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| Legacy | |
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Latin's culture has been passed down through these broad genres:
Inscriptions
Literature
legal terms
Science
Education
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| Inscriptions | |
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Most inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed-upon, monumental, multi-volume series termed the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). Authors and publishers vary but the format is approximately the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. There are approximately 270,000 known inscriptions.
[edit] Tags:Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,Epigraphy, | |
| Literature | |
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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. Their works were published in manuscript form before the invention of printing and now exist in carefully annotated printed editions such as the Loeb Classical Library by Harvard University Press or the Oxford Classical Texts by Oxford University Press.
[edit] Tags:Philology,Classics,Manuscript,Loeb Classical Library,Harvard University Press,Oxford Classical Texts,Oxford University Press, | |
| Influence on English | |
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Main article: Latin influence in English
In the medieval period, much borrowing from Latin occurred through ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century, or indirectly after the Norman Conquest through the Anglo-Norman language. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words. These were dubbed "inkhorn terms", 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 which proved useful survived, such as imbibe and extrapolate. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin, through the medium of Old French.
[edit] Tags:Medieval,French,Numbers,Latin Influence In English,Augustine Of Canterbury,Norman Conquest,Anglo-norman Language,Inkhorn Terms,Polysyllabic,Old French, | |
| Classical education | |
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Main article: Instruction in Latin
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the University Library of Graz
Throughout European history, an education in the Classics was considered a must for those who wished to join literate circles. In today's world, a large number of Latin students in America learn from Wheelock's Latin: The Classic Introductory Latin Course, Based on Ancient Authors. This book, first published in 1956,[7] was written by Frederic M. Wheelock, who received a PhD from Harvard University. Wheelock's Latin has become the standard text for many American introductory Latin courses.
[edit] Tags:Instruction In Latin,University Library Of Graz,Frederic M. Wheelock,Literate, | |
| Formal support for the study of Latin | |
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The Living Latin movement attempts to teach Latin in the same way that living languages are taught, i.e., as a means of both spoken and written communication. It is available at the Vatican, and at some institutions in the U.S., 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 recount the adventures of a mouse called Minimus.
In the United Kingdom, the Classical Association encourages the study of antiquity through various means, such as publications and grants. In the United States and 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.[8]
Latin is taught as a mandatory subject in gymnasia and other so-called classical high schools, located chiefly in Europe. In the United States, although once offered nearly universally, Latin is limited to elective status in a steadily declining number of grade schools, both public and private. The ordinary student can no longer count on being able to take Latin, but there are, however, extracurricular means. The College Board examinations, which serve as an educational tool for the admission of students into colleges, still features one Latin examination on a voluntary basis: Advanced Placement Latin: Vergil.
[edit] Tags:Living Latin,University Of Kentucky,Iowa State University,Cambridge University Press,Cambridge Latin Course,Minimus,Classical Association,United States,Canada,American Classical League,National Junior Classical League,National Senior Classical League,National Latin Exam,Mary Beard,The Times Literary Supplement,Gymnasia,College Board,Advanced Placement Latin: Vergil, | |
| Latin translations of modern literature | |
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Latin translations of modern literature such as Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, Walter the Farting Dog, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Cat in the Hat and a book of fairy tales, "fabulae mirabiles", 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.
[edit] Tags:Latin Translations Of Modern Literature,Treasure Island,Robinson Crusoe,Paddington Bear,Winnie The Pooh,Tintin,Asterix,Harry Potter,Walter The Farting Dog,Le Petit Prince,Max Und Moritz,How The Grinch Stole Christmas,The Cat In The Hat, | |
| Constructed languages based on Latin | |
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Many international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin. Interlingua, which lays claim to a sizeable following, 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.
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| History | |
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Main article: History of Latin
Latin has been divided into historical phases, each of which is distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, morphology and syntax. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as Protestant scholars, from Late Antiquity onward.
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| Archaic Latin | |
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Main article: Archaic Latin
The earliest known form is Archaic Latin, which was spoken from ancient times up to the middle Republican period, and attested in several inscriptions, as well as some of the earliest extant literary works. During this period, the Latin alphabet was first introduced by Rome's Etruscan rulers. The writing style later changed from an initial right-to-left or boustrophedon[9] to a left-to-right script.[10] Archaic Latin is attested through thousands of inscriptions from the Roman Republic, and through the writings of early authors such as Plautus, whose comedies are the earliest substantial works written in Latin.
[edit] Tags:Roman Republic,Archaic Latin, | |
| Classical Latin | |
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Main article: 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, which were taught in grammar and rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to these schools, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech.[11][12]
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| Vulgar Latin | |
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Main article: Vulgar Latin
Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as Plautus', which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, which has from ancient times been called Vulgar Latin (sermo vulgi by Cicero), the language of the vulgus or "commoners", existed alongside the literate Classical Latin. Since this language, by virtue of its informality, was rarely written, philologists have been left with individual words and phrases cited by Classical authors, as well as those found as graffiti.[13]
As vernacular Latin was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to expect that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. Just the opposite must have been true, as Romanized European populations developed their own dialects of the language.[14] This is the situation that prevailed when the Migration Period, ca. 300-700 AD, brought an end to the unity of the Roman world and removed the stabilizing influence of its institutions upon the language. A post-classical phase of Latin appeared, Late Latin, which was far more influenced by the everyday parlance.
One of the tests as to whether a given Latin feature or usage was in the spoken language is to compare its reflex in a Romance language with the equivalent formation in classical Latin. If it appeared in the Romance language but was not preferred in classical Latin, then it is most likely vulgar Latin. For example, the noun-case system is present in classical Latin, but not in the Romance languages, apart from remnants in Romanian. One might conclude that case endings throughout most of the Roman world started fading some time after the abandonment of Dacia in AD 271, even while their use continued in literate circles. In addition, much Romance vocabulary arose in vulgar Latin, rather than classical. The following examples adhere to this formula: classical Latin/vulgar Latin/Italian/French/Spanish/Portuguese: ignis/focus/fuoco/feu/fuego/fogo, equus/caballus/cavallo/cheval/caballo/cavalo, loqui/parabolare/parlare/parler/hablar/falar (from fabulari).[15] In each case, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese use terms that are derived from vulgar Latin (although classical equa gave rise to Spanish yegua and Portuguese égua, all meaning "mare"). Thus, we can deduce the everyday vocabulary of late Roman times.
The expansion of the Roman Empire spread Latin throughout Europe and North Africa. Vulgar Latin already began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the very latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the Dark Ages, confined to everyday speech, as medieval Latin was used for writing.
[edit] Tags:Roman Empire,/,Romance Languages,Vulgar Latin,Italian,Portuguese,Romanian,Spanish,Medieval Latin, | |
| Medieval Latin | |
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Main article: Medieval Latin
The language of Rome has had a profound impact on later cultures, as demonstrated by this Latin Bible from 1407
The term Medieval Latin refers to the written Latin in use during that portion of the post-classical 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 as a means of international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies.
Cut loose from its corrective spoken base and severed from the vanished institutions of the Roman empire that had supported its uniformity, medieval Latin lost its linguistic cohesion; for example, suus ("his/her own"), sui ("his/her own") and eius ("his/her") are used almost interchangeably, a confusion not resolved until the Renaissance, in works such as the tract of Lorenzo Valla, De reciprocatione suus et sui. In classical Latin sum and eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use fui and fueram instead.[16] Furthermore the meanings of many words have been changed and new vocabulary has been introduced from the vernacular.
While these minor changes are not enough to impair comprehension of the language, they introduce a certain flexibility not in it previously. The style of each individual author is characterized by his own uses of classically incorrect Latin to such a degree that one can identify him just by reading his Latin. In that sense medieval Latin is a collection of individual idioms united loosely by the main structures of the language. Some are more classical, others less so.[16] The majority of these writers were influential members of the Christian church: bishops, monks, philosophers, etc.; however, the term "Ecclesiastical Latin" does not accurately apply. There was no uniform language of the church. Late Latin is sometimes classified as medieval, sometimes not. Certainly many of the individual Latins were influenced by the vernaculars of their authors.
[edit] Tags:Latins,Renaissance,Tenses, | |
| Renaissance Latin | |
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Main article: Renaissance Latin
The bulk of 15th century printed books (incunabula) was in Latin, with the vernacular languages playing only a secondary role.[17]
The Renaissance briefly reinforced the position of Latin as a spoken language, through 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. It was they who introduced the practice of producing revised editions of the literary works that remained by comparing surviving manuscripts, and they who attempted to restore Latin to what it had been. They corrected medieval Latin out of existence no later than the 15th century and replaced it with more formally correct versions supported by the scholars of the rising universities, who attempted, through scholarship, to discover what the classical language had been.
[edit] Tags:Vernacular Languages, | |
| Phonology | |
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Main article: Latin spelling and pronunciation
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2011)
Pronunciation of Latin by the Romans in ancient times has been reconstructed from a variety of data, such as the evolution of features of the Romance languages, the representation of Latin words in other languages, such as Greek, the metrical patterns of Latin poetry, and more.[18] This reconstruction is known as (pronuntiatio) restituta "restored pronunciation" among Latin speakers of today and widely adopted for reasons of perceptibility. The table below lists the consonant phonemes of Classical Latin (1st century BC, beginning 1st century AD)
Labial
Dental
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
plain
labial
Plosive
voiced
b
d
ɡ
voiceless
p
t
k
kʷ
aspirated
pʰ
tʰ
kʰ
Fricative
voiced
z
voiceless
f
s
h
Nasal
m
n
ŋ
Rhotic
r
Approximant
l
j
w
Latin spelling of the Classical period seems to have been largely phonemic, with each letter corresponding to a specific phoneme in the language, save for some exceptions. In particular, all vowels varied in pronunciation depending upon their vowel length, the letter "n" represented either a dental nasal, a velar nasal, or lengthening and nasalization of the preceding vowel if an "f" or "s" follows, and the letters i and u represented either consonants or vowels depending on context. Although Classical Latin did not have a distinction between either i and j or u or v, in later publications, i and u can represent solely the vowel form while j and v solely the consonant form.
Most of the letters are (after this reconstruction) pronounced the same as in English, but note the following:
Consonants:
c = /k/ (never as in nice; without aspiration, as in Italian peccare)
g = /ɡ/ (never as in germ)
i (j) (consonantal i) = /j/ (like English y in you) The "i" is pronounced as a consonant if in the beginning of a root before a vowel or between two vowels, e.g. iucundus = /juː'cʊndʊs/ ~ yookundus ("pleasant"), periucundus = /peɾjuː'cʊndʊs/ ~ peRyookundus ("very pleasant").
l existed in two different allophonic variants: l exilis before l and i, and l pinguis in all other positions. The precise phonetic nature of these two allophones is unknown, so they are represented by a single consonant in the table above.
n = /n/ or /ŋ/ If n occurs before c, g or x or directly after a g,[19] it is pronounced /ŋ/ ("ng" as in "sing"). Otherwise, it is pronounced /n/[20] or before f or s represents a nasalization/prolongation of the preceding vowel (e.g. "consul" = /ko˝ːsʊl/).
ph = /pʰ/ (pronounced approximately like p in English point, just with more aspiration; never as in English philosopher)
r if beginning a syllable = /ɾ/ (as in Spanish pero); r if finishing a syllable and rr = /r/ (as in Spanish perro)
t = /t/ (never as in English nation; without aspiration, as in Spanish tentar)
th = /tʰ/ (analogous to ph; never as in English thunder or the)
u (v) (consonantal u) = /w/ The u is pronounced as a consonant also if beginning a root and before a vowel or if placed between two vowels (e.g. uehebantur = /weheː'bantuɾ/ ("they were driving"), inuehebantur = /inweheː'bantuɾ/ ("they were attacking verbally"), amauere = /amaː'weːɾe/ ~ amaaweyRe).
x = /ks/
Long consonants are represented by doubled spelling: puella = /pu'elːa/ ("girl"; similar to Italian nella), littera = /'lɪtːɛɾa/ ("letter", "character"; as in Italian petto), accidere = /akːidɛɾɛ/ ("to happen"; stress on the second syllable; as in Italian ecco), addere = /'adːɛɾɛ/ ("to add"), pessime = /'pesːimeː/ ("very/most badly") and the like.
It is also notable that consonants at the end of syllables close these syllables clearly, that means the latter are pronounced longer: e.g. amare = /a'maːɾɛ/ ("to love") has the quantitative structure short-long-short, whereas armare = /ar'maːɾɛ/ ("to arm") shows long-long-short. This feature of classical Latin is crucial to the understanding and retracing of Latin poetical rhythms of classical and ensuing times, which are mainly based on syllable lengths, less on the word stresses.
Vowels:
a = /a/ when short and /aː/ when long.
e = /ɛ/ (as in pet) when short and /eː/ (somewhat as in English they) when long.
i = /ɪ/ (as in pin) when short and /iː/ (as in machine) when long
o = /ɔ/ (as in British English law) when short and /oː/ (somewhat as in holy) when long.
u = /ʊ/ (as in put) when short and /uː/ (as in true) when long.
A vowel followed by an m or n (maintained later by French and Portuguese), either at the end of a word or before another consonant, is nasal, as in monstrum /mõːstrũ/.[19]
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| Orthography | |
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Main article: Latin alphabet
The Duenos Inscription, from the 6th century BC, is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts.
Latin was written using the Latin Alphabet, derived from the Old Italic alphabet, in turn drawn from the Greek and ultimately the Phoenician alphabet.[21] This alphabet has continued to be used throughout centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic, and many Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian and Czech), as well as for others as Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Niger–Congo languages.
The Latin alphabet has varied in number of letters. When it was first adopted from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21.[22] Later, “G”, representing /ɡ/, formerly included under “C”, was innovated to replace “Z”, which was non-functional, as the language had no voiced alveolar fricative at the time.[23] The letters “Y” and “Z” were later added to represent the Greek Upsilon and Zeta respectively in Greek loanwords.[23] “W” was created in the 11th century from VV. It represented /w/ in Germanic languages, not in Latin, which still uses “V” for the purpose. “J” was distinguished from the original “I” only during the late Middle Ages along with the letter “U” from “V”.[23] Although some dictionaries use “J” it is for the most part eschewed for Latin text as non-original, although other languages use it Tags:Italic, | |
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