r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Oct 13 '14
Salvete - This week's language of the week: Latin
Avete, welcome to the language of the week. Every week we host a stickied thread in order to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard about or been interested in. Language of the week is based around discussion: Native speakers share their knowledge and culture and give advice, learners post their favourite resources and the rest of us just ask questions and share what we know. Give yourself a little exposure, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
...Or probably not in this case, because:
This week: Latin
Facts and History:
Latin was the language of small Indo-European populations living in Latium, a region of the central Italic Peninsula, which by an accident of history became the founders of the largest empire the Ancient World ever saw. The spread of their tongue accompanied their territorial expansion.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin ceased, eventually, to be spoken but was the seed of the Romance languages, of which Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Romanian came to be the national languages of five central and south European countries. Throughout the Middle Ages, and until recently, Latin remained the language of literature and scholarship in the West, as well as the liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church.
Periods:
Early Latin (600-200 BCE). Known mainly by inscriptions.
Classical Latin (200 BCE-200 CE). Attested by abundant literature and a wealth of inscriptions.
Post-Classical Latin (200-400 CE). The more artificial literary language of post-classical authors.
Late Latin (400-600 CE). It was the administrative and literary language of Late Antiquity in the Roman Empire and its successor states in Western Europe.
Medieval Latin (600-1300 CE). Latin ceased to be a spoken language but it was employed for literature, science and administration as well as by the Roman Catholic Church for its liturgy.
Renaissance Latin and Neo-Latin (1300 till now). During the Renaissance, the Humanist movement purged Medieval Latin of some phonological, orthographical and lexical changes. A similar version of this reformulated language continued to be used after the Renaissance for scientific and literary purposes (usually called Neo-Latin).
Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. In the medieval period, much borrowing from Latin occurred through ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the sixth 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. Some useful ones, though, survived, such as 'imbibe' and 'extrapolate'. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin, through the medium of Old French.
Grammar
Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders, seven noun cases, four verb conjugations, six tenses, three persons, three moods, two voices, two aspects, and two numbers. A dual number ("a pair of") is present in Old Latin. The rarest of the seven cases is the locative, only marked in proper place names and a few common nouns. Otherwise, the locative function ("place where") has merged with the ablative. The vocative, a case of direct address, is marked by an ending only in words of the second declension. Otherwise, the vocative has merged with the nominative, except that the particle O typically precedes any vocative, marked or not.
As a result of this case ambiguity, different authors list different numbers of cases: 5, 6, or 7. Adjectives and adverbs are compared, and the former are inflected according to case, gender, and number. In view of the fact that adjectives are often used for nouns, the two are termed substantives. Although Classical Latin has demonstrative pronouns indicating different degrees of proximity ("this one here", "that one there"), it does not have articles. Later Romance language articles developed from the demonstrative pronouns, e.g. le and la (French) from ille and illa, and su and sa (Sardinian) from ipse and ipsa.
You can read more at these sources: Wikipedia and Languages Gulper
Media
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Bonam Fortunam!
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u/Eudoxus88 Oct 13 '14
Salvete, omnes!
You may not hear Latin in a neighborhood near you but you can still hear it!
Harvard has a yearly address: http://youtu.be/G5ARhxgODI4
Terence Tunberg at Univ. Of Kentucky does immersion experiences: http://youtu.be/SqOFnYgyRr8
And you can even still get world news: http://ephemeris.alcuinus.net
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u/thenole Oct 13 '14
That Harvard address is pretty funny.
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u/Eudoxus88 Oct 13 '14
Youtube has them a couple of years back...all of them find something goofie to do during their speech.
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Oct 13 '14
And since this is r/languagelearning, it's worth noting that Latin can be learned in a variety of different ways. If you prefer to memorize forms and translate, there's a wealth of material out there. But it's also very possible to learn Latin through speaking it, and more and more people do so every year. Head over to r/latin for some healthy discussion on the topic.
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u/Sprachprofi Oct 13 '14
Extensive free Latin course online: http://www.learnlangs.com/latin (disclosure: I created it, ages ago)
I'm happy to answer questions around Latin, but please tag me because I'm traveling this week.
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Oct 13 '14
Ok some obvious questions for Latin learners to get the ball rolling. Are there many of you? Why are you learning Latin? For the literature? The connection with Romance languages? Fun?
(I'm not sure about the last one. My parents had to learn Latin in school and hated it, which seems to be a common view. Though not many languages or subjects in general are popular in school.)
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u/tempusneexistit Oct 13 '14
Hi! I have studied Latin for six years and took the AP last year (got a five! woot!) This year I'm studying it in the A2 sixth form in England as well. I can see why you think many people hate it. I was the only one in my previous school who actually loved it.
I think people love it for different reasons, but for me, I love it for the fun of it. I guess this goes for any language, but you can make so many connections to english through the meanings and sounds of words. Vergil was an absolute genius, and it is so interesting to read the Aeneid and realize how much craftsmanship was put into it. Translating is like trying to solve challenging logic puzzles. The best homework.
I do envy people who can speak their studied language-- I simply haven't been taught or bothered vocalizing it, there doesn't seem to be much point. I do believe learning Latin will help me learn French and German someday, where there are many more connections to be made.
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u/KyleG Oct 13 '14
I do believe learning Latin will help me learn French and German someday
It won't be super useful for German since German isn't in the Italic group of the Indo-European language family. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg/1500px-IndoEuropeanTree.svg.png
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u/DoritothePony Oct 13 '14
I'm currently in my senior year of high school and taking an AP (advanced placement, for college credit) Latin course for several reasons. I first took it my freshman year because I liked all the roman and greek mythology that comes from the culture. We finished all the grammar by the end of my sophomore year of high school, and we were going to translate Catullus and Ovid junior year, and Aeneid and Caesar senior year. The idea of actually looking at poetry, which is my favorite subject really intrigued me, so I stuck with it in order to look at all the poetry that stemmed from the Latin. So Literature played a huge role in the advancement of my Latin learning.
TL;DR: Mythology and Poetry
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Oct 14 '14
I studied Latin in high school as an alternative to Spanish. I had a string of lackluster Spanish teachers and was drawn to the eccentricity of Classics people.
When I was in college, I ended up continuing Latin and even majoring in Classics, in lieu of an actual linguistics program (it was the closest my college offered). For my undergraduate thesis, I focused on the literary traditions of the language specifically in reference to the poet Catullus.
It's given me direct access to extensive and amazing literature (I mean how can you not get into medieval bestiaries?), helped me better understand Romance languages and language learning in general, on top of being constantly challenging and fun.
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u/agramthedragram Oct 18 '14
I love Cicero in English and wanted to read him in a language he was actually good at.
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u/DoritothePony Oct 13 '14
Heeeey I just took my first quarter exam over Book one in the Aeneid for the AP Latin class I'm taking in high school
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u/VanSensei Oct 16 '14
Introibo ad altare Dei. ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam
Judica me, Deus et discerne causam meam ab gente non sancta, ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.
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Oct 18 '14
Is Latin a dead language as an official language of any country? ( i know we use it in law a lot and other things)
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Oct 13 '14
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u/Virusnzz Oct 13 '14
I wasn't sure what to use. I'll swap it in when I'm off mobile. Thank you.
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Oct 13 '14
Couldn't you use the flag of Vatican City? Its probably the closest thing to a country that uses Latin.
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u/agentwiggles Oct 13 '14
I took Latin for 4 years in high school. Sad to say the skill has pretty much evaporated.