FACTOID # 140: In Switzerland, the average person has to work for 102 minutes to buy a kilogram of beef - one of the longest times in the developed world. On the other hand, they only have work 14 hours to buy a refrigerator for it.
 
 Home   Encyclopedia   Statistics   Countries A-Z   Flags   Maps   Education   Forum   FAQ   About 
 
WHAT'S NEW
RECENT ARTICLES
More Recent Articles »
 

SEARCH ALL

FACTS & STATISTICS    Advanced view

Search encyclopedia, statistics and forums:

 

 

(* = Graphable)

 

 


Encyclopedia > Latinate
Latin (lingua latina)
Spoken in: Vatican City
Region: Italian peninsula
Total speakers: none native
Ranking: not ranked
Genetic classification: Indo-European
 Italic
  Latino-Faliscan
   Latin
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Regulated by: Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1 la
ISO 639-2 lat
SIL LTN
See also: LanguageList of languages

Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics. This is a list of languages ordered by number of first-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families (families hereforth). ... The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ... The Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language family. ... The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian body, with over 1. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... City motto: Senatus Populusque Romanus – SPQR (The Senate and the People of Rome) Founded 21 April 753 BC mythical, 1st millennium BC Region Latium Mayor Walter Veltroni (Democratici di Sinistra) Area  - City Proper  1290 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 2,546,807 almost 4,000,000 1... Latium (Lazio in Italian) is a region of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Molise, Campania and the Tyrrhenian Sea. ... The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of cesarus vaginius (better known as Caesar Augustus). ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin Languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan Europa latina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa latină) as... A modern language is any human language that is used by societies in the world today. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Ecclesiastical Latin, sometimes called Church Latin, is the Latin language as used in documents of the Roman Catholic Church and in the Latin liturgies of the Catholic Church. ... The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian body, with over 1. ... A sacred language is a language, frequently a dead language, that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life. ... The Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, was an Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI in 1965. ... The 1960s, or The Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Scientific classification or biological classification is how biologists group and categorize extinct and living species of organisms. ... Classics, particularly within the Western University tradition, when used as a singular noun, means the study of the language, literature, history, art, and other aspects of Greek and Roman culture during the time frame known as classical antiquity. ...

Contents


Main features

Latin is a synthetic or inflectional language: affixes are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-to-word ratio. ... An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme such as a root or to a stem, to form a word. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... Conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from one basic form. ...


There are six noun cases:

  1. nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative),
  2. genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of 's to a noun),
  3. dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for),
  4. accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases),
  5. ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from),
  6. vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed).

In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express place (normally expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, similar places, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... For the physical process, see ablation. ... In linguistics, the instrumental case indicates that a noun is the instrument or means by which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. ... The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed, found in Latin among other languages. ... Locative is a case which indicates a location. ... The Proto-Indo-Europeans are the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, a prehistoric people of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. ...


There are six general tenses in Latin. The indicative mood is used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative.


Present system tenses

  1. present (sum, "I am")
  2. imperfect (eram, "I used to be")
  3. future (ero, "I shall be")

The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present Contents // Categories: Grammatical... The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with imperfective aspect. ... In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future. ...

Past system tenses

  1. perfect (fui, "I was", "I have been")
  2. pluperfect (fueram, "I had been")
  3. future perfect (fuero, "I shall have been")

The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the present system. The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ... The pluperfect tense (from Latin: plus quam perfectum more than perfect) is a perfective tense that exists in most Indo-European languages, used to refer to an event that has completed before another past action. ... The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ...


Latin and Romance

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of cesarus vaginius (better known as Caesar Augustus). ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin Languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan Europa latina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa latină) as... Events April 27 - Battle of Dunbar: The Scots are defeated by Edward I of England. ...


The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, 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 even stress is no longer distinctive. Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. ... Classical Latin is the language used by the principal exponents of that language in what is usually regarded as classical Latin literature. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...


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 retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative.


In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as 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 a compulsory subject.


Latin and English

See Latin influence in English for a fuller exposition. English has been called a Germanic language with a Romance vocabulary. ...


English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from 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. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Latin, unlike English, has a very flexible word order because the language is highly inflected. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ... A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in the English language where a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, occurs between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of the verb. ... Ancient Rome was a civilization that existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East between 753 BC and its downfall in AD 476. ...


During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created 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 remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." An inkhorn is an inkwell made out of horn. ...


Latin was once taught in most of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [1]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages. For other meanings of GCSE, see GCSE (disambiguation). ...


Latin education

The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League. Many would-be international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua considers itself to be the modernized and simplified version of the language (le latino moderne international e simplificate). The expression Living Latin refers to the living use of Latin, a classical language that has often being classified as dead. There are two main proponents of Living Latin. ... The University of Kentucky (also as UK or simply Kentucky) is a public, co-educational university located in Lexington, Kentucky. ... The National Junior Classical League, or NJCL, is an organization of junior and senior high school students sponsored by the American Classical League. ... An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) is a language used (or to be used in the future) for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. ... This article describes the international auxiliary language created by the IALA. For other usages of the term interlingua, see Interlingua (disambiguation). ...


Latin translations of Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and The Cat in the Hat (Cattus Petasatus) have also helped boost interest in the language. Paddington Station-Bronze of Paddington Bear Paddington Bear is a fictional character in childrens literature. ... Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. ... Cover of the International edition, distributed in the United Kingdom, Australia, India and Canada Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone is the first volume in a planned series of seven books for children written by British author J. K. Rowling, and featuring Harry Potter, a young wizard. ... The Cat in the Hat is a fictional cat created by Dr. Seuss. ...


See also

About the Latin language

Latin, unlike English, has a very flexible word order because the language is highly inflected. ... The Roman alphabet is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet to represent the phonemes of the Latin language. ... Latin is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. ... Conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from one basic form. ... This is a list of Latin words with derivatives in English (and other modern languages). ... In Latin grammar, the ablative absolute is a noun phrase cast in the ablative case. ... Latin differs from languages like English in that it uses many noun cases which are declined in such a way that they are nearly all different from each other, and even proper nouns such as names are declined. ...

About the Latin literary heritage

The literature of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire written in the Latin language. ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin Languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan Europa latina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa latină) as... The Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by the Harvard University Press, which present important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each... This page lists English translations of several Latin phrases and abbreviations, such as i. ... The following is a partial list of Latin and Roman proverbs and sayings, in alphabetical order, with English translations. ... A Brocard is a juridical principle usually expressed in Latin (and often derived from juridical works of the past), traditionally used to concisely express a wider legal concept or rule. ... This list of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names is intended to help those unfamiliar with classical languages understand and remember the scientific names of organisms. ... Until the Modern Era, Latin was the common language for scholarship and mapmaking. ... Carmen Possum is a popular 40-line comical poem written in a mix of Latin and English. ...

Other related topics


The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of cesarus vaginius (better known as Caesar Augustus). ... Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation between nations for the benefit of all. ...

Ages of Latin
—75 BC 75 BC – 1st c. 2nd c. – 8th c. 9th c. – 15th c. 15th c. - 17th c. 17th c. – present
Old Latin Golden Age Latin Silver Age Latin
(Classical Latin)
Late Latin Medieval Latin Humanist Latin New Latin

The Forum inscription is one of the oldest known Latin inscriptions. ... The golden age of Latin literature (Latinitas aurea) is a period consisting roughly of the time from approximately 75 BC to 14 AD, covering the end of the Roman Republic and the reign of Augustus Caesar. ... In reference to Roman literature, the Silver age covers the first two centuries A.D. directly after the Golden age (which was the first century B.C., and the start of the first century A.D.) Literature from the Silver age has traditionally, perhaps unfairly, been considered inferior to that... Classical Latin is the language used by the principal exponents of that language in what is usually regarded as classical Latin literature. ... Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. ... Medieval Latin refers to the Latin used in the Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman empire but before the rise of vernacular languages in the Renaissance. ... Humanist Latin is a name given to the distinctive Latin style developed by the humanist movement during the European Renaissance in the fifteenth century. ... New Latin (or Neo-Latin) is a post-medieval version of Latin, now used primarily in International Scientific Vocabulary cladistics and systematics. ...

External links

Wikibooks
Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Image:Wikipedia-logo. ... The Wikipedia logo. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...


  Results from FactBites:
 
Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid (903 words)
Latin language and literature and several helpful Latin downloads for the Macintosh.
Latin Parser and Translator by Adam McLean, a Windows program developed in Visual Basic, provides help with Latin vocabulary and grammar.
Latin Wordlist are available from the University of Kansas.
  More results at FactBites »


 

COMMENTARY     


Share your thoughts, questions and commentary here
Your name
Your comments
Please enter the 5-letter protection code

Want to know more?
Search encyclopedia, statistics and forums:

 


Lesson Plans | Student Area | Student FAQ | Reviews | Press Releases |  Feeds | Contact
The Wikipedia article included on this page is licensed under the GFDL.
Images may be subject to relevant owners' copyright.
All other elements are (c) copyright NationMaster.com 2003-5. All Rights Reserved.
Usage implies agreement with terms.