included vocabulary borrowed from
OscanOscan is a term used to describe both an extinct language of southern Italy and the language group to which it belonged.The Oscan language was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites, the Aurunci, the Sidicini, and the Ausones. The latter three tribes were often grouped under the name...
, another Italic language.
After the
Fall of TarentumThe history of Taranto dates back to the 8th century BC when it was founded as a Greek colony, known as Taras.-Foundation and splendour:Taranto was founded in 706 BC by Dorian immigrants as the only Spartan colony, and its origin is peculiar: the founders were Partheniae, sons of unmarried Spartan...
(272 BC), the Romans began hellenizing, or adopting features of Greek culture, including the borrowing of Greek words, such as
camera (vaulted roof),
sumbolum (symbol), and
balineum (bath). This hellenization led to the addition of “Y” and “Z” to the alphabet to represent these Greek sounds. Subsequently the Romans transplanted
Greek artGreek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the ancient period...
,
medicineMedicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
,
scienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
to Italy, paying almost any price to entice Greek skilled and educated persons to Rome, and sending their youth to be educated in Greece. Thus, many Latin scientific and philosophical words were Greek loanwords or had their meanings expanded by association with Greek words, as
ars (craft) for τέχνη.
Because of the Roman Empire’s expansion and subsequent trade with outlying European tribes, the Romans borrowed some northern and central European words, such as
beber (beaver), of Germanic origin, and
bracae (breeches), of Celtic origin. The specific dialects of Latin across Latin-speaking regions of the former Roman Empire after its fall were influenced by languages specific to the regions. These spoken Latins evolved into particular Romance languages.
During and after the adoption of Christianity into Roman society, Christian vocabulary became a part of the language, formed either from Greek or Hebrew borrowings, or as Latin neologisms. Continuing into the Middle Ages, Latin incorporated many more words from surrounding languages, including Old English and
Germanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
.
Over the ages Latin-speaking populations produced new adjectives, nouns and verbs by
affixAn affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
ing or
compoundingIn linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
meaningful
segmentIn linguistics , the term segment may be defined as "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech."- Classifying speech units :...
s. For example, the compound adjective,
omnipotens, "all-powerful," was produced from the adjectives
omnis, "all", and
potens, "powerful", by dropping the final
s of
omnis and concatenating. Often the concatenation changed the part of speech; i.e., nouns were produced from verb segments or verbs from nouns and adjectives.
Modern use
Latin lives in the form of
Ecclesiastical LatinEcclesiastical Latin is the Latin used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in all periods for ecclesiastical purposes...
, used for
lawsThe canon law of the Catholic Church, is a fully developed legal system, with all the necessary elements: courts, lawyers, judges, a fully articulated legal code and principles of legal interpretation. It lacks the necessary binding force present in most modern day legal systems. The academic...
and decrees issued by Hierarchs of the Catholic Church, and in the form of a sparse sprinkling of scientific or social articles written in it, as well as in numerous Latin clubs. Latin vocabulary is used in
scienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
,
academiaAcademia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
, and
lawLaw is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
.
Classical LatinClassical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
is taught in many schools often combined with
GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
in the study of
ClassicsClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
, though its role has diminished since the early 20th century.
The
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, together with its modern variants such as the
EnglishThe modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
, Spanish,
FrenchThe French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.-Letter names:- Diacritics :...
,
PortugueseThe Portuguese alphabet, , consists of the following 23 or 26 Latin letters:In addition, the following characters with diacritics are used: Áá, Ââ, Ãã, Àà, Çç, Éé, Êê, Íí, Óó, Ôô, Õõ, Úú. These are not, however, treated as independent letters in collation, nor do they have entries of their own in...
and
German alphabetThe modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
s, is the most widely used alphabet in the world. Terminology deriving from Latin words and concepts is widely used, among other fields, in
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
,
medicineMedicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
,
biologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, and law, in terms and abbreviations such as
subpoena duces tecumA subpoena duces tecum is a court summons ordering a named party to appear before the court and produce documents or other tangible evidence for use at a hearing or trial....
,
q.i.d. (
quater in die: "four times a day"), and
inter alia (among other things). These Latin terms are used in isolation, as technical terms. In scientific names for organisms, Latin is typically the language of choice, followed by Greek.
The largest organization that still uses Latin in official and quasi-official contexts is the Catholic Church (particularly in the Latin Rite). The
Tridentine MassThe Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...
uses Latin, although the
Mass of Paul VIThe Mass of Pope Paul VI is the liturgy of the Catholic Mass of the Roman Rite promulgated by Paul VI in 1969, after the Second Vatican Council...
is usually said in the local vernacular language; however, it can be and often is said in Latin, particularly in the
VaticanVatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
. Indeed, Latin is still the official standard language of the
Roman RiteThe Roman Rite is the liturgical rite used in the Diocese of Rome in the Catholic Church. It is by far the most widespread of the Latin liturgical rites used within the Western or Latin autonomous particular Church, the particular Church that itself is also called the Latin Rite, and that is one of...
of the Catholic Church, and the
Second Vatican CouncilThe Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...
merely authorized that the liturgical books be translated and optionally used in the vernacular languages. Latin is the official language of the
Holy SeeThe Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
. The Vatican City is also home to the only ATM where instructions are given in Latin.
Some films of relevant ancient settings, such as
SebastianeSebastiane is a controversial 1976 film written and directed by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress. It portrays the events of the life of Saint Sebastian, including his iconic martyrdom by arrows. Most of the controversy surrounding the film derives from the homoeroticism portrayed between the soldiers...
and
The Passion of the ChristThe Passion of the Christ is a 2004 American drama film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus. It depicts the Passion of Jesus largely according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...
, have been made with dialogue in Latin for purposes of realism. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/TV series as
the ExorcistThe Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
and
LostLost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
(
Jughead"Jughead" is the third television episode of the fifth season of ABC's Lost. The 89th episode of the show overall, "Jughead" aired on January 28, 2009 on ABC in the United States, being simulcast on A in Canada...
). Subtitles are usually employed for the benefit of audiences who do not understand Latin. There are also
songs written with Latin lyrics.
Many organizations today have Latin mottos, such as "
Semper ParatusSemper Paratus is the motto of a number of different organizations:-Canada:* The Windsor Regiment , an armoured regiment* The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry , an infantry regiment...
" (always ready), the motto of the
United States Coast GuardThe United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
, and "
Semper FidelisSemper Fidelis is Latin for "Always Faithful" or "Always Loyal". Well known in the United States as the motto of the United States Marine Corps , Semper Fidelis has served as a slogan for many families and entities, in many countries, dated to have been started no later than the 16th century...
" (always faithful), the motto of the
United States Marine CorpsThe United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
. Several of the states of the United States also have Latin mottos, such as "Montani Semper Liberi" (Mountaineers are always free), the state motto of
West VirginiaWest Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, "
Sic semper tyrannisSic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning "thus always to tyrants." It is sometimes mistranslated as "down with the tyrant." The phrase is said to have originated with Marcus Junius Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar....
" (Thus always to tyrants), that of
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, "
Esse Quam VideriEsse quam videri is a Latin phrase meaning "To be, rather than to seem ". It has been used as motto by a number of different groups.-History:...
" (To be rather than to seem), that of
North CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. and "Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice" ("If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.") that of
MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
.
Latin grammar has been taught in most Italian schools since the 18th century: for example, in the
Liceo classicoLiceo classico is a secondary school type in Italy. The educational curriculum lasts five years, and students are generally about 14 to 19 years of age....
and
Liceo scientificoLiceo Scientifico is a secondary school type in Italy. Along with Liceo Classico, it is considered the peak of the Italian upper secondary education. The access to this school is possible after the successful completion of the three year middle school and the corresponding final examination...
, Latin is still one of the primary subjects. Latin is taught in many schools and universities around the world as well.
Occasionally, some media outlets broadcast in Latin, which is targeted at the audience of enthusiasts. Notable examples include
Radio BremenRadio Bremen , Germany's smallest public radio and television broadcaster, is the legally mandated broadcaster for the city-state of Bremen...
in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, YLE radio in
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
and Vatican Radio & Television; all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin.
There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The
Latin WikipediaThe Latin Wikipedia is the Latin language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has about articles. While all primary content is in Latin, in discussions modern languages such as English, French, German or Spanish are allowed and often used, since many users find this easier.Professional latinists...
has more than 59,000 articles written in Latin.
See also
- Classical compound
Classical compounds are compound words composed from Latin or Ancient Greek root words. A large portion of the technical and scientific lexicon of English and other Western European languages consists of classical compounds. For example, bio- combines with -graphy to form biography...
- Contemporary Latin
- Greek and Latin roots in English
- Hybrid word
A hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
- Latin influence in English
English is a Germanic language, having a grammar and core vocabulary inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, a significant portion of the English wordhoard comes from Romance and Latinate sources. Estimates of native words range from 20%–33%, with the rest made up of foreign borrowings...
- Latin Mnemonics
A Latin mnemonic verse or mnemonic rhyme is a mnemonic device for teaching and remembering Latin grammar. Such mnemonics have been considered by teachers to be an effective technique for schoolchildren to learn the complex rules of Latin accidence and syntax...
- Latin school
Latin School may refer to:* Latin schools of Medieval Europe* These schools in the United States:** Boston Latin School, Boston, MA** Brooklyn Latin School, New York, NY** Brother Joseph C. Fox Latin School, Long Island, NY...
- Medical terminology
Medical terminology is a vocabulary for accurately describing the human body and associated components, conditions, processes and process in a science-based manner. Some examples are: R.I.C.E., trapezius, and latissimus dorsi. It is to be used in the medical and nursing fields...
- Romanization (cultural)
Romanization or latinization indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire...
- Toponymy
Toponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...
- Wikipedia:IPA for Latin
Lists:
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