Latin Alternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation) Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. It is said that 80% of scholarly English words are somehow derived from Latin. Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, which makes it the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the 1960s. It is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. Main features Latin is a synthetic or inflectional language: affixes are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. The six noun cases are: nominative (used of the subject of the verb), genitive (used to indicate relation or possession), dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), accusative (used of the direct object of the verb), ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, there exists in some nouns a locative case used to express place (normally expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this hold-over from Indo-European is only found in the names of lakes, cities, towns, similar locales, and a few other words. Latin and Romance After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin being still used for writing. (For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese.) The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian still has five cases (though the ablative case is no longer represented). Latin and English See Latin influence in English for a fuller exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the contrived prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, Spanish, and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words, dubbed "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink), were rich in flavor and meaning. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, and inebriation are all inkpot terms carved from Latin and Greek words. Latin, at one time, was commonly taught in most English schools. However, since the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE, Latin has gradually been phased out. Now, however, it, along with other classical languages are being taught by more schools. See also About the Latin language Latin grammar Latin phonemes Latin declension Latin conjugation Latin lexicon ablative absolute Word order in Latin About the Latin literary heritage Latin literature Loeb Classical Library List of Latin phrases List of Latin proverbs Brocard Compound verbs in English consisting of Latin prefix and Latin verb List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names Latin names of European cities Latin names of European rivers Carmen Possum Other related topics Roman Empire External links Ethnologue report for Latin Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum, a comprehensive webography of Latin texts and their translations The Perseus Project has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including an interactive Latin dictionary. words by William whitaker - a dictionary program online capable of looking up various word forms. Retiarius.Org includes a Latin text search engine. Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar from U of Notre Dame Latin resources Latin texts and collection of dictionaries. Free online courses in Latin http://sprachprofi.de.vu/latin http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Latin The Latin Library contains many Latin etexts Textkit has Latin textbooks and etexts. Latin–English Dictionary: from Webster's Rosetta Edition. Language reference Cross-foreign-language lexicon powered by its own search engine. All cross combinations between Latin and French, German, Italian, Spanish. Rhetor by Gabriel Harvey - originally published in 1577 and never again reprinted. ast:Llatín nds:Latinsch simple:Latin Most Popular Articles: Music    Musical Instruments    Guitar    Classical Music    History    Music Definition    Country Music    Rock Music    Pop Music    Hip Hop    Rap    DJ    Video Games    Casino Games    Poker    Blackjack    Casinos    Real Estate    Loan    Auction    eBay    Marketing    Search Engine Optimization    File Sharing    MP3    Music Industry    Kazaa    Internet    Supermodel    Fashion    Fashion Designers    Erotica    Modeling    Clothing    Boots    Shoes    Diamond Engagement Rings    Diamond    Rugs    Gospel Music    Affiliate    E-Commerce    Radio This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html You may copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. You must provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for use of this content. To view or edit this article at Wikipedia go to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin