Latin  

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Poggio Bracciolini recovered a great number of classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries, including the only surviving copy of Lucretius's De rerum natura, and disseminated manuscript copies among his learned friends.
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Poggio Bracciolini recovered a great number of classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss, and French monastic libraries, including the only surviving copy of Lucretius's De rerum natura, and disseminated manuscript copies among his learned friends.

"From the time of the Romans until the seventeenth century Latin was the language of learning; and through it Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Grotius, Harvey the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, gave their discoveries to the world. Its decline was not due to any failure in the language itself. Though confined to the use of scholars, it was being modified by usage, as all living languages must be, and in harmony with the general trend of language, it was becoming analytical. Remember that classical Latin includes only 202 authors and a number of inscriptions, — whilst medieval Latin comprises many thousands of books.

The fall of Latin came with the reaction against scholasticism and the awaking of the spirit of inquiry, which strives to ascertain fact by experiment and rejects reliance upon tradition. Bacon, a foremost leader in this movement, wrote his greatest scientific works in English, but translated them into Latin, because of its wide currency. Even then he indicated the need for a new international medium."--Delphos; the Future of International Language (1935) by E. Sylvia Pankhurst


"Cogito, ergo sum"


"The study of etymology, as here presented, may advantageously begin at an early stage in the study of Latin; and it should continue, in some form, throughout the course of classical education. The present work may be used for regular daily lessons in connection with the study of the classical text, and may also, with equal advantage and facility, be employed for reference on individual words."--An Etymology of Latin and Greek (1882) by Charles Storrs Halsey


"He began by turning over all his Latin library, after which he re-marshalled the special works of Archelaüs, Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully and Arnaud de Villanova treating of the kabbala and the occult sciences; lastly he verified, one by one, his modern books and was delighted to find they were all intact, dry and in good condition."--À rebours (1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans

This page Latin is part of the Ancient Rome series.  Illustration: Antichita Romanae (1748) by Piranesi
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This page Latin is part of the Ancient Rome series.
Illustration: Antichita Romanae (1748) by Piranesi

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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in Latium (also known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage. For most of the time it was used, it would be considered a "dead language" in the modern linguistic definition; that is, it lacked native speakers, despite being used extensively and actively.

Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative, and vestigial locative), five declensions, four verb conjugations, six tenses (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three persons, three moods, two voices (passive and active), two or three aspects, and two numbers (singular and plural). The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets.

By the late Roman Republic (75 BC), Old Latin had been standardized into Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form with less prestigious variations attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and author Petronius. 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 Romance languages.

In Latin's usage beyond the early medieval period, it lacked native speakers. Medieval Latin was used across Western and Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages as a working and literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance, which then developed a Classifying and purified form, called Renaissance Latin. This was the basis for Neo-Latin which evolved during the early modern era. In these periods, while Latin was used productively, it was generally taught to be written and spoken, at least until the late seventeenth century, when spoken skills began to erode. Later, it became increasingly taught only to be read.

One form of Neo-Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church at Vatican City. When talking about current uses of Latin, Contemporary Latin also exists however it has limited productive use, and is rarely spoken.

Latin has also greatly influenced the English language and historically contributed many words to the English lexicon 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.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Latin" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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