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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 grammatical case[3].
There has also been a major Latin influence in English. Although English is Germanic in grammar, its vocabulary is mostly Italic.
Sixty percent of the English vocabulary has its roots in Latin
(although much of this is indirect, mostly via Anglo-Norman and
French). In the medieval period, much of this borrowing occurred
through ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century, or indirectly after the Norman Conquest, through the Anglo-Norman language.
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled
together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These
words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot"
words, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words
were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some were so
useful that they survived. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant, and employer are all inkhorn terms created from Latin words. Many of the most common polysyllabic "English" words are simply adapted Latin forms, in a large number of cases adapted by way of Old French.
Latin mottos are used as guidelines by many organizations.
Pronunciation
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Grammar
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Main article: Latin grammar
Latin is a synthetic, fusional language: affixes (often suffixes, which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns—a process called declension. Affixes are attached to fixed stems of verbs, as well, to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect—a process called conjugation.
Nouns
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There are six main Latin noun
cases. These play a major part in determining 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. Because of noun cases, words can
often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its
meaning, though the emphasis will have been altered. The cases, with
their most important uses, are these:
- Nominative: used when the noun is the subject of the sentence or phrase, or when functioning as a predicative of the subject. (i.e., Puer currit. The boy runs.)
- Genitive:
used when the noun is the possessor of an object (example: "the horse
of the man", or "the man's horse" - in both of these cases, the word man
would be in the genitive case when translated into Latin). Also
indicates material of which something greater is made of (example: "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. (i.e., The cup is full of wine. Poculum plenum vini est. The master of the slave beats him. Dominus servi eum verberat.)
- 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. (i.e., The merchant hands over the toga to the woman. Mercator feminae togam tradit.)
- Accusative:
used when the noun is the direct object of the sentence/phrase, with
certain prepositions, or as the subject of an infinitive. (i.e., Ancilla vinum portat. The slave girl carries the wine.)
- Ablative: used when the noun demonstrates separation or movement from a source, cause, agent, or instrument, or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions; adverbial.
- 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 opposed to the plural
nominative (filii). (i.e., "Master!" shouted the slave. "Domine!" servus clamavit.)
There is also a seventh case, called the Locative case,
used to indicate a location (corresponding to the English "in" or
"at"). This is far less common than the other six cases of Latin nouns
and usually applies to place names, especially of cities. 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 articles; thus puer currit can mean either "the boy runs" or "a boy runs".
Verbs
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Verbs in Latin are usually identified by four main conjugations, 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 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 tenses in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), four grammatical moods (indicative, infinitive, imperative and subjunctive), six persons (first, second, and third, each in singular and plural), two voices (active and passive), and a few aspects. Verbs are described by four principal parts:
- The first principal part is the first person, singular, present tense, and it is the indicative mood form of the verb.
- The second principal part is the active, present tense, infinitive form of the verb.
- The third principal part is the first person, singular, perfect tense, active indicative mood form of the verb.
- The fourth principal part is the supine form, or alternatively, the
participial form, nominative case, singular, perfect tense, passive
voice 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 that verb cannot be made passive.
Instruction in Latin
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The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in secondary schools
and in universities is primarily geared toward an ability to translate
Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it for the purpose
of oral communication. As such, the skills of reading and writing are
heavily emphasized, while speaking and listening skills are
de-emphasized (usually passively, through omission).
However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin
movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can be taught in the same
way that modern "living" languages are taught, i.e., as a means of both
spoken and written communication. This approach to learning the
language assists speculative insight into how ancient authors spoke and
incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; patterns in Latin poetry and literature can be difficult to identify without an understanding of the sounds of words.
Living Latin instruction is provided in states like the Vatican, and some Institutions in the U.S. like the University of Kentucky. In Great Britain, the Classical Association
encourages this approach, and Latin language books describing the
adventures of a mouse called Minimus have been published. In the United States, the National Junior Classical League (with more than 50,000 members) encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the National Senior Classical League encourages college students to continue their studies of the language.
Many international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin. Interlingua, which lays claim to a sizeable following, is sometimes considered a simplified, modern version of the language. Latino sine Flexione, popular in the early 20th century, is a language created from Latin with its inflections dropped.
Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Cat in the Hat are intended to bolster interest in the language.
Modern use of Latin
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Main article: Recent Latin
The signs at
Wallsend Metro station are in English and Latin as a tribute to Wallsend's role as one of the outposts of the Roman empire.
Today, Latin terminology is widely used, amongst other things, in philosophy, medicine, biology, and law, in terms and abbreviations such as subpoena duces tecum, q.i.d. (quater in die: "four times a day"), and inter alia
(among other things). The Latin terms are used in isolation, as
technical terms. The largest organization which still uses Latin in
official contexts is the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Mass of Paul VI is usually said in the local vernacular language, it can be and often is said in Latin, particularly in the Vatican.
In situations when lingual neutrality is preferred, such as in scientific names for organisms, Latin is typically the language of choice.
Some films of relevant ancient settings, such as Sebastiane and The Passion of the Christ,
have been made with dialogue in Latin for purposes of realism.
Subtitles are usually employed for the predominantly non-Latin speaking
audiences.
Many organizations today also have Latin mottos, such as "Semper fidelis" (always faithful), the motto of the United States Marine Corps.
Some universities still hold graduation ceremonies in Latin.
See also
Latin language
Latin culture
Historical periods
Notes
- ^ Grimes, Barbara F. (October 1996). in Barbara F. Grimes: Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Consulting Editors: Richard S. Pittman & Joseph E. Grimes, thirteenth edition, Dallas, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Academic Pub. ISBN 1-55671-026-7.
- ^ Foreign Languages: Italian, specifically, "Sardinian
in fact conserves many archaic features from Latin which disappeared in
Italian, such as the hard k-sound in words like chelu, where Italian has cielo."
- ^ Columbia University Language Resource Center
- Clackson, James, and Geoffrey Horrocks, The Blackwell History of the Latin Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), Pp. viii, 324.
References
- Bennett, Charles E., Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0-19-520829-3
- Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1-85984-402-2; translated from the French by John Howe.
- Wheelock, Frederic, Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0-06-078423-7
External links
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- Latin Etymology, An Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language
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- Latin for Beginners at Publicliterature.org
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- Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum, a database of Latin texts and translations
- The Perseus Project, a resource for classical languages and literature
- Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar, from the University of Notre Dame
- Dictionary of Latin phrases
- The Latin Library A collection of Latin texts: classical, Christian, medieval, and modern. See also The Latin Library
- omniamundamundis, Latin texts from fourteen ancient Roman authors
- Schola Latina Universalis, a version of Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus
- Latin Online from the University of Texas at Austin
- National Latin Exam
- Understanding Anatomical Latin, explaining common medical/anatomical forms
- Online Latin Community Web forum for discussion of Latin language both in Latin and in English
- Latin language history and Classical Latin texts translated into English.
- [1] LATINUM - Anglice et Latine - Extensive Latin language learning podcast.
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