Latin

Vulgar Latin refers to the less prestigious colloquial registers, attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence[2] and the author Petronius.

Latin grammar is highly fusional, with classes of inflections for case, number, person, gender, tense, mood, voice, and aspect.

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.

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.

Some linguists, particularly in the nineteenth century, believed this to be a separate language, existing more or less in parallel with the literary or educated Latin, but this is now widely dismissed.

In the Late Latin period, language changes reflecting spoken (non-classical) norms tend to be found in greater quantities in texts.

It is characterised by greater use of prepositions, and word order that is closer to modern Romance languages, for example, while grammatically retaining more or less the same formal rules as Classical Latin.

Spoken Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear.

Although the Mass of Paul VI (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.

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 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.

Switzerland has adopted the country's Latin short name Helvetia 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 Confoederatio Helvetica, the country's full Latin name.

Some film and television in ancient settings, such as Sebastiane, The Passion of the Christ and Barbarians (2020 TV series), have been made with dialogue in Latin.

Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, Sardinian and other Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin.

[citation needed] 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, Le Petit Prince, Max and Moritz, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, fabulae mirabiles, are intended to garner popular interest in the language.

[citation needed] Some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL).

Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information.

In the Middle Ages, borrowing from Latin occurred from ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century or indirectly after the Norman Conquest, through the Anglo-Norman language.

It has also published a subseries of children's texts in Latin by Bell & Forte, which recounts the adventures of a mouse called Minimus.

In the Kingdom of Poland Latin was officially recognised and widely used[58][59][60][61] between the 10th and 18th centuries, commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility.

Classical Latin did not contain sentence punctuation, letter case,[78] or interword spacing, but apices were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the interpunct was used at times to separate words.

The first line of Catullus 3 ("Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids") was originally written as: It would be rendered in a modern edition as: The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many wax tablets excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Britain.

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.

Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also called De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War), written by Gaius Julius Caesar, begins with the following passage: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.

Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

Belgae ab extremis Galliae finibus oriuntur; pertinent ad inferiorem partem fluminis Rheni; spectant in septentrionem et orientem solem.

Aquitania a Garumna flumine ad Pyrenaeos montes et eam partem Oceani quae est ad Hispaniam pertinet; spectat inter occasum solis et septentriones.The same text may be marked for all long vowels (before any possible elisions at word boundary) with apices over vowel letters, including customarily before nf and ns where a long vowel is automatically produced: Gallia est omnis dívísa in partés trés, quárum únam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquítání, tertiam quí ipsórum linguá Celtae, nostrá Gallí appellantur.

Hórum omnium fortissimí sunt Belgae, proptereá quod á cultú atque húmánitáte próvinciae longissimé absunt, miniméque ad eós mercátórés saepe commeant atque ea quae ad efféminandós animós pertinent important, proximíque sunt Germánís, quí tráns Rhénum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

Belgae ab extrémís Galliae fínibus oriuntur; pertinent ad ínferiórem partem flúminis Rhéní; spectant in septentriónem et orientem sólem.

The linguistic landscape of central Italy at the beginning of Roman expansion
The Lapis Niger , probably the oldest extant Latin inscription, from Rome, c. 600 BC during the semi-legendary Roman Kingdom
The Latin Malmesbury Bible from 1407
Most 15th-century printed books ( incunabula ) were in Latin, with the vernacular languages playing only a secondary role. [ 19 ]
The signs at Wallsend Metro station are in English and Latin, as a tribute to Wallsend 's role as one of the outposts of the Roman Empire , as the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall (hence the name) at Segedunum .
The polyglot European Union has adopted Latin names in the logos of some of its institutions for the sake of linguistic compromise, an "ecumenical nationalism" common to most of the continent and as a sign of the continent's heritage (such as the EU Council : Consilium ).
QDP Ep 84 – De Ludo "Mysterium": A Latin-language podcast
Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the Roman Republic .
Range of the Romance languages, the modern descendants of Latin, in Europe
A multivolume Latin dictionary in the University of Graz Library in Austria
Audio of a person with a German accent reading in Latin
Ave Maria read in Ecclesiastical Latin
The Duenos Inscription , from the 6th century BC, is one of the earliest known Old Latin texts. It was found on the Quirinal Hill in Rome.
A modern Latin text written in the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the Vindolanda tablets , the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. The word Romani 'Romans' is at bottom left.
An educational diagram displaying the syntax of the Latin sentence Iohannes vidit illam puellam with nodes representing John, sees, and girl, aiding in understanding language structure.
Syntactical structure of the Latin sentence Iohannes vidit illam puellam , meaning 'John sees the girl'