User:Jorge Stolfi/Latin language


 * Alternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation)

Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium, which gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire.

After the Empire's demise, Latin remained the primary lingua franca for international diplomacy, scholarship, and science throughout Western Europe, until into the 18th century; and the liturgical and administrative language of the Catholic Church, until the 21st century. Meanwhile Latin evolved into a number of Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian, and others) which are spoken by hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Many words derived from Latin found their way into other languages, such as English and German. Latin is still the basis for much legal jargon, and, together with Greek, of the systematic nomenclature for living beings.

Latin before Rome
Little is known about the evolution of Latin until the beginnings of Rome, around the 7th century BC. By that time, the language which would become Latin was only a minor member of the Italic languages, a branch of the Indo-European family that comprised most of the languages spoken in the Peninsula.

Latin in the Middle Ages
Even after the demise of the Roman Empire as a political entity, Latin remained in use through the Western half of its territory. For many centuries there was a marked diglossia, with several spoken languages (derived from Vulgar Latin) very different from the written language (still tied to classical Latin). Although this situation was favorable for international communication, it was burdensome for internal use; so, by the 13th century, many of the spoken languages had begun to be written down and gained administrative status. At that time the role of Latin in administration began to decrease, although it remained in use for.

Latin was eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. It remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, which includes being the official national language of the Vatican and it was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. It is also still used, along with Greek, to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things.

Familial features
As a member of the Indo-European languages, Latin has a complex inflectional system, which mainly operates by appending strings to a fixed stem.

The inflection of nouns and adjectives (called "declension") indicates the grammatical number (singular and plural), gender (masculine or feminine), and case (grammatical function in sentence). Adjectives are generally inflected according to the attributes of the nouns that they modify. The possible cases are nominative (for subjects and predicate nominatives), genitive (to show possession), dative (for indirect objects), accusative (for direct objects and after some prepositions), ablative (after other prepositions), vocative (to address someone), and locative (to express place). The latter exists only for certain nouns (mainly the names of lakes, cities, towns, similar locales), being otherwise expressed by a preposition (such as in) plus the ablative.

Verb inflection ("conjugation") is used to indicate the grammatical person (first, second, and third) and number of its subject. Cojugation also indicates various modifiers of the action, such as time (past, present, future, etc.), conditionality, command, etc.

Romance

 * Vulgar latin

While Classical Latin remained the only written language, most of the Empire's population spoke Romance (lingua romana rustica or simply lingua romana), a much simplified and modified form. Romance was the lingua franca of the imperial army and small administration, which were largely composed of natives of conquered lands, and soon replaced most of the languages previously spoken through its range.

Latin and English
English grammar is not a direct derivative of Latin grammar. Attempts to make English grammar fit Latin rules &mdash; such as the contrived prohibition against the split infinitive &mdash; have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English come to us through Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, Spanish, and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English.

During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words, dubbed "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from an pot of ink), were rich in flavor and meaning. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, Extrapolate, and Inebriation are all "inkpot" terms carved from Latin and Greek Words.

About the Latin language

 * Latin phonemes
 * Latin declension
 * Latin conjugation
 * Latin lexicon
 * ablative absolute
 * Word-order in Latin

About the Latin literary heritage

 * Latin literature
 * Loeb Classical Library
 * Latin proverbs
 * List of Latin phrases
 * List of Latin proverbs
 * Brocard
 * Compound verbs in English consisting of Latin prefix and Latin verb
 * List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
 * Latin names of European cities
 * Latin names of European rivers
 * Carmen Possum

Other related topics

 * Roman Empire
 * New Latin