Latin (, or , ) is a

classical language A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...

belonging to the Italic branch of the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

. Latin was originally a

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

spoken in the lower

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Riv ...

area (then known as

Latium Latium ( , ; ) is the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome was founded and grew to be the capital city of the Roman Empire. Definition Latium was originally a small triangle of fertile, volcanic soil (Old Latium) on whi ...

) around present-day

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, but through the power of the

Roman Republic The Roman Republic ( la, Res publica Romana ) was a form of government of Rome and the era of the classical Roman civilization when it was run through public representation of the Roman people. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kin ...

it became the dominant language in the

Italian region The regions of Italy ( it, regioni d'Italia) are the first-level administrative divisions of the Italian Republic, constituting its second NUTS administrative level. There are twenty regions, five of which have higher autonomy than the rest. U ...

and subsequently throughout the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the

common language A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

international communication International communication (also referred to as the ''study of global communication'' or transnational communication) is the communication practice that occurs across international borders. The need for international communication was due to the ...

, science, scholarship and

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a

dead language An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if the language has no living Genetic relationship (linguistics), descendants. In contrast, a dead language is one that is no longer the native language of any commun ...

in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct

genders Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

(masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven

noun cases A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomina ...

(nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjugations, six

tenses In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...

(present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three

persons A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

, three moods, two

voices Voices or The Voices may refer to: Film and television * ''Voices'' (1920 film), by Chester M. De Vonde, with Diana Allen * ''Voices'' (1973 film), a British horror film * ''Voices'' (1979 film), a film by Robert Markowitz * ''Voices'' (19 ...

(passive and active), two or three aspects, and two

numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

(singular and plural). The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan ...

and Greek alphabets. By the late

(75 BC), Old Latin had been standardized into Classical Latin used by educated elites.

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...

was the colloquial form spoken at that time among lower-class

commoner A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...

s and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and author

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Late Latin is the written language from the 3rd century, and its various Vulgar Latin dialects developed in the 6th to 9th centuries into the modern

. Medieval Latin was used during the Middle Ages as a literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance, which then used

Renaissance Latin Renaissance Latin is a name given to the distinctive form of Literary Latin style developed during the European Renaissance of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, particularly by the Renaissance humanism movement. Ad fontes ''Ad fontes' ...

. Later, New Latin evolved during the early modern era to eventually become various forms of rarely spoken Contemporary Latin, one of which, Ecclesiastical Latin, remains the official language of the Holy See and the

Roman Rite The Roman Rite ( la, Ritus Romanus) is the primary liturgical rite of the Latin Church, the largest of the ''sui iuris'' particular churches that comprise the Catholic Church. It developed in the Latin language in the city of Rome and, while dist ...

of the Catholic Church at Vatican City. Latin has also greatly influenced the English language and historically contributed many words to the English

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

after the Christianization of Anglo-Saxons and the Norman conquest. In particular, Latin (and Ancient Greek) roots are still used in English descriptions of theology, science disciplines (especially anatomy and taxonomy), medicine, and law.

History

A number of historical phases of the language have been recognized, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, morphology, and syntax. There are no hard and fast rules of classification; different scholars emphasize different features. As a result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from late antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars. After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses.

Old Latin

The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, which was spoken from the

Roman Kingdom The Roman Kingdom (also referred to as the Roman monarchy, or the regal period of ancient Rome) was the earliest period of Roman history when the city and its territory were ruled by kings. According to oral accounts, the Roman Kingdom began wi ...

to the later part of the

period. It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of Plautus and Terence. The Latin alphabet was devised from the Etruscan alphabet. The writing later changed from what was initially either a right-to-left or a boustrophedon script to what ultimately became a strictly left-to-right script.

Classical Latin

During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other literate men, who wrote the great works of

classical literature Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

, which were taught in grammar and

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such schools, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech.

Vulgar Latin

Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus, which contain fragments of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, Vulgar Latin (termed , "the speech of the masses", by Cicero), existed concurrently with literate Classical Latin. The informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors and those found as graffiti. As it was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, Romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which eventually led to the differentiation of

. The Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin and were originally the popular and informal dialects spoken by various layers of the Latin-speaking population. These dialects were distinct from the classical form of the language spoken by the Roman upper classes, the form in which Romans generally wrote. The

decline of the Roman Empire The fall of the Western Roman Empire (also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome) was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vas ...

meant a deterioration in educational standards that brought about Late Latin, a postclassical stage of the language seen in Christian writings of the time. It was more in line with everyday speech, not only because of a decline in education but also because of a desire to spread the word to the masses. Currently, the five most widely spoken

by number of native speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...

. Despite dialectal variation, which is found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy have retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

(Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the

Muslim conquest of Spain The Umayyad conquest of Hispania, also known as the Umayyad conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom, was the initial expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate over Hispania (in the Iberian Peninsula) from 711 to 718. The conquest resulted in the decline of t ...

in 711, cutting off communications between the major Romance regions, that the languages began to diverge seriously. The Vulgar Latin dialect that would later become

diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. One key marker of whether a given Romance feature was found in Vulgar Latin is to compare it with its parallel in Classical Latin. If it was not preferred in Classical Latin, then it most likely came from the undocumented contemporaneous Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance for "horse" (Italian , French , Spanish , Portuguese and Romanian ) came from Latin . However, Classical Latin used . Therefore, was most likely the spoken form. Vulgar Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing.

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the postclassical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed. The spoken language had developed into the various incipient Romance languages; however, in the educated and official world, Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies. Without the institutions of the Roman Empire that had supported its uniformity, medieval Latin lost its linguistic cohesion: for example, in classical Latin and are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use and instead. Furthermore, the meanings of many words have been changed and new vocabularies have been introduced from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail.

Renaissance Latin

The Renaissance briefly reinforced the position of Latin as a spoken language by its adoption by the Renaissance Humanists. Often led by members of the clergy, they were shocked by the accelerated dismantling of the vestiges of the classical world and the rapid loss of its literature. They strove to preserve what they could and restore Latin to what it had been and introduced the practice of producing revised editions of the literary works that remained by comparing surviving manuscripts. By no later than the 15th century they had replaced Medieval Latin with versions supported by the scholars of the rising universities, who attempted, by scholarship, to discover what the classical language had been.

New Latin

During the Early Modern Age, Latin still was the most important language of culture in Europe. Therefore, until the end of the 17th century, the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin. Afterwards, most diplomatic documents were written in French (a

Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...

) and later native or other languages.

Contemporary Latin

Despite having no native speakers, Latin is still used for a variety of purposes in the contemporary world.

Religious use

The largest organisation that retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church required that Mass be carried out in Latin until the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, which permitted the use of the vernacular. Latin remains the language of the

. The Tridentine Mass (also known as the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass) is celebrated in Latin. Although the

Mass of Paul VI The Mass of Paul VI, also known as the Ordinary Form or Novus Ordo, is the most commonly used liturgy in the Catholic Church. It is a form of the Latin Church's Roman Rite and was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969, published by him in the 1970 ...

(also known as the Ordinary Form or the Novus Ordo) is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or in whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of the Holy See, the primary language of its public journal, the , and the working language of the Roman Rota. Vatican City is also home to the world's only automatic teller machine that gives instructions in Latin. In the pontifical universities postgraduate courses of Canon law are taught in Latin, and papers are written in the same language. In the Anglican Church, after the publication of the '' Book of Common Prayer'' of 1559, a Latin edition was published in 1560 for use in universities such as Oxford and the leading "public schools" (English private academies), where the liturgy was still permitted to be conducted in Latin. There have been several Latin translations since, including a Latin edition of the 1979 USA Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Use of Latin for mottos

In the Philippines and in the Western world, many organizations, governments and schools use Latin for their mottos due to its association with formality, tradition, and the roots of Western culture. Canada's motto ("from sea to sea") and most provincial mottos are also in Latin. The Canadian Victoria Cross is modelled after the British Victoria Cross which has the inscription "For Valour". Because Canada is officially bilingual, the Canadian medal has replaced the English inscription with the Latin . Spain's motto '' Plus ultra'', meaning "even further", or figuratively "Further!", is also Latin in origin. It is taken from the personal motto of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain (as Charles I), and is a reversal of the original phrase ("No land further beyond", "No further!"). According to legend, this phrase was inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules, the rocks on both sides of the

Strait of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar ( ar, مضيق جبل طارق, Maḍīq Jabal Ṭāriq; es, Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules), also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Medi ...

and the western end of the known, Mediterranean world. Charles adopted the motto following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and it also has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence. In the United States the unofficial national motto until 1956 was '' E pluribus unum'' meaning "Out of many, one". The motto continues to be featured on the Great Seal, it also appears on the flags and seals of both houses of congress and the flags of the states of Michigan, North Dakota, New York, and Wisconsin. The mottos 13 letters symbolically represent the original Thirteen Colonies which revolted from the British Crown. The motto is featured on all presently minted coinage and has been featured in most coinage throughout the nation's history. Several states of the United States have Latin mottos, such as: * Arizona's ("God enriches"); * Connecticut's ("He who transplanted sustains"); * Kansas's ("Through hardships, to the stars"); * Colorado's ("Nothing without providence"); * Michigan's ("If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you"), is based on that of Sir

Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches ...

, in

St. Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Gr ...

; * Missouri's ("The health of the people should be the highest law"); * New York (state)'s ("Ever upward"); * North Carolina's ("To be rather than to seem"); * South Carolina's ("While tillbreathing, I hope"); * Virginia's ("Thus always to tyrants"); and * West Virginia's ("Mountaineers realways free"). Many military organizations today have Latin mottos, such as: * ("always ready"), the motto of the United States Coast Guard; * ("always faithful"), the motto of the United States Marine Corps; * Semper supra ("always above"), the motto of the United States Space Force; * ("Through adversity/struggle to the stars"), the motto of the Royal Air Force (RAF); and * Vigilamus pro te ("We stand on guard for thee"), the motto of the

Canadian Armed Forces } The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF; french: Forces armées canadiennes, ''FAC'') are the unified military forces of Canada, including sea, land, and air elements referred to as the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and Royal Canadian Air Force. ...

. A law governing body in the Philippines have a Latin motto, such as: * ("Justice, peace, work"), the motto of the Department of Justice (Philippines); Some colleges and universities have adopted Latin mottos, for example Harvard University's motto is ("truth"). Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn, and the mother of Virtue.

Other modern uses

Switzerland has adopted the country's Latin short name on coins and stamps, since there is no room to use all of the nation's four official languages. For a similar reason, it adopted the international vehicle and internet code ''CH'', which stands for , the country's full Latin name. Some films of ancient settings, such as '' Sebastiane'' and '' The Passion of the Christ'', have been made with dialogue in Latin for the sake of realism. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/television series as '' The Exorcist'' and ''

Lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

'' (" Jughead"). Subtitles are usually shown for the benefit of those who do not understand Latin. There are also songs written with Latin lyrics. The libretto for the opera-oratorio by

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...

is in Latin. The continued instruction of Latin is often seen as a highly valuable component of a liberal arts education. Latin is taught at many high schools, especially in Europe and the Americas. It is most common in British

public schools Public school may refer to: *State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government *Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England and ...

and grammar schools, the Italian and , the German and the Dutch . Occasionally, some media outlets, targeting enthusiasts, broadcast in Latin. Notable examples include Radio Bremen in Germany, YLE radio in Finland (the Nuntii Latini broadcast from 1989 until it was shut down in June 2019), and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin. A variety of organisations, as well as informal Latin 'circuli' ('circles'), have been founded in more recent times to support the use of spoken Latin. Moreover, a number of university classics departments have begun incorporating communicative pedagogies in their Latin courses. These include the University of Kentucky, the University of Oxford and also Princeton University. There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The

Latin Wikipedia The Latin Wikipedia ( la, Vicipaedia Latina) is the Latin, Latin language edition of Wikipedia, created in May 2002. As of , it has about encyclopedia article, articles. While all primary content is in Latin, modern languages such as English la ...

has more than 130,000 articles.

Urdaneta City Urdaneta, officially the City of Urdaneta ( pag, Siyudad na Urdaneta; ilo, Siyudad ti Urdaneta; fil, Lungsod ng Urdaneta), is a 2nd class component city in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a populati ...

's motto ("It is enough for the people to serve God") the Latin motto can be read in the old seal of this Philippine city.

Legacy

Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish,

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

, Romansh and other

are direct descendants of Latin. There are also many Latin borrowings in English and

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...

,Sawicka, Irena
"A Crossroad Between West, East and Orient–The Case of Albanian Culture."
Colloquia Humanistica. No. 2. Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2013. Page 97: "Even according to Albanian linguists, Albanian vocabulary is composed in 60 percent of Latin words from different periods... When albanological studies were just emerging, it happened that Albanian was classified as a Romance language. Already there exists the idea of a common origin of both Albanian and Rumanian languages. The Rumanian grammar is almost identical to that of Albanian, but it may be as well the effect of later convergence within the Balkan Sprachbund.." as well as a few in German, Dutch, Norwegian,

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

. Latin is still spoken in Vatican City, a city-state situated in Rome that is the seat of the Catholic Church.

Inscriptions

Some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the (CIL). Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the

provenance Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...

and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

. About 270,000 inscriptions are known.

Literature

The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part, in substantial works or in fragments to be analyzed in philology. They are in part the subject matter of the field of

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

. Their works were published in manuscript form before the invention of printing and are now published in carefully annotated printed editions, such as the

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a series of books originally published by Heinemann in London, but is currently published by Harvard University Press. The library contains important works of ancient Greek and L ...

, published by Harvard University Press, or the Oxford Classical Texts, published by Oxford University Press. Latin translations of modern literature such as: '' The Hobbit'', '' Treasure Island'', '' Robinson Crusoe'', '' Paddington Bear'', '' Winnie the Pooh'', '' The Adventures of Tintin'', '' Asterix'', ''

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

'', , '' Max and Moritz'', '' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!'', '' The Cat in the Hat'', and a book of fairy tales, "", are intended to garner popular interest in the language. Additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as

Meissner's Latin Phrasebook Meissner’s Latin Phrase-book is a book of phrases in Latin for students of composition or those wanting to learn spoken Latin. History of the English text The English text is a translation of Carl Meissner’s (1830–1900) sixth German edition ...

Influence on present-day languages

The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. In the Middle Ages, borrowing from Latin occurred from ecclesiastical usage established by Saint

Augustine of Canterbury Augustine of Canterbury (early 6th century – probably 26 May 604) was a monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founder of the English Church.Delaney '' ...

in the 6th century or indirectly after the Norman Conquest, through the

Anglo-Norman language Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French ( nrf, Anglo-Normaund) ( French: ), was a dialect of Old Norman French that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period. When ...

. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed "

inkhorn term An inkhorn term is a loanword, or a word coined from existing roots, which is deemed to be unnecessary or overly pretentious. Etymology An inkhorn is an inkwell made of horn. It was an important item for many scholars, which soon became symb ...

s", 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 useful ones survived, such as 'imbibe' and 'extrapolate'. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. The influence of Roman governance and

Roman technology Roman technology is the collection of antiques, skills, methods, processes, and engineering practices which supported Roman civilization and made possible the expansion of the economy and military of ancient Rome (753 BC – 476 AD). The Roma ...

on the less-developed nations under Roman dominion led to the adoption of Latin phraseology in some specialized areas, such as science, technology, medicine, and law. For example, the Linnaean system of plant and animal classification was heavily influenced by '' Historia Naturalis'', an encyclopedia of people, places, plants, animals, and things published by Pliny the Elder. Roman medicine, recorded in the works of such physicians as Galen, established that today's

medical terminology Medical terminology is a language used to precisely describe the human body including all its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon it. Medical terminology is used in the field of medicine Medical terminolog ...

would be primarily derived from Latin and Greek words, the Greek being filtered through the Latin. Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole. Latin law principles have survived partly in a long

list of Latin legal terms A number of Latin terms are used in legal terminology and legal maxims. This is a partial list of these terms, which are wholly or substantially drawn from Latin. __TOC__ Common law Civil law Ecclesiastical law See also * B ...

. A few

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...

s have been heavily influenced by Latin. Interlingua is sometimes considered a simplified, modern version of the language. Latino sine Flexione, popular in the early 20th century, is Latin with its inflections stripped away, among other grammatical changes. The Logudorese dialect of the

Sardinian language Sardinian or Sard ( , or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Many Romance linguists consider it the language that is closest to Latin among all its genealogica ...

is the closest contemporary language to Latin.

Education

Throughout European history, an education in the classics was considered crucial for those who wished to join literate circles. This also was true in the United States where many of the nation's Founders obtained a classically-based education in grammar schools or from tutors. Admission to Harvard in the Colonial era required that the applicant "Can readily make and speak or write true Latin prose and has skill in making verse . . ." Latin Study and the classics were emphasized in American secondary schools and colleges well into the Antebellum era. Instruction in Latin is an essential aspect. In today's world, a large number of Latin students in the US learn from ''Wheelock's Latin: The Classic Introductory Latin Course, Based on Ancient Authors''. This book, first published in 1956, was written by

Frederic M. Wheelock Frederic Melvin Wheelock (September 19, 1902 – October 29, 1987) was an American Latin professor, best known for his authorship of ''Wheelock's Latin''. Early life He was the son of Franklin M. and Etta R. (née Goldthwaite) Wheelock. He ...

, who received a PhD from Harvard University. ''Wheelock's Latin'' has become the standard text for many American introductory Latin courses. The Living Latin movement attempts to teach Latin in the same way that living languages are taught, as a means of both spoken and written communication. It is available in Vatican City and at some institutions in the US, such as the University of Kentucky and Iowa State University. The British Cambridge University Press is a major supplier of Latin textbooks for all levels, such as the Cambridge Latin Course series. It has also published a subseries of children's texts in Latin by Bell & Forte, which recounts the adventures of a mouse called

Minimus The Minimus books are a series of school textbooks, written by Barbara Bell, illustrated by Dr. Helen Forte, and published by the Cambridge University Press, designed to help children of primary school age to learn Latin. The books espouse some of ...

Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at Duke University in 2014

In the United Kingdom, the Classical Association encourages the study of antiquity through various means, such as publications and grants. The University of Cambridge, the Open University, a number of prestigious independent schools, for example

Eton Eton most commonly refers to Eton College, a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. Eton may also refer to: Places *Eton, Berkshire, a town in Berkshire, England * Eton, Georgia, a town in the United States * Éton, a commune in the Meuse dep ...

Harrow Harrow may refer to: Places * Harrow, Victoria, Australia * Harrow, Ontario, Canada * The Harrow, County Wexford, a village in Ireland * London Borough of Harrow, England ** Harrow, London, a town in London ** Harrow (UK Parliament constituency) ...

, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, Merchant Taylors' School, and

Rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

, and The Latin Programme/Via Facilis, a London-based charity, run Latin courses. In the United States and in Canada, the American Classical League supports every effort to further the study of classics. Its subsidiaries include the National Junior Classical League (with more than 50,000 members), which encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the National Senior Classical League, which encourages students to continue their study of the classics into college. The league also sponsors the National Latin Exam. Classicist Mary Beard wrote in '' The Times Literary Supplement'' in 2006 that the reason for learning Latin is because of what was written in it.

Official status

Latin was or is the official language of European states: * – Latin was an official language in the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11th century to the mid 19th century, when Hungarian became the exclusive official language in 1844. The best known Latin language poet of Croatian-Hungarian origin was Janus Pannonius. * – Latin was the official language of Croatian Parliament (Sabor) from the 13th to the 19th century (1847). The oldest preserved records of the parliamentary sessions () – held in Zagreb (), Croatia – date from 19 April 1273. An extensive Croatian Latin literature exists. Latin is still used on Croatian coins on even years. * , Kingdom of Poland – officially recognised and widely usedKarin Friedrich et al., ''The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772'', Cambridge University Press, 2000,
Google Print, p.88
between the 10th and 18th centuries, commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility.

Phonology

The ancient pronunciation of Latin has been reconstructed; among the data used for reconstruction are explicit statements about pronunciation by ancient authors, misspellings, puns, ancient etymologies, the spelling of Latin loanwords in other languages, and the historical development of Romance languages.

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Classical Latin are as follows: was not native to Classical Latin. It appeared in Greek loanwords starting around the first century BC, when it was probably pronounced initially and doubled between vowels, in contrast to Classical Greek or . In Classical Latin poetry, the letter between vowels always counts as two consonants for metrical purposes. The consonant ⟨b⟩ usually sounds as however, when ⟨t⟩ or ⟨s⟩ follows ⟨b⟩ then it is pronounced as in tor s Further, consonants do not blend together. So, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ph⟩, and ⟨th⟩ are all sounds that would be pronounced as h h and h In Latin, ⟨q⟩ is always followed by the vowel ⟨u⟩. Together they make a wsound. In Old and Classical Latin, the Latin alphabet had no distinction between uppercase and lowercase, and the letters did not exist. In place of , were used, respectively; represented both vowels and consonants. Most of the letterforms were similar to modern uppercase, as can be seen in the inscription from the Colosseum shown at the top of the article. The spelling systems used in Latin dictionaries and modern editions of Latin texts, however, normally use in place of Classical-era . Some systems use for the consonant sounds except in the combinations for which is never used. Some notes concerning the mapping of Latin phonemes to English graphemes are given below: In Classical Latin, as in modern Italian, double consonant letters were pronounced as

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensur ...

consonant sounds distinct from short versions of the same consonants. Thus the ''nn'' in Classical Latin "year" (and in Italian ) is pronounced as a doubled as in English ''unnamed''. (In English, distinctive consonant length or doubling occurs only at the boundary between two words or morphemes, as in that example.)

Vowels

Simple vowels

In Classical Latin, did not exist as a letter distinct from V; the written form was used to represent both a vowel and a consonant. was adopted to represent upsilon in loanwords from Greek, but it was pronounced like and by some speakers. It was also used in native Latin words by confusion with Greek words of similar meaning, such as and . Classical Latin distinguished between long and short vowels. Then, long vowels, except for , were frequently marked using the apex, which was sometimes similar to an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

. Long was written using a taller version of , called "

long I Long i ( la, i longum or '' itterai longa''), written , is a variant of the letter i found in ancient and early medieval forms of the Latin script. History In inscriptions dating to the early Roman Empire, it is used frequently but inconsisten ...

": . In modern texts, long vowels are often indicated by a macron , and short vowels are usually unmarked except when it is necessary to distinguish between words, when they are marked with a breve . However, they would also signify a long vowel by writing the vowel larger than other letters in a word or by repeating the vowel twice in a row. The acute accent, when it is used in modern Latin texts, indicates stress, as in Spanish, rather than length. Long vowels in Classical Latin are, technically, pronounced as entirely different from short vowels. The difference is described in the table below: This difference in quality is posited by

W. Sidney Allen William Sidney Allen, (1918–2004), was a British linguist and philologist, best known for his work on Indo-European phonology. Early life and undergraduate education Allen was born in north London, the elder son of William Percy Allen, a m ...

in his book ''Vox Latina''. However, Andrea Calabrese has disputed that short vowels differed in quality from long vowels during the classical period, based in part upon the observation that in Sardinian and some Lucanian dialects, each long and short vowel pair was merged. This is distinguished from the typical Italo-Western romance vowel system in which short /i/ and /u/ merge with long /eː/ and /oː/. Thus, Latin 'siccus' becomes 'secco' in Italian and 'siccu' in Sardinian. A vowel letter followed by at the end of a word, or a vowel letter followed by before or , represented a short

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...

, as in .

Diphthongs

Classical Latin had several diphthongs. The two most common were . was fairly rare, and were very rare, at least in native Latin words. There has also been debate over whether is truly a diphthong in Classical Latin, due to its rarity, absence in works of Roman grammarians, and the roots of Classical Latin words (i.e. to , to , etc.) not matching or being similar to the pronunciation of classical words if were to be considered a diphthong. The sequences sometimes did not represent diphthongs. and also represented a sequence of two vowels in different syllables in "of bronze" and "began", and represented sequences of two vowels or of a vowel and one of the semivowels , in "beware!", "whose", "I warned", "I released", "I destroyed", "his", and "new". Old Latin had more diphthongs, but most of them changed into long vowels in Classical Latin. The Old Latin diphthong and the sequence became Classical . Old Latin and changed to Classical , except in a few words whose became Classical . These two developments sometimes occurred in different words from the same root: for instance, Classical "punishment" and "to punish". Early Old Latin usually changed to Classical . In Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages, merged with . During the Classical Latin period this form of speaking was deliberately avoided by well-educated speakers.

Syllables

Syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

s in Latin are signified by the presence of diphthongs and vowels. The number of syllables is the same as the number of vowel sounds. Further, if a consonant separates two vowels, it will go into the syllable of the second vowel. When there are two consonants between vowels, the last consonant will go with the second vowel. An exception occurs when a phonetic stop and liquid come together. In this situation, they are thought to be a single consonant, and as such, they will go into the syllable of the second vowel.

Length

Syllables in Latin are considered either long or short. Within a word, a syllable may either be long by nature or long by position. A syllable is long by nature if it has a diphthong or a long vowel. On the other hand, a syllable is long by position if the vowel is followed by more than one consonant.

Stress

There are two rules that define which syllable is stressed in the Latin language. # In a word with only two syllables, the emphasis will be on the first syllable. # In a word with more than two syllables, there are two cases. #* If the second-to-last syllable is long, that syllable will have stress. #* If the second-to-last syllable is not long, the syllable before that one will be stressed instead.

Orthography

Latin was written in the Latin alphabet, derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn drawn from the Greek alphabet and ultimately the Phoenician alphabet. This alphabet has continued to be used over the centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic and many Slavic languages (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian and Czech); and it has been adopted by many languages around the world, including Vietnamese, the Austronesian languages, many Turkic languages, and most languages in

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

, the Americas and Oceania, making it by far the world's single most widely used writing system. The number of letters in the Latin alphabet has varied. When it was first derived from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21 letters. Later, ''G'' was added to represent , which had previously been spelled ''C'', and ''Z'' ceased to be included in the alphabet, as the language then had no voiced alveolar fricative. The letters ''Y'' and ''Z'' were later added to represent Greek letters, upsilon and zeta respectively, in Greek loanwords. ''W'' was created in the 11th century from ''VV''. It represented in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses ''V'' for the purpose. ''J'' was distinguished from the original ''I'' only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter ''U'' from ''V''. Although some Latin dictionaries use ''J'', it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it. Classical Latin did not contain sentence punctuation, letter case, or interword spacing, but

apices The apex is the highest point of something. The word may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional entities * Apex (comics), a teenaged super villainess in the Marvel Universe * Ape-X, a super-intelligent ape in the Squadron Supreme universe *Apex ...

were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the

interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...

was used at times to separate words. The first line of

Catullus 3 Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (''c''. 84 – ''c''. 54 BCE) that laments the death of a pet sparrow (''passer'') for which an unnamed girl (''puella''), possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia, had an affection. Written in ...

, originally written as : ("Mourn, O Venuses and

Cupid In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, lust, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus (mythology), Venus and the god of war Mar ...

s") or with

as or with interpunct as : would be rendered in a modern edition as : Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque or with macrons : Lūgēte, ō Venerēs Cupīdinēsque or with apices : Lúgéte, ó Venerés Cupídinésque. Hocgracili

The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many

wax tablet A wax tablet is a tablet made of wood and covered with a layer of wax, often linked loosely to a cover tablet, as a "double-leaved" diptych. It was used as a reusable and portable writing surface in Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. C ...

s excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on

Hadrian's Wall Hadrian's Wall ( la, Vallum Aelium), also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or ''Vallum Hadriani'' in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. R ...

in Britain. Most notable is the fact that while most of the Vindolanda tablets show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era.

Alternative scripts

Occasionally, Latin has been written in other scripts: * The Praeneste fibula is a 7th-century BC pin with an Old Latin inscription written using the Etruscan script. * The rear panel of the early 8th-century Franks Casket has an inscription that switches from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

Anglo-Saxon runes Anglo-Saxon runes ( ang, rūna ᚱᚢᚾᚪ) are runes used by the early Anglo-Saxons as an alphabet in their writing system. The characters are known collectively as the futhorc (ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ ''fuþorc'') from the Old English sound va ...

to Latin in Latin script and to Latin in runes.

Grammar

Latin is a

synthetic Synthetic things are composed of multiple parts, often with the implication that they are artificial. In particular, 'synthetic' may refer to: Science * Synthetic chemical or compound, produced by the process of chemical synthesis * Synthetic o ...

, fusional language in the terminology of linguistic typology. In more traditional terminology, it is an inflected language, but typologists are apt to say "inflecting". Words include an objective semantic element and markers specifying the grammatical use of the word. The fusion of root meaning and markers produces very compact sentence elements: , "I love," is produced from a semantic element, , "love," to which , a first person singular marker, is suffixed. The grammatical function can be changed by changing the markers: the word is "inflected" to express different grammatical functions, but the semantic element usually does not change. (Inflection uses affixing and infixing. Affixing is prefixing and suffixing. Latin inflections are never prefixed.) For example, , "he (or she or it) will love", is formed from the same stem, , to which a future tense marker, , is suffixed, and a third person singular marker, , is suffixed. There is an inherent ambiguity: may denote more than one grammatical category: masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. A major task in understanding Latin phrases and clauses is to clarify such ambiguities by an analysis of context. All natural languages contain ambiguities of one sort or another. The inflections express gender, number, and

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...

in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, a process called '' declension''. Markers are also attached to fixed stems of verbs, to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect, a process called ''

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...

''. Some words are uninflected and undergo neither process, such as adverbs, prepositions, and interjections.

Nouns

A regular Latin noun belongs to one of five main declensions, a group of nouns with similar inflected forms. The declensions are identified by the genitive singular form of the noun. * The first declension, with a predominant ending letter of ''a'', is signified by the genitive singular ending of ''-ae''. * The second declension, with a predominant ending letter of ''us'', is signified by the genitive singular ending of ''-i''. * The third declension, with a predominant ending letter of ''i'', is signified by the genitive singular ending of ''-is''. * The fourth declension, with a predominant ending letter of ''u'', is signified by the genitive singular ending of ''-ūs''. * The fifth declension, with a predominant ending letter of ''e'', is signified by the genitive singular ending of ''-ei''. There are seven Latin noun cases, which also apply to adjectives and pronouns and mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence by means of inflections. Thus, word order is not as important in Latin as it is in English, which is less inflected. The general structure and word order of a Latin sentence can therefore vary. The cases are as follows: #

Nominative In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...

– used when the noun is the

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

or a predicate nominative. The thing or person acting: the girl ran: or #

Genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

– used when the noun is the possessor of or connected with an object: "the horse of the man", or "the man's horse"; in both instances, the word ''man'' would be in the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

when it is translated into Latin. It also indicates the partitive, in which the material is quantified: "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: The cup is full of wine. () The master of the slave had beaten him. () #

Dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

– used when the noun is the indirect object of the sentence, with special verbs, with certain prepositions, and if it is used as agent, reference, or even possessor: The merchant hands the stola to the woman. () # Accusative – used when the noun is the direct object of the subject and as the object of a preposition demonstrating place to which.: The man killed the boy. () # Ablative – used when the noun demonstrates separation or movement from a source, cause,

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

or instrument or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions; adverbial: You walked with the boy. () # Vocative – used when the noun is used in a direct address. The vocative form of a noun is often the same as the nominative, with the exception of second-declension nouns ending in ''-us''. The ''-us'' becomes an ''-e'' in the vocative singular. If it ends in ''-ius'' (such as ), the ending is just ''-ī'' (), as distinct from the nominative plural () in the vocative singular: "Master!" shouted the slave. () #

Locative In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...

– used to indicate a location (corresponding to the English "in" or "at"). It is far less common than the other six cases of Latin nouns and usually applies to cities and small towns and islands along with a few common nouns, such as the words (house), (ground), and (country). In the singular of the first and second declensions, its form coincides with the genitive ( becomes , "in Rome"). In the plural of all declensions and the singular of the other declensions, it coincides with the ablative ( becomes , "at Athens"). In the fourth-declension word , the locative form, ("at home") differs from the standard form of all other cases. Latin lacks both definite and indefinite

articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

so can mean either "the boy is running" or "a boy is running".

Adjectives

There are two types of regular Latin adjectives: first- and second-declension and third-declension. They are so-called because their forms are similar or identical to first- and second-declension and third-declension nouns, respectively. Latin adjectives also have

comparative and superlative Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages ...

forms. There are also a number of Latin participles. Latin numbers are sometimes declined as adjectives. See '' Numbers'' below. First- and second-declension adjectives are declined like first-declension nouns for the feminine forms and like second-declension nouns for the masculine and neuter forms. For example, for (dead), is declined like a regular first-declension noun (such as (girl)), is declined like a regular second-declension masculine noun (such as (lord, master)), and is declined like a regular second-declension neuter noun (such as (help)). Third-declension adjectives are mostly declined like normal third-declension nouns, with a few exceptions. In the plural nominative neuter, for example, the ending is ''-ia'' ( (all, everything)), and for third-declension nouns, the plural nominative neuter ending is ''-a'' or ''-ia'' ( (heads), (animals)) They can have one, two or three forms for the masculine, feminine, and neuter nominative singular.

Participles

Latin participles, like English participles, are formed from a verb. There are a few main types of participles: Present Active Participles, Perfect Passive Participles, Future Active Participles, and Future Passive Participles.

Prepositions

Latin sometimes uses prepositions, depending on the type of prepositional phrase being used. Most prepositions are followed by a noun in either the accusative or ablative case: "apud puerum" (with the boy), with "puerum" being the accusative form of "puer", boy, and "sine puero" (without the boy), "puero" being the ablative form of "puer". A few

adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s, however, govern a noun in the genitive (such as "gratia" and "tenus").

Verbs

A regular verb in Latin belongs to one of four main conjugations. A conjugation is "a class of verbs with similar inflected forms." The conjugations are identified by the last letter of the verb's present stem. The present stem can be found by omitting the -''re'' (-''rī'' in deponent verbs) ending from the present infinitive form. The infinitive of the first conjugation ends in ''-ā-re'' or ''-ā-ri'' (active and passive respectively): , "to love," , "to exhort"; of the second conjugation by ''-ē-re'' or ''-ē-rī'': , "to warn", , "to fear;" of the third conjugation by ''-ere'', ''-ī'': , "to lead," , "to use"; of the fourth by ''-ī-re'', ''-ī-rī'': , "to hear," , "to attempt". The stem categories descend from Indo-European and can therefore be compared to similar conjugations in other Indo-European languages.

Irregular verbs A regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs. A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called an irregular verb. This is one instance ...

are verbs that do not follow the regular conjugations in the formation of the inflected form. Irregular verbs in Latin are ''esse'', "to be"; ''velle'', "to want"; ''ferre'', "to carry"; ''edere'', "to eat"; ''dare'', "to give"; ''ire'', "to go"; ''posse'', "to be able"; ''fieri'', "to happen"; and their compounds. There are six general

in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect and future perfect), three moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive, in addition to the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive and supine), three

(first, second and third), two numbers (singular and plural), two

(active and passive) and two aspects ( perfective and imperfective). Verbs are described by four principal parts: # The first principal part is the first-person singular, present tense, active voice, indicative mood form of the verb. If the verb is impersonal, the first principal part will be in the third-person singular. # The second principal part is the present active infinitive. # The third principal part is the first-person singular, perfect active indicative form. Like the first principal part, if the verb is impersonal, the third principal part will be in the third-person singular. # The fourth principal part is the supine form, or alternatively, the nominative singular of the perfect passive participle form of the verb. The fourth principal part can show one gender of the participle or all three genders (-''us ''for masculine, -''a'' for feminine and -''um'' for neuter) in the nominative singular. The fourth principal part will be the future participle if the verb cannot be made passive. Most modern Latin dictionaries, if they show only one gender, tend to show the masculine; but many older dictionaries instead show the neuter, as it coincides with the supine. The fourth principal part is sometimes omitted for intransitive verbs, but strictly in Latin, they can be made passive if they are used impersonally, and the supine exists for such verbs. The six tenses of Latin are divided into two tense systems: the present system, which is made up of the present, imperfect and future tenses, and the perfect system, which is made up of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect tenses. Each tense has a set of endings corresponding to the person, number, and voice of the subject. Subject (nominative) pronouns are generally omitted for the first (''I, we'') and second (''you'') persons except for emphasis. The table below displays the common inflected endings for the indicative mood in the active voice in all six tenses. For the future tense, the first listed endings are for the first and second conjugations, and the second listed endings are for the third and fourth conjugations:

Deponent verbs

Some Latin verbs are deponent, causing their forms to be in the passive voice but retain an active meaning: ''hortor, hortārī, hortātus sum'' (to urge).

Vocabulary

As Latin is an Italic language, most of its vocabulary is likewise Italic, ultimately from the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language. However, because of close cultural interaction, the Romans not only adapted the Etruscan alphabet to form the Latin alphabet but also borrowed some

words into their language, including "mask" and "actor". Latin also included vocabulary borrowed from Oscan, another Italic language. After the Fall of Tarentum (272 BC), the Romans began Hellenising, or adopting features of Greek culture, including the borrowing of Greek words, such as (vaulted roof), (symbol), and (bath). This Hellenisation led to the addition of "Y" and "Z" to the alphabet to represent Greek sounds. Subsequently, the Romans transplanted Greek art, medicine, science and philosophy to Italy, paying almost any price to entice Greek skilled and educated persons to Rome and sending their youth to be educated in Greece. Thus, many Latin scientific and philosophical words were Greek loanwords or had their meanings expanded by association with Greek words, as (craft) and τέχνη (art). Because of the Roman Empire's expansion and subsequent trade with outlying European tribes, the Romans borrowed some northern and central European words, such as (beaver), of Germanic origin, and (breeches), of Celtic origin. The specific dialects of Latin across Latin-speaking regions of the former Roman Empire after its fall were influenced by languages specific to the regions. The dialects of Latin evolved into different Romance languages. During and after the adoption of Christianity into Roman society, Christian vocabulary became a part of the language, either from Greek or Hebrew borrowings or as Latin neologisms. Continuing into the Middle Ages, Latin incorporated many more words from surrounding languages, including

and other Germanic languages. Over the ages, Latin-speaking populations produced new adjectives, nouns, and verbs by

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

ing or

compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...

meaningful segments. For example, the compound adjective, , "all-powerful," was produced from the adjectives , "all", and , "powerful", by dropping the final ''s'' of and concatenating. Often, the concatenation changed the part of speech, and nouns were produced from verb segments or verbs from nouns and adjectives.

Phrases (Neo-Latin)

The phrases are mentioned with accents to show where stress is placed. In Latin, words are normally stressed either on the second-to-last (penultimate)

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

, called in Latin or ,

Tore Janson Tore Janson (born 1936) is a Swedish linguist. Janson was professor of Latin at the University of Gothenburg, and later became professor of African languages at the same alma mater. He retired in 2001, but has since been affiliated with the Unive ...

– ''Latin – Kulturen, historien, språket'' – First edition, 2009. or on the third-to-last syllable, called in Latin or . In the following notation, accented short vowels have an acute diacritic, accented long vowels have a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

diacritic (representing long falling pitch), and unaccented long vowels are marked simply with a macron. This reflects the tone of the voice with which, ideally, the stress is phonetically realized; but this may not always be clearly articulated on every word in a sentence.

Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilia ...

, ''

Institutio Oratoria ''Institutio Oratoria'' (English: Institutes of Oratory) is a twelve-volume textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95 AD. The work deals also with the foundational education ...

'' (95 CE) Regardless of length, a vowel at the end of a word may be significantly shortened or even altogether deleted if the next word begins with a vowel also (a process called elision), unless a very short pause is inserted. As an exception, the following words: ''est'' (English "is"), ''es'' ("

ou (sg.) OU or Ou or ou may stand for: Universities United States * Oakland University in Oakland County, Michigan * Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama * Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia * Ohio University in Athens, Ohio * Olivet Univers ...

are") lose their own vowel ''e'' instead. to one person / to more than one person – hello to one person / to more than one person – greetings to one person / to more than one person – goodbye – take care to male / to female, to male / to female, to male / to female, to male / to female – welcome , – how are you? – good – I'm fine – bad – I'm not good (roughly: kwaeso: kwe:so: – please – please , , , , , – yes , – no , – thank you, I give thanks to you , – many thanks , , – thank you very much to one person / to more than one person, – you're welcome – how old are you? 25 (vīgintī quīnque) annōs nātus sum 25 annōs nāta sum by female – I am 25 years old – where is the toilet? – do you speak (literally: "do you know") ... * – Latin? * – Greek? * – English? * / – German? (sometimes also: ) * – French? * / – Russian? * – Italian? * / – Spanish? * – Polish? * – Portuguese? * – Romanian? * – Swedish? * – Welsh? * – Chinese? * – Japanese? * – Korean? * – Hebrew? * – Arabic? * – Persian? * – Hindi? * ''Bengalicē?'' – Bengali? / – I love you

Numbers

In ancient times, numbers in Latin were written only with letters. Today, the numbers can be written with the Arabic numbers as well as with

Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...

. The numbers 1, 2 and 3 and every whole hundred from 200 to 900 are declined as nouns and adjectives, with some differences. The numbers from 4 to 100 do not change their endings. As in modern descendants such as Spanish, the gender for naming a number in isolation is masculine, so that "1, 2, 3" is counted as .

Example text

, also called (''The Gallic War''), written by Gaius Julius Caesar, begins with the following passage: The same text may be marked for all long vowels (before any possible elisions at word boundary) with

over vowel letters, including customarily before "nf" and "ns" where a long vowel is automatically produced:

References

Bibliography

External links

Language tools

* Searches Lewis & Short's ''A Latin Dictionary'' and Lewis's ''An Elementary Latin Dictionary''. Online results. * Search on line Latin-English and English-Latin dictionary with complete declension or conjugation. Online results. * Identifies the grammatical functions of words entered. Online results. * Identifies the grammatical functions of all the words in sentences entered, using Perseus. * Displays complete conjugations of verbs entered in first-person present singular form. * Displays conjugation of verbs entered in their infinitive form. * Identifies Latin words entered. Translates English words entered. * Combines Whittakers Words, Lewis and Short, Bennett's grammar and inflection tables in a browser addon. * * *
Classical Language Toolkit
" (CLTK). A

Natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...

toolkit for Python offering a variety of functionality for Latin and other classical languages. *
Collatinus web
. Online lemmatizer and morphological analysis for Latin texts.

Courses

Latin Lessons
(free online through th
Linguistics Research Center
at UT Austin)
Free 47-Lesson Online Latin Course
Learnlangs
Learn Latin
Grammar, vocabulary and audio

Compiled by Fr. Gary Coulter * * (a course in ecclesiastical Latin). *
Beginners' Latin
on The National Archives (United Kingdom)

Grammar and study

* * * * * *

Phonetics

* * *

Libraries

The latin library
ancient Latin books and writings (without translations) ordered by author
LacusCurtius
a small collection of Greek and Roman authors along with their books and writings (original texts are in Latin and Greek, translations in English and occasionally in a few other languages are available)

Latin language news and audio

Ephemeris
online Latin newspaper: = news in Latin of the universe (whole world)
Ephemeris archive
archived copy of online Latin newspaper
Nuntii Latini
from Finnish YLE Radio 1

monthly review from German Radio Bremen (

Bremen Zwei Bremen Zwei is a German, public radio station owned and operated by the Radio Bremen (RB). References

Radio Bremen Radio stations in Germany Radio stations established in 2017 2017 establishments in Germany Mass media in Bremen (city) ...

)
Classics Podcasts in Latin and Ancient Greek
Haverford College
Latinum Latin Language course and Latin Language YouTube Index

Latin language online communities

Grex Latine Loquentium
(Flock of those Speaking Latin)
Circulus Latinus Interretialis
(Internet Latin Circle)

Latin Discord Forum
{{Authority control Languages attested from the 7th century BC Fusional languages Languages of Andorra Languages of France Languages of Italy Languages of Portugal Languages of Romania Languages of Spain Languages of Vatican City Languages with own distinct writing systems Subject–object–verb languages