From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Latin (lingua Latīna, pronounced [laˈtiːna]) is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. It later evolved into such languages as French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan.
It was also the international language of science and scholarship in
central and western Europe until the 17th century. There are two
varieties of Latin: Classical Latin, the literary dialect used in poetry and prose, and Vulgar Latin, the form of the language spoken by ordinary people, which later diverged into the various Romance languages. After the rise of the Catholic Church, Medieval Latin, the ecclesiastical language of the Catholic Church, became the lingua franca of educated classes in the West.
Around the 16th century, the popularity of Medieval Latin
began to decline. Vulgar Latin, however, was preserved as a spoken
language in much of Europe, and by the 9th century diverged into the
various Romance languages. Classical Latin lives on in the form of Ecclesiastical Latin used for edicts and papal bulls issued by the Catholic Church. Much Latin vocabulary is used in science, academia, and law. Classical Latin, the literary language of the late Republic and early Empire, is still taught in many primary, grammar, and secondary schools, often combined with Greek in the study of Classics, though its role has diminished since the early 20th century. The Latin alphabet, together with its modern variants such as the English, Spanish and French alphabets, is the most widely used alphabet in the world.
History
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Latin is a member of the Italic languages. Its alphabet is based on the Old Italic alphabet, derived from the Greek alphabet. In the 9th or 8th century BC, the Italic languages were brought to the Italian peninsula by migrating tribes, and the dialect spoken in Latium around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization would develop, evolved into Latin.
Although surviving Roman literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin, the actual spoken language of the Western Roman Empire among ordinary people was what is known as Vulgar Latin, which differed from Classical Latin in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Although Latin long remained the legal and governmental language of the Roman Empire, Greek
was the secondary language of the well-educated elite, as much of the
literature and philosophy studied by upper-class Romans was written in
Greek. In the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which would become the Byzantine Empire after the final split of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires
in 395, Greek eventually supplanted Latin as the legal and governmental
language; and it had long been the lingua franca of Eastern citizens of
all classes.
Orthography
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Main article: Latin alphabet
The language of
Rome has had a profound impact on later cultures, as demonstrated by this
Latin Bible from 1407
To write Latin, the Romans used the Latin alphabet, derived from the Old Italic alphabet, which itself was derived from the Greek alphabet.
The Latin alphabet flourishes today as the writing system for Romance,
Celtic, Germanic (including English), some Slavic (such as Polish), and
many other languages.
The ancient Romans did not use punctuation, macrons (although they did use apices to distinguish between long and short vowels), the letters j, u or w, lowercase letters (although they did have a cursive script), or interword spacing
(though dots were occasionally placed between words that would
otherwise be difficult to distinguish). 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 Venuses and Cupids
The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many wax tablets excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Britain.
Legacy
The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe, and, eventually, Vulgar Latin began to diverge into various dialects. Vulgar Latin gradually evolved into a number of distinct Romance languages by the 9th century. These were for many centuries only oral languages, Latin still being used for writing.
For example, Latin was still the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. Many of these "daughter" languages, including Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Romanian flourished, the differences between them growing greater and more formal over time.
Out of the Romance languages, Italian is the most conservative descendant of Latin in terms of vocabulary[1], and Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.[2] .
Some of the differences between Classical Latin and the Romance
languages have been used in attempts to reconstruct Vulgar Latin. For
example, the Romance languages have distinctive stress on certain syllables, whereas Latin had this feature in addition to distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese,
there is distinctive length of consonants as well as stress; in Spanish
and Portuguese, only distinctive stress; while in French length (for
most speakers) and stress are no longer distinctive. Another major
distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages,
excluding Romanian, have lost
Classical
from 
