Latin (Lingua Latina)
Ave! "welcome"
Ave! "welcome"
Introduction
Latin is a member of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European language family that includes other Romance languages. Italic speakers were not native to Italy. They migrated to the Italian Peninsula in the 2nd millennium BC. Before their arrival, Italy was populated by Etruscans, a non-Indo-
European-speaking people, in the north, and by Greeks in the south. Latin developed in west-central Italy in an area along the River Tiber known as Latium which became the birthplace of the Roman civilization.
As Rome extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian Peninsula, Latin become dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken sometime in the 1st century AD. The expansion of the Roman Empire also spread Latin throughout the territories occupied by the Romans who spoke Vulgar Latin, a colloquial variety of the language actually spoken by Roman citizens. Vulgar Latin was a language of wider communication but it was
not a standardized written language. It was Classical Latin, a stylized and standardized variety of the language, that was used for all written communication. Vulgar Latin varied 
across the territories occupied by the Romans depending on a variety of factors, including the influence of local languages. As the Roman Empire disintegrated and communication with Rome declined, local forms of Vulgar Latin diverged more and more from the Classical norms in structure, vocabulary, and pronunciation. They became less and less mutually intelligible, and by the 9th century developed into separate Romance languages, as we know them today.
As Vulgar Latin continued to evolve, Classical Latin continued in a more or less standardized form throughout the Middle Ages as the written language of religion and scholarship. As such, it had a profound effect on all Western European languages.
The Catholic Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) after which it was largely replaced by the local spoken languages of the parishioners. However, Ecclesiastical Latin, also known as Church Latin, remains the official language of Vatican City, and is used in documents of the Roman Catholic Church and in its Latin liturgies. Ecclesiastical Latin does not differ greatly from Classical Latin. |
Structure
Sound System|
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Sound system of Classical Latin
Latin also imported some Greek sounds that were used in borrowings from Greek:
Stress |
/, /h/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /k
/, /p
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Grammar,
Word order |
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Vocabulary Latin has borrowed words from many sources. Prominent among those sources is Greek which provided many religious terms. Various Germanic languages spoken by the Germanic tribes who invaded western Europe were also major sources of new words. Classical Latin also borrowed words from Vulgar Latin which, in turn, borrowed words from the local languages. |
Writing
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The true developers of the Latin alphabet were the Etruscans who dominated the Italian peninsula in pre-Roman times. They were the ones who adapted the early Greek alphabet for writing their language. The Romans took over the Etruscan alphabet for writing their own language. They oginally took 21 of the Greek and Etruscan letters to represent the sounds of their own language. The Greek letters upsilon Y and zeta Z, unnecessary in early Latin, were dropped. However, since the Romans borrowed many words from Greek, they reinstituted the letters Y and Z for spelling words they had borrowed from Greek and added them to the end of the alphabet. The letters J and U appeared in writing as variants of I and V in the Middle Ages, and acquired the status of separate letters during the Renaissance. In northern Europe a two-letter sequence of VV or UU became fused into the new letter W, providing the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. Most of the people conquered by Rome had unwritten languages. With the spread of Christianity into the areas where these languages were spoken came the need to translate the Bible into their languages. This, in turn, required the adaptation of the Roman alphabet to represent these languages. The early Roman alphabet had only uppercase letters. Lowercase letters evolved from the capitals in several stages, as shown below for the letter A.
Today, the Roman alphabet has these letters:
There are two different versions of Latin orthography . They are given below:
Today, there are as many pronunciations of Latin as there are languages whose speakers have learned Latin. In most cases, Latin pronunciation is based on the sound system of the speaker's native language. Take a look at the text of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Latin.
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Latin words in English Latin roots and words in English
Check if you know the meaning of these Latin phrases commonly used in English by mousing over the phrases. |
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ResourcesClick here to find out where Latin is taught in the United States.
Online resources for the study of Latin
Wikipedia article(s) on Latin
Yamada Language Center Guide for Latin
Greek and Latin Language Resources
Latin language resources for high school students
E.L.Easton Latin online
LanguageLinks: Latin
University of Virginia Electronic Text Center: Latin Collection
BUBL LINK Catalogue of Internet Resources
About: Resources on the Latin Language
University of Notre Dame Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid
Humbul Humanities Hub: Greek and Latin Language Resources
Click here to find learning materials for studying Latin.
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