Latin

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Latin is an ancient Indo-European language that was originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. It gained wide currency, especially in Europe, as the official language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, and, after Rome's conversion to Christianity, of the Roman Catholic Church. Principally through the influence of the Church, it became the language of later medieval European scholars and philosophers. Because Latin is a highly inflectional and synthetic language, word order is to some extent variable, compared with mostly analytic languages such as English, which has lost the ancient noun-case system inherited from Proto-Indo-European except in pronouns, although in prose the Romans tended to favor a SOV word order. Syntax is revealed through a systemic structure of affixes attached to word stems. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets (each of which is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet), remains the most widely used in the world.

Although now generally considered a dead language, of few fluent speakers and no native ones, Latin is still used by the Catholic Church. It has greatly influenced many living languages, including English, and is a source of vocabulary for science, academia, and law. Vulgar Latin, a dialect of Latin, is the ancestor of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, and other regional languages or dialects from the same area), and many words adapted from Latin are found in other modern languages—including English, half of whose vocabulary is derived, directly or indirectly, from Latin.^[1] Latin's influence attests to its legacy as the lingua franca of the Western world for over a thousand years.

Latin is the official language of Vatican City and The Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. It had been the primary liturgical language until just after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, when the various vernacular languages of its members were allowed in the liturgy. Classical Latin, the literary language of the late Republic and early Empire, is still taught in many primary, grammar, and secondary schools throughout the world, often combined with Greek in the study of Classics; but its role has diminished since the early 20th century.

[edit] History

Main article: History of Latin

Latin is a member of the Italic languages and its alphabet is based on the Old Italic alphabet, derived from the Greek alphabet. In the 9th or 8th century BC Latin was brought to the Italian peninsula by northern migrants who settled in the Latium region, around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization would develop. At first Latin came under the influence of Celtic dialects and the non-Indo-European Etruscan language of northern Italy.

Although surviving Roman literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin, the actual spoken language of the Western Roman Empire was Vulgar Latin, which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar, vocabulary, and (eventually) pronunciation. Classical Latin, by contrast, was a highly stylized literary language whose Golden Age spanned from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD (when prose writers and poets like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and Caesar, among others, were active),

Although Latin long remained the legal and governmental language of the Roman Empire, Greek became the dominant language of the well-educated elite, as much of the literature and philosophy studied by upper-class Romans had been produced by Greek (usually Athenian) authors. 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 spoken language of most Eastern citizens (of all classes).

[edit] Legacy

The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe, and, eventually, Vulgar Latin began to dialectize, based on the location of its various speakers. Vulgar Latin gradually evolved into a number of distinct Romance languages; a process well underway 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 in 1296, after which it was replaced by Portuguese. Many of these "daughter" languages, including Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and Romansh, flourished, the differences between them growing greater and more formal over time. Out of the Romance languages, Italian is generally considered the purest descendant of Latin in terms of vocabulary, though Sardinian is the most conservative in terms of phonology.

Classical Latin and the Romance languages differ in one way, and some of these differences have been used in attempts to reconstruct Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance languages have distinctive stress on certain syllables, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French length and stress are no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words, except for some pronouns. Romanian exhibits a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and a vocative, but linguists have said that the case endings are a Balkan innovation. Also the Romans wrote their Latin words in one long sentence without any spaces.^[2]

There has also been a major Latin influence in English. English is Germanic in grammar, Romance in vocabulary, with Greek influence. Sixty percent of the English vocabulary has its roots in Latin^[3] (although a large amount of this is indirect, mostly via 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 mottoes are used as guidelines by many organizations.

[edit] Grammar

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".

[edit] Nouns

Main article: Latin declension

There are five Latin noun declensions. Almost every one is used when the noun is the direct object of the verb or object of certain prepositions, or to denote movement towards. Due to these declensions, word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages. With the declensions, words can be moved around in a sentence and the meaning will stay exactly the same, but of course the emphasis will have altered.

1. Nominative: used when the noun is the subject of sentence or phrase.
2. 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). Some nouns are genitive with special verbs too.
3. Dative: used when the noun is the Indirect object of the sentence, with special verbs, with certain prepositions, and if used as agent, or reference.
4. Accusative: used when the noun is the Direct object of the sentence/phrase, with certain prepositions, or as the subject of Indirect Statement.
5. Ablative: used when the noun shows separation or movement from source, cause, agent, or instrument, or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions; adverbial.
6. Vocative: used when the noun is used in a direct address (usually of a person, but not always, as in O Tempora! O Mores!).

[edit] Verbs

Main article: Latin conjugation

Verbs in Latin are usually identified by the four main conjugations—the groups of verbs with similar inflected forms. The first conjugation is typified by infinitive forms ending in -āre, the second by infinitives ending in -ēre, the third by infinitives ending in -ere, and the fourth by infinitives ending in -īre. However, there are a few key exceptions to these rules. 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:

1. The first principal part is the first person, singular, present tense, and it is the indicative mood form of the verb.
2. The second principal part is the infinitive form of the verb.
3. The third principal part is the first person, singular, perfect tense, active indicative mood form of the verb.
4. 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.

[edit] Education

[edit] Italy

Although Latin was once the universal academic language in Europe, academics no longer use it for writing papers or daily discourse. Nonetheless, the study of Latin remained an academic staple into the latter part of the 20th century. It is a requirement in relatively few places, and in some universities is not offered. In Italy, however, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools such as the Liceo classico and Liceo scientifico, which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo classico, ancient Greek is also a compulsory subject. About one third of Italian certificated (18-year-olds) have taken Latin for five years.

[edit] Canada and France

Latin is optionally studied in secondary schools in both Canada and France.

[edit] Spain

In Spain, Latin is a compulsory subject for all those who study humanities (students can select from three sorts of study: sciences, humanities or a mixture) in grades 11 and 12.

[edit] Greece

In Greece, Latin is compulsory for students who wish to study humanities, and is one of the six subjects tested in Greek examinations for entry into humanities University courses. In high school, it is a lesson taught in the field of theory.

[edit] Britain

In the first half of the 20th century, Latin was taught in approximately 25% of British schools.^[4] However, from the 1960s universities gradually began to abandon Latin as an entry requirement for Medicine and Law degrees. After the introduction of the Modern Language General Certificate of Secondary Education in the 1980s, Latin began to be replaced by other languages in many schools. Latin is still taught in a small number, particularly public schools. Only one British exam board now offers Latin (OCR), since 2006 when it was dropped by the exam board AQA.

[edit] Ireland

In Ireland, Latin is not widely taught but can be taken as an optional subject in some secondary schools.

[edit] Germany

In Germany, some 15% of the student population learn Latin, and a Latin certificate (called Latinum) is a requirement for various university courses.

[edit] Poland

In Poland Latin is a non-compulsory third foreign language that students of some high schools can choose to learn.

[edit] Elsewhere in Europe

In Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, Latin is studied at high schools called Gymnasia.

[edit] United States

In the United States Latin is occasionally taught in high schools and middle schools. There is, however, a growing classical education movement, consisting of private schools and homeschools, that are teaching Latin at the elementary, or grammar school level. Latin is also often taught and is sometimes a mandatory requirement at Catholic secondary schools.

[edit] Institutionalized modernization

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, and speaking and listening skills are left inchoate.

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.

Institutions that offer Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and 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; the successful language Interlingua considers itself a modernized and simplified version of the language. Latino sine Flexione is a language created from Latin with its inflections dropped, that laid claim to a sizable following in the early 20th century.

Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat are intended to bolster interest in the language.