Latin (lingua Latīna, or Latīnum, ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition.
Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven grammatical case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjugations, six latin tenses (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three persons, three grammatical mood, two voices (passive and active), two or three aspects, and two numbers (singular and plural). The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and .
By the late Roman Republic (75 BC), Old Latin had been standardized into Classical Latin used by educated elites. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken at that time among lower-class and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and author Petronius. Late Latin is the written language from the 3rd century, and its various Vulgar Latin dialects developed in the 6th to 9th centuries into the modern Romance languages. Medieval Latin was used during the Middle Ages as a literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance, which then used Renaissance Latin. Later, New Latin evolved during the early modern era to eventually become various forms of rarely spoken Contemporary Latin, one of which, Ecclesiastical Latin, remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church at Vatican City.
Latin has also greatly influenced the English language and historically contributed many words to the English lexicon after the Christianization of Anglo-Saxons and the Norman conquest. In particular, Latin (and Ancient Greek) roots are still used in English descriptions of theology, science disciplines (especially anatomy and taxonomy), medicine, and law.
In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from Late Antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars.
After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses.
The Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin and were originally the popular and informal dialects spoken by various layers of the Latin-speaking population. These dialects were distinct from the classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which Romans generally wrote.
The decline of the Roman Empire meant a deterioration in educational standards that brought about Late Latin, a postclassical stage of the language seen in Christian writings of the time. It was more in line with everyday speech, not only because of a decline in education but also because of a desire to spread the word to the masses.
Currently, the five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. Despite dialectal variation, which is found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy have retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christians (Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711, cutting off communications between the major Romance regions, that the languages began to diverge seriously. The Vulgar Latin dialect that would later become Romanian diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire.
One key marker of whether a given Romance feature was found in Vulgar Latin is to compare it with its parallel in Classical Latin. If it was not preferred in Classical Latin, then it most likely came from the undocumented contemporaneous Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance for "horse" (Italian cavallo, French cheval, Spanish caballo, Portuguese cavalo and Romanian cal) came from Latin caballus. However, Classical Latin used equus. Therefore, caballus was most likely the spoken form.
Vulgar Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing.
Without the institutions of the Roman Empire that had supported its uniformity, medieval Latin lost its linguistic cohesion: for example, 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 vocabularies have been introduced from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail.
In the Anglican Church, after the publication of the Book of Common Prayer of 1559, a Latin edition was published in 1560 for use in universities such as Oxford and the leading "public schools" (English private academies), where the liturgy was still permitted to be conducted in Latin. There have been several Latin translations since, including a Latin edition of the 1979 USA Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
Canada's motto A mari usque ad mare ("from sea to sea") and most provincial mottos are also in Latin. The Canadian Victoria Cross is modelled after the British Victoria Cross which has the inscription "For Valour". Because Canada is officially bilingual, the Canadian medal has replaced the English inscription with the Latin Pro Valore.
Spain's motto Plus ultra, meaning "even further", or figuratively "Further!", is also Latin in origin. It is taken from the personal motto of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain (as Charles I), and is a reversal of the original phrase Non terrae plus ultra ("No land further beyond", "No further!"). According to legend, this phrase was inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules, the rocks on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and the western end of the known, Mediterranean world. Charles adopted the motto following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and it also has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence.
In the United States the unofficial national motto until 1956 was E pluribus unum meaning "Out of many, one". The motto continues to be featured on the Great Seal, it also appears on the flags and seals of both houses of congress and the flags of the states of Michigan, North Dakota, New York, and Wisconsin. The mottos 13 letters symbolically represent the original Thirteen Colonies which revolted from the British Crown. The motto is featured on all presently minted coinage and has been featured in most coinage throughout the nation's history.
Several states of the United States have Latin mottos, such as:
Many military organizations today have Latin mottos, such as:
A law governing body in the Philippines have a Latin motto, such as:
Some colleges and universities have adopted Latin mottos, for example Harvard University's motto is Veritas ("truth"). Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn, and the mother of Virtue.
Some films of ancient settings, such as Sebastiane and The Passion of the Christ, have been made with dialogue in Latin for the sake of realism. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/television series as The Exorcist and Lost ("Jughead"). Subtitles are usually shown for the benefit of those who do not understand Latin. There are also songs written with Latin lyrics. The libretto for the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex by Igor Stravinsky is in Latin.
The continued instruction of Latin is often seen as a highly valuable component of a liberal arts education. Latin is taught at many high schools, especially in Europe and the Americas. It is most common in British public schools and grammar schools, the Italian liceo classico and liceo scientifico, the German Humanistisches Gymnasium and the Dutch gymnasium.
Occasionally, some media outlets, targeting enthusiasts, broadcast in Latin. Notable examples include Radio Bremen in Germany, YLE radio in Finland (the Nuntii Latini broadcast from 1989 until it was shut down in June 2019), and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin.
A variety of organisations, as well as informal Latin 'circuli' ('circles'), have been founded in more recent times to support the use of spoken Latin. Moreover, a number of university classics departments have begun incorporating communicative pedagogies in their Latin courses. These include the University of Kentucky, the University of Oxford and also Princeton University.
There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The Latin Wikipedia has more than 130,000 articles.
Urdaneta City's motto Deo servire populo sufficere ("It is enough for the people to serve God") the Latin motto can be read in the old seal of this Philippine city.
Latin translations of modern literature such as: The Hobbit, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, The Adventures of Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, Le Petit Prince, Max and Moritz, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Cat in the Hat, 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 Phrasebook.
The influence of Roman governance and Roman technology on the less-developed nations under Roman dominion led to the adoption of Latin phraseology in some specialized areas, such as science, technology, medicine, and law. For example, the Linnaean system of plant and animal classification was heavily influenced by Historia Naturalis, an encyclopedia of people, places, plants, animals, and things published by Pliny the Elder. Roman medicine, recorded in the works of such physicians as Galen, established that today's medical terminology would be primarily derived from Latin and Greek words, the Greek being filtered through the Latin. Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole. Latin law principles have survived partly in a long list of Latin legal terms.
A few international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin. Interlingua is sometimes considered a simplified, modern version of the language. Latino sine Flexione, popular in the early 20th century, is Latin with its inflections stripped away, among other grammatical changes.
The Logudorese dialect of the Sardinian language is the closest contemporary language to Latin.
Instruction in Latin is an essential aspect. In today's world, a large number of Latin students in the US 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. Wheelock, who received a PhD from Harvard University. Wheelock's Latin has become the standard text for many American introductory Latin courses.
The Living Latin movement attempts to teach Latin in the same way that living languages are taught, as a means of both spoken and written communication. It is available in Vatican City and at some institutions in the US, such as the University of Kentucky and Iowa State University. The British Cambridge University Press is a major supplier of Latin textbooks for all levels, such as the Cambridge Latin Course series. It has also published a subseries of children's texts in Latin by Bell & Forte, which recounts the adventures of a mouse called Minimus.
In the United Kingdom, the Classical Association encourages the study of antiquity through various means, such as publications and grants. The University of Cambridge, the Open University, a number of prestigious independent schools, for example Eton College, Harrow School, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, Merchant Taylors' School, and Rugby School, and The Latin Programme/Via Facilis, a London-based charity, run Latin courses. In the United States and in Canada, the American Classical League supports every effort to further the study of classics. Its subsidiaries include the National Junior Classical League (with more than 50,000 members), which encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the National Senior Classical League, which encourages students to continue their study of the classics into college. The league also sponsors the National Latin Exam. Classicist Mary Beard wrote in The Times Literary Supplement in 2006 that the reason for learning Latin is because of what was written in it.
In Old and Classical Latin, the Latin alphabet had no distinction between letter case, and the letters did not exist. In place of , were used, respectively; represented both vowels and consonants. Most of the letterforms were similar to modern uppercase, as can be seen in the inscription from the Colosseum shown at the top of the article.
The spelling systems used in Latin dictionaries and modern editions of Latin texts, however, normally use in place of Classical-era . Some systems use for the consonant sounds except in the combinations for which is never used.
Some notes concerning the mapping of Latin phonemes to English graphemes are given below:
In Classical Latin, as in modern Italian, double consonant letters were pronounced as Gemination consonant sounds distinct from short versions of the same consonants. Thus the nn in Classical Latin annus "year" (and in Italian anno) is pronounced as a doubled as in English unnamed. (In English, distinctive consonant length or doubling occurs only at the boundary between two words or , as in that example.)
In Classical Latin, did not exist as a letter distinct from V; the written form was used to represent both a vowel and a consonant. was adopted to represent upsilon in loanwords from Greek language, but it was pronounced like and by some speakers. It was also used in native Latin words by confusion with Greek words of similar meaning, such as sylva and ὕλη.
Classical Latin distinguished between vowel length. Then, long vowels, except for , were frequently marked using the apex, which was sometimes similar to an acute accent . Long was written using a taller version of , called i longa "long I": . In modern texts, long vowels are often indicated by a macron , and short vowels are usually unmarked except when it is necessary to distinguish between words, when they are marked with a breve . However, they would also signify a long vowel by writing the vowel larger than other letters in a word or by repeating the vowel twice in a row. The acute accent, when it is used in modern Latin texts, indicates stress, as in Spanish, rather than length.
Long vowels in Classical Latin are, technically, pronounced as entirely different from short vowels. The difference is described in the table below:
This difference in quality is posited by W. Sidney Allen in his book Vox Latina. However, Andrea Calabrese has disputed that short vowels differed in quality from long vowels during the classical period, based in part upon the observation that in Sardinian and some Lucanian dialects, each long and short vowel pair was merged. This is distinguished from the typical Italo-Western romance vowel system in which short /i/ and /u/ merge with long /eː/ and /oː/. Thus, Latin 'siccus' becomes 'secco' in Italian and 'siccu' in Sardinian.
A vowel letter followed by at the end of a word, or a vowel letter followed by before or , represented a short nasal vowel, as in monstrum .
The sequences sometimes did not represent diphthongs. and also represented a sequence of two vowels in different syllables in aēnus "of bronze" and coēpit "began", and represented sequences of two vowels or of a vowel and one of the semivowels , in cavē "beware!", cuius "whose", monuī "I warned", solvī "I released", dēlēvī "I destroyed", eius "his", and novus "new".
Old Latin had more diphthongs, but most of them changed into long vowels in Classical Latin. The Old Latin diphthong and the sequence became Classical . Old Latin and changed to Classical , except in a few words whose became Classical . These two developments sometimes occurred in different words from the same root: for instance, Classical poena "punishment" and pūnīre "to punish". Early Old Latin usually changed to Classical .
In Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages, merged with . During the Classical Latin period this form of speaking was deliberately avoided by well-educated speakers.
Further, if a consonant separates two vowels, it will go into the syllable of the second vowel. When there are two consonants between vowels, the last consonant will go with the second vowel. An exception occurs when a phonetic stop and liquid come together. In this situation, they are thought to be a single consonant, and as such, they will go into the syllable of the second vowel.
The number of letters in the Latin alphabet has varied. When it was first derived from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21 letters. Later, G was added to represent , which had previously been spelled C, and Z ceased to be included in the alphabet, as the language then had no voiced alveolar fricative. The letters Y and Z were later added to represent Greek letters, upsilon and zeta respectively, in Greek loanwords.
W was created in the 11th century from VV. It represented in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses V for the purpose. J was distinguished from the original I only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter U from V. Although some Latin dictionaries use J, it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it.
Classical Latin did not contain sentence punctuation, letter case, or interword spacing, but apices were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the interpunct was used at times to separate words. The first line of Catullus 3, originally written as
lv́géteóveneréscupꟾdinésqve
or with interpunct as
would be rendered in a modern edition as
or with macrons
or with apices
The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain. Most notable is the fact that while most of the Vindolanda tablets show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era.
The grammatical function can be changed by changing the markers: the word is "inflected" to express different grammatical functions, but the semantic element usually does not change. (Inflection uses affixing and infixing. Affixing is prefixing and suffixing. Latin inflections are never prefixed.)
For example, amābit, "he (or she or it) will love", is formed from the same stem, amā-, to which a future tense marker, -bi-, is suffixed, and a third person singular marker, -t, is suffixed. There is an inherent ambiguity: -t may denote more than one grammatical category: masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. A major task in understanding Latin phrases and clauses is to clarify such ambiguities by an analysis of context. All natural languages contain ambiguities of one sort or another.
The inflections express gender, number, and grammatical case in , , and , a process called declension. Markers are also attached to fixed stems of verbs, to denote person, number, tense, voice, grammatical mood, and aspect, a process called conjugation. Some words are uninflected and undergo neither process, such as adverbs, prepositions, and interjections.
There are seven Latin noun cases, which also apply to adjectives and pronouns and mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence by means of inflections. Thus, word order is not as important in Latin as it is in English, which is less inflected. The general structure and word order of a Latin sentence can therefore vary. The cases are as follows:
Latin lacks both definite and indefinite articles so puer currit can mean either "the boy is running" or "a boy is running".
Latin numbers are sometimes declined as adjectives. See Numbers below.
First- and second-declension adjectives are declined like first-declension nouns for the feminine forms and like second-declension nouns for the masculine and neuter forms. For example, for mortuus, mortua, mortuum (dead), mortua is declined like a regular first-declension noun (such as puella (girl)), mortuus is declined like a regular second-declension masculine noun (such as dominus (lord, master)), and mortuum is declined like a regular second-declension neuter noun (such as auxilium (help)).
Third-declension adjectives are mostly declined like normal third-declension nouns, with a few exceptions. In the plural nominative neuter, for example, the ending is -ia (omnia (all, everything)), and for third-declension nouns, the plural nominative neuter ending is -a or -ia (capita (heads), animalia (animals)) They can have one, two or three forms for the masculine, feminine, and neuter nominative singular.
Irregular verbs are verbs that do not follow the regular conjugations in the formation of the inflected form. Irregular verbs in Latin are esse, "to be"; velle, "to want"; ferre, "to carry"; edere, "to eat"; dare, "to give"; ire, "to go"; posse, "to be able"; fieri, "to happen"; and their compounds.
There are six general tenses in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect and future perfect), three grammatical mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive, in addition to the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive and supine), three persons (first, second and third), two numbers (singular and plural), two voices (active and passive) and two aspects (perfective and imperfective). Verbs are described by four principal parts:
The six tenses of Latin are divided into two tense systems: the present system, which is made up of the present, imperfect and future tenses, and the perfect system, which is made up of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect tenses. Each tense has a set of endings corresponding to the person, number, and voice of the subject. Subject (nominative) pronouns are generally omitted for the first ( I, we) and second ( you) persons except for emphasis.
The table below displays the common inflected endings for the indicative mood in the active voice in all six tenses. For the future tense, the first listed endings are for the first and second conjugations, and the second listed endings are for the third and fourth conjugations:
After the Fall of Tarentum (272 BC), the Romans began Hellenising, or adopting features of Greek culture, including the borrowing of Greek words, such as camera (vaulted roof), sumbolum (symbol), and balineum (bath). This Hellenisation led to the addition of "Y" and "Z" to the alphabet to represent Greek sounds. Subsequently, the Romans transplanted Greek art, medicine, science and philosophy 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) and τέχνη (art).
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. The dialects of Latin evolved into different Romance languages.
During and after the adoption of Christianity into Roman society, Christian vocabulary became a part of the language, 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 other Germanic languages.
Over the ages, Latin-speaking populations produced new adjectives, nouns, and verbs by or compounding meaningful segments. 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, and nouns were produced from verb segments or verbs from nouns and adjectives.
The numbers from 4 to 100 do not change their endings. As in modern descendants such as Spanish, the gender for naming a number in isolation is masculine, so that "1, 2, 3" is counted as ūnus, duo, trēs.
The same text may be marked for all long vowels (before any possible elisions at word boundary) with apices over vowel letters, including customarily before "nf" and "ns" where a long vowel is automatically produced:
Renaissance Latin
New Latin
Contemporary Latin
Religious use
Use of Latin for mottos
Other modern uses
Legacy
Inscriptions
Literature
Influence on present-day languages
Education
Official status
Phonology
Consonants
was not native to Classical Latin. It appeared in Greek loanwords starting around the first century BC, when it was probably pronounced initially and [[doubled|Gemination]] between vowels, in contrast to [[Classical Greek|Ancient Greek]] or . In Classical Latin poetry, the letter between vowels always counts as two consonants for metrical purposes. The consonant ⟨b⟩ usually sounds as [b]; however, when ⟨t⟩ or ⟨s⟩ follows ⟨b⟩ then it is pronounced as in [pt] or [ps]. Further, [[consonant]]s do not blend together. So, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ph⟩, and ⟨th⟩ are all sounds that would be pronounced as [kh], [ph], and [th]. In Latin, ⟨q⟩ is always followed by the [[vowel]] ⟨u⟩. Together they make a [kʷ] sound.
+ Notes
Vowels
Simple vowels
+ Pronunciation of Latin vowels
! Latin
grapheme
! Latin
phone
! modern examples
Diphthongs
+ Diphthongs classified by beginning sound
! !! Front !! Back
Syllables
Length
Stress
Orthography
Alternative scripts
Grammar
Nouns
Adjectives
Participles
Prepositions
Verbs
Deponent verbs
Vocabulary
Conversational phrases
Numbers
ūnus, ūna, ūnum (masculine, feminine, neuter) I one duo, duae, duo (m., f., n.) II two trēs, tria (m./f., n.) III three quattuor IIII or IV four quīnque V five sex VI six septem VII seven octō VIII eight novem VIIII or IX nine decem X ten quīnquāgintā L fifty centum C one hundred quīngentī, quīngentae, quīngenta (m., f., n.) D five hundred mīlle M one thousand
Example text
See also
Bibliography
External links
Language tools
Courses
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Linguistics Research Center at UT Austin)
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Free 47-Lesson Online Latin Course, Learnlangs
Grammar and study
Phonetics
Libraries
Latin language news and audio
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Ephemeris archive, archived copy of online Latin newspaper
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Classics Podcasts in Latin and Ancient Greek, Haverford College
Latin language online communities
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Circulus Latinus Interretialis (Internet Latin Circle)
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