In the 5th century BC e. Latin language(self-name Lingua Latina) was one of the many Italic languages ​​spoken in central Italy. Latin was used in the area known as Latium (the modern name is Lazio), and Rome was one of the cities in this area. The earliest inscriptions in Latin date from the 6th century BC. BC e. and made using an alphabet based on the Etruscan script.

Gradually, the influence of Rome spread to other parts of Italy, and through them to Europe. Over time, the Roman Empire took over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Throughout the empire, Latin began to be used as the language of law and authority, and, to an increasing extent, the language of everyday life. The Romans were literate, and many of them read the works of famous Latin authors.

Meanwhile, in the eastern Mediterranean, Greek remained the lingua franca, and educated Romans were bilingual. The earliest examples of Latin literature known to us are translations of Greek plays and Cato's agricultural manual into Latin, dating from 150 BC. e.

Classical Latin, which was used in the early works of Latin literature, differed in many ways from colloquial, so-called Vulgar Latin. However, some writers, including Cicero and Petronius, used Vulgar Latin in their writings. Over time, the spoken versions of the Latin language moved further and further away from the literary standard, and gradually italic / romance languages ​​​​appeared on their basis (, spanish, portuguese, etc.).

Even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Latin continued to be used as a literary language in Western and Central Europe. A huge amount of medieval Latin literature of various styles appeared - from the scientific works of Irish and Anglo-Saxon writers to simple fairy tales and sermons intended for the general public.

During the XV century. Latin began to lose its dominant position and the title of the main language of science and religion in Europe. To a large extent, it has been replaced by written versions of local European languages, many of which are derived from or influenced by Latin.

Modern Latin was used by the Roman Catholic Church until the middle of the 20th century, and today, to some extent, continues to exist, especially in the Vatican, where it is recognized as one of the official languages. Latin terminology is actively used by biologists, paleontologists and other scientists to name species and preparations, as well as doctors and lawyers.

Latin alphabet

The Romans used only 23 letters to write in Latin:

There were no lowercase letters in Latin. The letters I and V could be used as consonants and vowels. The letters K, X, Y and Z were only used to write words of Greek origin.

The letters J, U and W were added to the alphabet later for writing in languages ​​other than Latin.

The letter J is a variant of I and was first introduced into use by Pierre de la Ramais in the 16th century.

The letter U is a variant of V. In Latin, the sound /u/ was denoted by the letter v, for example IVLIVS (Julius).

W was originally a doubled v (vv) and was first used by Old English scribes in the 7th century, although the runic letter Wynn (Ƿ) was more commonly used to represent the /w/ sound. After the Norman Conquest, the letter W became more popular and by 1300 completely replaced the letter Wynn.

Reconstructed phonetic transcription of Classical Latin

Vowels and diphthongs

Consonants

Notes

• Vowel length was not displayed in writing, although modern redactions of classical texts use the macron (ā) to indicate long vowels.
• The pronunciation of short vowels in mid-position is different: E [ɛ], O [ɔ], I [ɪ] and V [ʊ].

Phonetic transcription of Church Latin

Vowels

diphthongs

Consonants

Notes

• Double vowels are pronounced separately
• C = [ʧ] before ae, oe, e, i or y, and [k] in any other position
• G = [ʤ] before ae, oe, e, i or y, and [g] in any other position
• H is not pronounced except in words mihi and nihil where the /k/ sound is pronounced
• S = [z] between vowels
• SC = [ʃ] before ae, oe, e, i or y, and in any other positions
• TI = before a vowel a and after all letters except s, t, or x, and in any other position
• U = [w] after q
• V = [v] at the beginning of a syllable
• Z = at the beginning of a word before vowels, and before consonants or at the end of a word.

LATIN LANGUAGE(Latin), one of the Indo-European languages ​​​​of the Italic group, in which - from about the 6th century. BC. by 6th c. AD - spoke the ancient Romans and which was the official language of the Roman Empire; up to the beginning of the New Age - one of the main written languages ​​of Western European science, culture and social life; the official language of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church (up to the middle of the 20th century, it was also used in Catholic worship); the language of the richest, more than two thousand years of literary tradition, one of the most important languages ​​of human culture, in some areas of knowledge (medicine, biology, general scientific terminology of the natural and human sciences) continues to be actively used at the present time.

Initially, the Latin language was only one of many in the group of closely related Italic languages ​​(the most significant among them are Oscan and Umbrian), which formed by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. in central and southern Italy. The original zone of the existence of the Latin language is a small region of Latium, or Latium (lat. Latium, modern it. Lazio) around Rome, but as the ancient Roman state expanded, the influence of the Latin language gradually spread to the entire territory of modern Italy (where other local languages ​​\u200b\u200bwere completely replaced by it), Southern France (Provence) and a significant part of Spain, and by the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. - to almost all countries of the Mediterranean basin, as well as Western (to the Rhine and Danube) and Northern Europe (including the British Isles). In modern Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Romania and some. other countries of Europe and currently speak languages ​​​​that are descendants of Latin (they make up the so-called Romance group of the Indo-European family); in modern times, the Romance languages ​​spread very widely (Central and South America, Western and Central Africa, French Polynesia, etc.).

In the history of the Latin language, archaic (up to the 3rd century BC), classical (early - up to the 1st century AD and late - up to the 3rd century AD) and postclassical periods (up to about the 6th century AD) are distinguished. . AD). Latin literature reaches its greatest flourishing by the era of Caesar and Augustus (1st century BC, the so-called "golden Latin" of Cicero, Virgil and Horace). The language of the postclassical period is characterized by noticeable regional differences and gradually (through the stage of the so-called vulgar, or folk Latin) breaks up into separate Romance dialects (in the 8th–9th centuries it is already possible to speak with confidence about the existence of early variants of modern Romance languages, which differ from written Latin fully understood by contemporaries).

Although after the 6th c. (i.e. after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire) Latin as a living spoken language is falling into disuse and can be considered dead, its role in the history of medieval Western Europe, where it has long remained the only written language, turns out to be extremely important - it is no coincidence that everything Western European languages ​​other than Greek use a Latin-based alphabet; at present, this alphabet has spread throughout the globe. In the Renaissance, interest in classical Latin even increased, and until the end of the 17th century. it continues to serve as the main language of European scholarship, diplomacy and the Church. Latin was written at the court of Charlemagne and in the papal office, it was used by St. Thomas Aquinas and Petrarch, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Copernicus, Leibniz and Spinoza, he sounded in the oldest European universities, uniting people from different countries - from Prague to Bologna, from Ireland to Spain; only in the latest period of European history, this unifying and cultural role gradually passes first to French, and then to English, which in the modern era has become one of the so-called "world languages". In the countries of the Romanesque language, the Catholic Church finally renounces services in Latin only in the 20th century, but they are preserved, for example, among the Catholics of the Gallican rite.

The oldest monuments of the Latin language (6th–7th centuries BC) are short inscriptions on objects and tombstones, fragments of the so-called salic hymns and some. others; The first surviving monuments of fiction date back to the 3rd century BC. BC. (it was during this period that the unification of Italy under the rule of Rome and intensive contacts with the Greek culture of southern Italy began). The most famous author of this period is the comedian Titus Maccius Plautus, who left brilliant examples of "unsmoothed" colloquial speech; early examples of journalism are presented in the writings of Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder.

The classical period is characterized by the rapid flourishing of fiction and journalism: the canon of normative prose language (on which all subsequent generations were guided) was created in the work of such authors as the orator, publicist and philosopher Mark Tullius Cicero and Gaius Julius Caesar, who left historical notes about his conquests; the canon of poetic language - in the work of such authors as the lyric poets Gaius Valery Catullus, Quintus Horace Flaccus, Albius Tibull, the epics Publius Virgil Maron, Publius Ovid Nason (whose lyrical heritage is also significant), etc .; their works are an integral part of world literature, acquaintance with which forms the basis of modern humanitarian “classical education”. An important role is also played by the historical and natural-science prose of such authors as Gaius Sallust Crispus, Cornelius Nepos, Titus Livy, Mark Terentius Varro.

Among the authors of the late classical period, the work of the poet-satirist Mark Valery Martial and the prose writer Titus Petronius the Arbiter, whose language is closer to the colloquial than that of the authors of the "golden age", is of particular importance.

The late classical period is also characterized by the appearance of a large amount of philosophical and scientific prose; at that time, the historians Gaius Cornelius Tacitus and Gaius Suetonius Tranquill, the naturalist Gaius Pliny Caecilius Secundus the Elder, the philosopher Lucius Annei Seneca and many others wrote. others

In the postclassical period, the activities of Christian authors are of particular importance, of which the most famous are Quintus Septimius Florent Tertullian, Sophronius Eusebius Jerome (Saint Jerome, who completed the first Latin translation of the Bible at the end of the 4th century), Decimus Aurelius Augustine (Blessed Augustine).

Medieval Latin literature includes, to a greater extent, religious-philosophical and scientific-journalistic texts, although works of art were also created in Latin. One of the most striking and original manifestations of medieval Latin literature is the so-called lyric poetry of the vagantes (or itinerant students), which reached its peak in the 9th-13th centuries; relying on the traditions of Latin classical poetry (especially Ovid), the vagantes create short poems for the occasion, love and drinking lyrics, and satire.

The Latin alphabet is a kind of Western Greek (assimilated by the Romans, like many other achievements of material and spiritual culture, possibly through the Etruscans); in the oldest versions of the Latin alphabet, the letter G is missing (officially legalized by the end of the 3rd century BC), sounds are designated in the same way u and v, i and j(additional letters v and j appear only in the Renaissance among European humanists; many scholarly editions of classical Latin texts do not use them). The direction of writing from left to right is finally established only by the 4th century. BC. (the direction of writing in more ancient monuments varies). The length of vowels, as a rule, is not indicated (although in some ancient texts, a special “apex” sign in the form of a slash above the letter is used to convey longitude, for example, á).

Linguistically, the Latin language is characterized by many features typical of the most archaic Indo-European languages, including a developed morphological system of declension and conjugation, inflection, and prefix verb word formation.

A feature of the phonetic system of the Latin language is the presence of labiovelar stops k w (spelling qu) and (spelling ngu) and the absence of voiced fricatives (in particular, the voiced pronunciation s for the classical period is not reconstructed); all vowels are characterized by opposition in longitude. In classical Latin, the stress, according to the evidence of ancient grammarians, was musical (raising the tone on a stressed vowel); the place of stress was almost completely determined by the phonological structure of the word. In the preclassical era, there may have been a strong initial stress (this explains many historical changes in the Latin vowel system); in the postclassical era, the stress loses its musical character (and none of the Romance languages ​​retains the musical stress). The Latin language is also characterized by diverse restrictions on the structure of the syllable and rather complex rules for the assimilation of vowels and consonants (for example, long vowels cannot be placed before combinations nt, nd and before m; voiced noisy ones do not occur before deaf noisy ones and at the end of a word; brief i and o also - with single exceptions - does not occur at the end of a word, etc.). Confluences of three or more consonants are avoided (there are few permissible combinations of three consonants, they are possible mainly at the junction of a prefix and a root - for example, pst, tst, nfl, mbr and some etc.).

Morphologically, first of all, the name and the verb are opposed; adjectives and adverbs can be considered as special categories of names. Unlike many new Indo-European languages, Latin adjectives, although inflected for cases, do not have a distinct (compared to nouns) set of case endings; gender agreement is also not characteristic of many adjectives, and often a noun differs from an adjective only in its syntactic function in a sentence (for example, pauper can mean "poor" and "poor", ales- "winged" and "bird", amicus- "friendly" and "friend", etc.).

Names traditionally have five types of declension, which have different sets of case-numerical endings (number and case values ​​are expressed together by the same indicator, cf. lup- us "wolf, im. units", lup- i "wolves, im. pl.", lup- o "wolves, dat. pl."). Five main cases are distinguished: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, depositional (combining the functions of the instrumental, depositional and local; traces of the lost local case are available in separate frozen forms); vocative forms differ from nominative forms only in units. number of masculine nouns. In no type of declension, all five case forms are distinguished (for example, the endings of the nominative and genitive, dative and genitive, dative and deferred cases may coincide; in the plural, the endings of the dative and deferred cases coincide for all nouns; nouns of the middle gender always have the same endings nominative and accusative cases, etc.). This feature of the Latin declension (a large number of declension types with a large number of homonymous endings) played (along with external historical circumstances) an important role in the subsequent restructuring of the Latin case system, which first led to its significant simplification, and then to its complete loss in all modern Romance languages ​​( except for Romanian, which retained a reduced two-case system). Tendencies towards the unification of declension begin to be traced already in classical Latin. As in most archaic Indo-European languages, the masculine, feminine and neuter gender is distinguished (in the Romance languages, the neuter gender is almost completely lost); the relationship between gender and type of declension of a name is not rigid. Names consistently distinguish between singular and plural (there is no dual); there are no indicators of certainty/uncertainty (articles) in Classical Latin, unlike Romance languages.

The Latin verb has a developed inflectional conjugation system, which, however, appears somewhat simplified compared to the more archaic verbal systems of such Indo-European languages ​​as ancient Greek or Sanskrit. The main grammatical opposition within the Latin verbal system should be recognized as opposition according to relative time (or taxis), i.e. an indication of the simultaneity, precedence or following of two situations (the so-called rules of "coordination of times"); this feature brings Latin closer to the modern Romance and Germanic languages. Relative time values ​​are expressed together with absolute time values ​​(distinguish between present, past and future) and aspect (distinguish between continuous and limited form). Thus, simultaneity in the past, like duration, is expressed by the forms of the imperfect; precedence in the past - forms of the pluperfect, limited (single) action in the past - usually forms of the so-called perfect, etc. Oppositions in absolute time are expressed not only in the system of real forms (ie indicative mood), but also in the system of irreal moods: imperative and subjunctive. So, the forms of the imperative mood fall into simple and “deferred” (“do it later, after”); the choice of forms of the subjunctive mood (expressing a condition, wish, possibility, assumption, etc.) is also closely related to the rules of "coordination of tenses" (especially strict in the language of the classical period).

The forms of the Latin verb consistently agree in person/number with the subject; personal endings are different not only in different tenses and moods, but also in different forms of voice: the series of "active" and "passive" personal endings are different. "Passive" endings express not only the passive in the proper sense, but also the reflexive (cf. lavi- tur "washes") and some. etc., therefore they are sometimes (following the ancient Greek) called "medial". A number of verbs have only passive endings (for example, loqui- tur "says"), which thus do not express a pledge value; their traditional name is "deposit".

The order of words in the language of the classical period is considered “free”: this means that the relative position of the members of the sentence does not depend on their syntactic role (subject, object, etc.), but on the degree of importance for the speaker of the information transmitted with their help; usually more important information is reported at the beginning of the sentence, but this rule describes the real situation only in the most general terms. Subordinating constructions are widespread in Latin; both conjunctions in combination with subjunctive forms of the verb in the subordinate clause, and non-finite forms of the verb (participles, infinitives, supines - the latter in the classical language served as the infinitive of the goal with verbs of motion, but in later periods practically out of use). A striking feature of Latin syntax is turnovers ablativus absolutus and accusativus cum infinitivo. In the first case, the subordinating relationship (of broad adverbial semantics, including the meanings of cause, consequence, concomitant circumstance, etc.) is expressed by setting the dependent verb into the participle form, which at the same time agrees with the subject of the dependent sentence in the positive case (ablative); thus, a phrase with the meaning "taking the city, the enemy plundered it" will literally sound like "taken by the city, the enemy plundered it." The second turnover is used with a certain group of verbs that can subordinate clauses with an explanatory meaning; at the same time, the dependent verb takes the form of an infinitive, and its subject becomes a direct object of the main verb (for example, the phrase with the meaning "the king believed that she was dancing" would literally sound like "the king thought she was dancing"). Late classical and medieval Latin is characterized by a significant simplification and standardization of this rich syntactic arsenal.

A significant part of the grammatical elements of the Latin language is Indo-European in origin (personal endings of verbs, case endings of nouns, etc.). There are also many original Indo-European roots in Latin vocabulary (cf. frater"brother", tres"three", Mare"sea", edere "is", etc.); abstract vocabulary and scientific and philosophical terminology contain many Greek borrowings. As part of the vocabulary, a certain number of words of Etruscan origin are also distinguished (the most famous are histrio"actor" and persona"mask") and borrowings from closely related Italian languages ​​(for example, borrowing from the language of the Oscan subgroup is indicated, for example, by the phonetic appearance of the word lupus"wolf": a native Latin word would be expected as * luquus).

Latin or Latin was the language of the Roman Empire, the language of the Roman Catholic service, and today is the language of the Vatican City State in Italy. Since there are no living native speakers of Latin, therefore Latin is used as a second language. Latin spoken: in Vatican city Region: Italian peninsula. Total number of speakers: none. Classification: no classification. Genetic classification: Indo-European family. Official language: Vatican City States. Regulated by: Roman Catholic Church.

History of the Latin language

Initially, Latin was spoken in the area located

next to Rome, called Latium. It gained importance by becoming the official language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages ​​originated from Latin, and many words with Latin roots can be found in many modern languages, for example, in Russian, English, German, French.

It is said that 80% of scientific words in English are taken from Latin (in most cases via French). Moreover, in Western countries, Latin has been a scientific language (lingua franca) used for scientific and political purposes for more than a thousand years. As a result, in the 18th century Latin was replaced by French, and in the 19th century by English. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, making it the official state language of the Vatican. The Roman Catholic Church used Latin as its primary language for services until the Second Council of the Vatican, which took place in the 1960s. Latin is still used (with the active participation of Greek roots) as a language for classifying the scientific names of living organisms.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin gave rise to various Romance languages. For centuries, these languages ​​were considered only spoken, while Latin was written. (For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296, when it was replaced by Portuguese.)
The Romance languages ​​arose from vernacular (Vulgar) Latin, which was used everywhere, and which was formed from the old colloquial speech that gave rise to the official classical Latin. Latin and Romance languages ​​differ, for example, in that in Romance languages ​​the emphasis on a certain syllable is significant, while in Latin the length of vowels is characteristic. For Italian, the characteristic feature is the length of the consonants and stress, in Spanish - only the stress, and in French, even the stress is fixed.

Another important distinguishing feature in Romance and Latin is, with the exception of Romanian, that the Romance languages ​​have lost case endings in most words except for some pronouns. The Romanian language still retains five cases (although there is no longer an ablative case).

Latin today

Latin language courses offered today in universities and colleges are mainly aimed at teaching the translation of Latin texts into modern languages, and not at using it as a means of communication. Therefore, the emphasis is on the ability to read well, while speaking and listening are only superficially affected. However, there is a living Latin movement that believes that Latin can or should be taught along the same lines as modern "living" languages: that is, learning to speak and write. One of the interesting points of this approach is the theoretical idea of ​​how certain sounds were pronounced in ancient times. Without understanding what the pronunciation should be, it is difficult to determine the styles that are commonly used in Latin poetry. Institutions that offer living Latin guides are the Vatican and the University of Kentucky.

Latin dialects

As a living language, Latin has undergone continuous evolution and has been open to the influence of other languages. First of all, this statement was true for colloquial speech, which was used by the illiterate population, which already in ancient times borrowed many terms from Greek, Celtic, and later from Germanic languages. It was a language called sermo vulgaris that spread throughout all the Romanized parts of Western Europe, such as Gaul, where it apparently co-existed with other languages ​​(Celtic). The Celtic language probably disappeared from northern Gaul by the fifth century, and was later re-imported here by people who fled to the Continent from the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who came to conquer the British Isles. In the regions of the North-Eastern part of the Empire, which were less Romanized, as well as outside the borders of the Roman Empire, Germanic languages ​​were spoken. These were such languages ​​as Frisian, Saxon, as well as West Germanic languages ​​and dialects.

Germanic languages ​​(Gothic)

During the migrations, the languages ​​of the invading tribes brought strong linguistic changes to the territory of the late Roman Empire. Gothic, the language of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, was especially widespread. The Gothic bishop Vulfilas (or Ulfilas, 311-382) was responsible for preparing the translation of the Bible into Gothic, which remained in circulation among the Aryan Christians, who were considered heretics by the Roman Church. This Bible was used for several centuries, mainly in Visigothic Spain. As a spoken language, Gothic disappeared between the seventh and ninth centuries, but the translation of the Wulfilas Bible (Gothic Bible) still remains the first major document of Germanic literature.

Dialects in Gaul

In Gaul, Latin sermo vulgaris combined elements from several languages ​​and became known as Romance Latin. It is so firmly rooted that the militant Germanic tribes adopted it as their own. The proof of this is the fact that since the sixth century the sermons read in the ecclesiastical councils of France were translated into this language. By the eighth century, Charlemagne ordered sermons to be read in the vernacular, while the rest of the service was to be held in Latin. However, even in Gaul the same language used in different areas was not uniform. Along with individual languages, there were various dialects, the main one being Provencal. In general terms, starting from the early Middle Ages, in the territories conditionally divided by the Loire River, two groups of dialects arose. In the south, Languedoc (langue d'oc), which had more similarities with Latin, and Languedoil (langue d'oil) in the north, which was heavily influenced by other languages. The terms for the two groups of dialects indicate the manner in which the word "yes" is pronounced in each group.

Dialects of Western Europe

A similar development took place in the German-speaking areas of Western Europe between about 500-700 AD. AD in the north. Here a group of dialects emerged which are collectively known as the Low German languages, while the southern dialects are respectively called High German. As in France, after a long time the dominant influence of one group over another began, in the fourteenth century in France and in the sixteenth in Germany.

The evolution of ancient writing

Ancient literature and science, as well as various Christian texts, have been preserved in the form of manuscripts (i.e. manuscripts). The style of the fonts was according to the traditions of Roman writing, or the forms of writing that arose later. However, beginning in the seventh century, more rigorous "national" writing techniques began to develop in various parts of Europe. The so-called "Insular script" used in Ireland and Scotland from the seventh century onwards differed considerably from the Visigothic script common in Spain and the Beneventan script common in southern Italy. In the territories of the Frankish state, the Merovingian types of type that were used in the seventh and eighth centuries were replaced during the reign of Charlemagne with a new type, partly influenced by the Romanesque style of writing known as the Carolingian minuscule. Fine manuscripts were often embellished with illustrations called miniatures or elaborate ornamental lettering, such as the Lindisfarne Gospel of 698 and the Kell Book of the mid-8th century.

Importantlatinthe words

Months

January: Ianus (ancient Roman god)
February: Februaris (Ancient Roman feast of purification)
March: Mars (ancient Roman god)
April: Aprilis (opening, beginning of the season)
May: Maia (ancient Roman goddess)
June: Iuno (ancient Roman goddess)
July: Iulius Caesar (Roman Emperor)
August: Augustus (Roman emperor)
September: September: 7th month
October: October: 8th month
November: November: 9th month
December: December: 10th month

Days of the week

Sunday: Solis dies (sun day)
Monday: Lunae dies (day of the moon)
Tuesday: Martis dies (Mars day)
Wednesday: Mercurii dies (Mercury day)
Thursday: Jovis dies (Jupiter day)
Friday: Veneris dies (Venus day)
Saturday: Saturni dies (Saturn day)

Colors

Albi/Albus: white
Aurei/Aurantiacus: orange
carnei: flesh color
Flavi: yellow
Fulvus: bright yellow
Lutei Niger/Nigra: black
Purpurei: purple
Rosei/Roseu: pink
Rubra/Rubri: red
Viride/Viridi: green

Family

filiam: daughter
filium: son
mater: mother
materfamilias: (female) head of the family
nepos: grandson. Also means "nephew" in some records.
neptis: granddaughter. Also means "niece" in some records.
uxor (ux, vx): wife

Listen to Latin speech (subtitles in English):

And one more thing: Christian prayer "Symbol of Faith" in Latin:

Prayer Pater noster in latin

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo.

Circulus Latinus Panormitanus is one of the best sites for modern Latin.

Latin: catch phrases, aphorisms and expressions - an authoritative collection of aphorisms, catch phrases and sayings in Latin.

Latin, or Latin, is one of the oldest written Indo-European languages. It appeared among the peoples of ancient Italy around the second millennium BC, displaced other languages ​​spoken by the Italians, and became the main one in the western Mediterranean. The language reached its greatest flourishing in the first century BC, the development of the so-called classical Latin - the literary language in which Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Ovid wrote. Latin improved simultaneously with the development of Rome and its formation as the largest state in the Mediterranean.

Further, this language survived the periods of postclassic and late Latin, in which similarities with the new Romance languages ​​were already outlined. In the 4th century, medieval Latin was formed, which was significantly influenced by Christianity. The Bible was translated into Latin, and since then it has become a sacred language. All theological works were written on it. Renaissance figures also used Latin for their works: Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch, Boccaccio wrote in it.

Latin is a dead language

Gradually, the Latin language disappeared from the speech of people, in the Middle Ages, local dialects were used more and more often as an oral language, but Latin lived in religious texts, scientific treatises, biographies and other works. The rules for pronunciation of sounds were forgotten, the grammar changed a little, but the Latin language lived on.

It can be officially called a dead language since the 6th century, after the fall of the Roman Empire, when barbarian states began to flourish and Latin gradually fell out of everyday use. Linguists call a dead language a language that does not exist in everyday life, is not used in live oral communication, but exists in the form of written monuments. If there is not a single person who speaks like a native, then the language is considered dead.

But Latin is a special dead language, which can be called such with a stretch. The fact is that it is still actively used in many areas of life. Latin is widely used in medicine and biology, as well as in other sciences, but even in everyday life people still use some in Latin.

In addition, the Latin language is actively used by the Catholic Church, it is the language of the Vatican, the Holy See and the Order of Malta.

It is quite difficult to learn how to read Latin, simply because it is an extinct language that is now used in a scientific environment, encyclopedias. However, students of language specialties must also master it at a good level. But even if you do not belong to the circle of scientists or students, you also have every chance of learning to read Latin.

You will need

• - a computer;
• - the Internet;
• - teacher.

Instruction

Start by learning the basics of the Latin language, namely the alphabet and phonetic rules. Go to http://latinista.tk/doca/phonetica.htm. You will be presented with all the features of reading vowels and consonants, as well as various exceptions that should also be taken into account. Read everything carefully and make notes in your workbook so that understanding comes faster.

Start mastering the lexical structure of the Latin language in the same way. Remember that this language has not been used in everyday communication for more than 1 thousand years and contains only such words as “sailor”, “fields”, “oceans”, “senator”, etc. In it you will not find modern expressions like “how are you?” etc. Click on the link http://latinista.tk/vocabularium.htm. You will see a small list of basic words that you can read and memorize the meanings if you need them. Go through each, following the rules of phonetics that you have already learned. For example, the word ratio is po-, like "ratio".

Learn the rules for pronunciation of vowels and consonants, diphthongs, digraphs and other letter combinations. Do some exercises on declension of nouns, repeat the degrees of comparison of adjectives, etc. To make it easier for you to remember grammar rules, draw an analogy with the Russian language. For example, in Latin there are five cases, in - six, nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), two numbers (singular and plural), as in Russian, etc.

The development of the society of new states led to the gradual emergence of new translations of the Bible into other languages. The era of navigation, which allowed previously unknown countries, made it possible for the development of the missionary movement. This, in turn, required new efforts to translate the Holy Scriptures into those languages ​​spoken by the inhabitants of distant territories. A special impetus in this direction was the development of printing. The first printed Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, appeared in 1456. Since then, copies of the Holy Scriptures, translated into different languages ​​​​of the peoples of the world, began to appear with an increasing progression. At the moment, the Bible, in whole or in part, is available for reading by 90% of the world's population.

ISO 639-1 : ISO 639-2: ISO 639-3: See also: Project:Linguistics

Latin language(self-name - lingua Latina), or Latin, is the language of the Latino-Faliscan branch of the Italic languages ​​of the Indo-European language family. To date, it is the only actively used Italian language (it is a dead language).

Latin is one of the most ancient written Indo-European languages.

The largest representative of the archaic period in the field of literary language is the ancient Roman comedian Plautus (c. -184 BC), from whom 20 comedies in their entirety and one in fragments have come down to our time. However, it should be noted that the vocabulary of Plautus' comedies and the phonetic structure of his language are already largely approaching the norms of classical Latin of the 1st century BC. e. - the beginning of the 1st century A.D. e.

Classical Latin

Classical Latin refers to the literary language that reached its greatest expressiveness and syntactic harmony in the prose writings of Cicero (-43 BC) and Caesar (-44 BC) and in the poetic works of Virgil (-19 BC). ), Horace (-8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD).

The period of formation and flowering of the classical Latin language was associated with the transformation of Rome into the largest slave-owning state in the Mediterranean, subjugating vast territories in western and southeastern Europe, in northern Africa and Asia Minor. In the eastern provinces of the Roman state (in Greece, Asia Minor and on the northern coast of Africa), where by the time they were conquered by the Romans the Greek language and highly developed Greek culture were widespread, the Latin language was not widely used. The situation was different in the western Mediterranean.

By the end of the 2nd century BC. e. the Latin language dominates not only throughout Italy, but also, as the official state language, penetrates into the regions of the Iberian Peninsula conquered by the Romans and present-day southern France. Through Roman soldiers and traders, the Latin language in its colloquial form finds access to the masses of the local population, being one of the most effective means of Romanization of the conquered territories. At the same time, the closest neighbors of the Romans are most actively Romanized - the Celtic tribes who lived in Gaul (the territory of present-day France, Belgium, partly the Netherlands and Switzerland). The conquest of Gaul by the Romans began in the second half of the 2nd century BC. e. and was completed at the very end of the 50s of the 1st century BC. e. as a result of prolonged hostilities under the command of Julius Caesar (Gallic wars 58-51 BC). At the same time, the Roman troops come into close contact with the Germanic tribes who lived in vast areas east of the Rhine. Caesar also makes two trips to Britain, but these short-term expeditions (in and 54 BC) did not have serious consequences for relations between the Romans and the British (Celts). Only 100 years later, in 43 AD. e. , Britain was conquered by Roman troops, who stayed there until 407 AD. e. Thus, for about five centuries, until the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. e. , the tribes that inhabited Gaul and Britain, as well as the Germans, experience the strongest influence of the Latin language.

Postclassical Latin

It is customary to distinguish from classical Latin the language of Roman fiction, the so-called. postclassical (postclassical, late antique) period, chronologically coinciding with the first two centuries of our chronology (the so-called era of the early empire). Indeed, the language of prose writers and poets of this time (Seneca, Tacitus, Juvenal, Martial, Apuleius) is distinguished by a significant originality in the choice of stylistic means; but since the norms of the grammatical structure of the Latin language developed over the previous centuries are not violated, the indicated division of the Latin language into classical and postclassical has a literary rather than linguistic significance.

Late Latin

As a separate period in the history of the Latin language, the so-called. late Latin, the chronological boundaries of which are the III-VI centuries - the era of the late empire and the emergence, after its fall, of barbarian states. In the works of writers of that time - mainly historians and Christian theologians - many morphological and syntactic phenomena already find a place, preparing the transition to new Romance languages.

Medieval Latin

Medieval or Christianized Latin is primarily liturgical (liturgical) texts - hymns, hymns, prayers. At the end of the 4th century, Saint Jerome translated the entire Bible into Latin. This translation, known as the Vulgate (that is, the People's Bible), was recognized as equivalent to the original at the Catholic Council of Trent in the 16th century. Since then, Latin, along with Hebrew and Ancient Greek, has been considered one of the sacred languages ​​of the Bible. The Renaissance left us a huge amount of scientific works in Latin. These are medical treatises by physicians of the Italian school of the 16th century: “On the Structure of the Human Body” by Andreas Vesalius (), “Anatomical Observations” by Gabriel Fallopius (), “Anatomical Works” by Bartholomew Eustachio (), “On Contagious Diseases and Their Treatment” by Girolamo Fracastoro () other. In Latin, the teacher Jan Amos Comenius () created his book “The World of Sensual Things in Pictures” (“ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS. Omnium rerum pictura et nomenclatura”), in which the whole world is described with illustrations, from inanimate nature to the structure of society. Many generations of children from different countries of the world have learned from this book. Its latest Russian edition was published in Moscow, in the city of

Stylistic features of liturgical Latin

Pronunciation and spelling

Consonants

		labial	labiodental	dental	palatine	posterior palatine		Throat
						simple	round- fief
explosive	voiced	B /b/		D /d/		G /ɡ/
	deaf	P /p/		T /t/		C or K /k/ 1	QV /kʷ/
fricatives	voiced			Z /z/²
	deaf		F /f/	S /s/				H /h/
nasal		M /m/		N /n/		G/N [ŋ] ³
rhotic				R /r/ 4
approximants (semivowels)				L /l/ 5	I /j/ 6		V /w/ 6

1. In early Latin, the letter K was regularly written before A, but only survived in classical times in a very limited set of words.
2. /z/ is an "import phoneme" in Classical Latin; the letter Z was used in Greek borrowings in place of zeta (Ζζ), which is supposed to have stood for the sound [z] by the time of its inclusion in the Latin alphabet. Between vowels, this sound could be doubled, i.e.. Some believe that Z could stand for the affricate /dz/, but there is no reliable evidence for this.
3. Before velar consonants, /n/ assimilated at the place of articulation into [ŋ], as in the word quinque["kʷiŋkʷe] . In addition, G denoted a velar nasal sound [ŋ] before N ( agnus: ["aŋnus] ).
4. The Latin R denoted either an alveolar quaver [r], like Spanish RR, or an alveolar flap [ɾ], like Spanish R not at the beginning of a word.
5. It is assumed that the phoneme /l/ had two allophones (much like in English). According to Allen (Chapter 1, Section v), it was a velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ] as in English full at the end of a word or before another consonant; other times it was an alveolar lateral approximant [l], as in English look.
6. V and I could represent both vowel and semivowel phonemes (/ī/ /i/ /j/ /ū/ /u/ /w/ ).

PH , TH , and CH were used in Greek borrowings in place of phi (Φφ /pʰ/ ), theta (Θθ /tʰ/ ) and chi (Χχ /kʰ/ ) respectively. There were no aspirated consonants in Latin, so these digraphs were most often read as P (later F), T, and C/K (with the exception of the most educated people who were well acquainted with Greek).

The letter X denoted a combination of consonants /ks/.

Doubled consonants were denoted by doubled letters (BB /bː/, CC /kː/ etc.). In Latin, the length of sounds had a semantic difference, for example anus/ˈanus/ (old woman) or anus/ˈaːnus/ (ring, anus) or annus/ˈanːus/ (year). In early Latin, double consonants were written as single; in the 2nd century BC. e. they began to be denoted in books (but not in inscriptions) with a sickle-shaped diacritic known as "sicilius" (apparently like ň ). Later they began to write the double consonants familiar to us.

(1) The phoneme /j/ occurs at the beginning of words before a vowel or in the middle of words between vowels; in the second case, it is doubled in pronunciation (but not in writing): ius/juːs/ , cuius/ˈkujjus/ . Since such a doubled consonant makes the preceding syllable long, the macron marks the preceding vowel as long in dictionaries, although in reality this vowel is usually short. Prefixed words and compound words keep /j/ at the beginning of the second word element:: adiectum/adjekˈtiːwum/ .

(2) Apparently, by the end of the classical period, /m/ at the end of words was pronounced weakly, either dull, or only in the form of nasalization and lengthening of the preceding vowel. For example, decem("10") was to be pronounced [ˈdekẽː]. This hypothesis is supported not only by the rhythms of Latin poetry, but also by the fact that in all Romance languages ​​the final M was lost. For simplification, and also in view of the incomplete proof of this hypothesis, M is usually considered to always represent the phoneme /m/ .

Vowels

	front row		middle row		back row
	long	brief	long	brief	long	brief
high rise	I /iː/	I /ɪ/			V /uː/	V /ʊ/
medium rise	E /eː/	E /ɛ/			O /oː/	O /ɔ/
low rise			A /aː/	A /a/

• Each vowel (with the possible exception of Y) represents at least two different phonemes: a long vowel and a short vowel. A can be either short /a/ or long /aː/ ; E can stand for either /ɛ/ or /eː/ etc.

• Y was used in Greek borrowings in place of the letter upsilon (Υυ /ʏ/ ). Latin originally did not have rounded front vowels, so if a Roman could not pronounce this Greek sound, then he would read upsilon as /ʊ/ (in archaic Latin) or as /ɪ/ (in classical and late Latin).

• AE , OE , AV, EI, EV were diphthongs: AE = /aɪ/ , OE = /ɔɪ/ , AV = /aʊ/ , EI = /eɪ/ and EV = /ɛʊ/ . AE and OE became monophthongs /ɛː/ and /eː/ in the post-republic period, respectively.

Other notes on spelling

• The letters C and K both stand for /k/ . In archaic inscriptions, C is usually used before I and E, while K is used before A. However, in classical times, the use of K was limited to a very small list of native Latin words; in Greek borrowings, kappa (Κκ) is always rendered by the letter C. The letter Q makes it possible to distinguish between minimal pairs with /k/ and /kʷ/ , for example cui/kui̯/ and qui/kʷiː/.

• In early Latin, C stood for two different phonemes: /k/ and /g/ . Later, a separate letter G was introduced, but the spelling C was preserved in abbreviations of a number of ancient Roman names, for example Gaius(Guy) was abbreviated C., a Gnaeus(Angry) like Cn.

• The semivowel /j/ was regularly doubled between vowels, but this was not shown in writing. Before the vowel I, the semivowel I was not written at all, for example /ˈrejjikit/ ‘thrown back’ was more often written reicit, but not reiicit.

Longitude of vowels and consonants

In Latin, the length of vowels and consonants had a semantic difference. The length of consonants was indicated by their doubling, but long and short vowels were not distinguished in standard writing.

Nevertheless, there were attempts to introduce a distinction for vowels as well. Sometimes long vowels were denoted by doubled letters (this system is associated with the ancient Roman poet Actius ( Accius)); there was also a way to mark long vowels with an "apex" - a diacritical mark similar to an acute accent (the letter I in this case simply increased in height).

In modern editions, if it is necessary to indicate the length of vowels, a macron is placed above long vowels ( ā, ē, ī, ō, ū ), and above short ones - breve ( ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ ).

Morphology

Latin, like Russian, is predominantly synthetic. This means that grammatical categories are expressed by inflection (declension, conjugation), and not by function words.

declination

There are 6 cases in Latin:

Three genders, as in Russian:

• Male (genus masculinum)
• Female (genus femininum)
• Medium (genus neutrum)

Divided into 5 declensions.

Conjugation

Latin verbs have 6 tenses, 3 moods, 2 voices, 2 numbers and 3 persons.

Latin verb tenses:

• Present tense (praesens)
• Past tense imperfective (imperfectum)
• Past perfect tense (perfectum)
• Plusquamperfect, or prepast (plusquamperfectum)
• Future tense, or future first (futurum primum)
• Pre-future tense, or future second (futurum secundum)

• First (persona prima)
• Second (persona secunda)
• Third (persona tertia)

Parts of speech

Latin has nouns ( lat. nomen substantive), numerals and pronouns declined by cases, persons, numbers and genders; adjectives, except for the listed ones, changeable according to degrees of comparison; verbs conjugated by tenses and pledges; supin - verbal noun; adverbs and prepositions.

Syntax

As in Russian, a simple sentence most often consists of a subject and a predicate, and the subject is in the nominative case. The pronoun as a subject is used extremely rarely, since usually it is already enclosed in the personal form of the predicate. The predicate can be expressed by a verb, a nominal part of speech, or a nominal part of speech with an auxiliary verb.

Due to the synthetic structure of the Latin language and, as a result, a rich system of declensions and conjugations, the word order in a sentence is not critical. However, as a rule, the subject is placed at the beginning of the sentence, the predicate at the end, the direct object before the control verb, that is, the predicate.

When constructing sentences, the following turns are used:

Accusativus cum infinitivo(accusative with indefinite) - used with verbs of speech, thought, sensory perception, expression of will and some other cases and is translated as a subordinate clause, where the accusative part becomes the subject, and the infinitive becomes the predicate in a consistent form with the subject.

Nominativus cum infinitivo(nominative with indefinite) - has the same structure as the previous turn, but with a predicate in the passive voice. When translating, the predicate is transmitted in the active form of the 3rd person plural with an indefinitely personal meaning, and the turnover itself is a subordinate clause.

Subordinate clauses with union cum historicum, as a rule, are subordinate clauses of time, translated with the union "when".

see also

• Latin Grammar

Popular borrowings

• Nota Bene

Notes

Literature

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• Tronsky I.M. Historical grammar of the Latin language. - M., 1960 (2nd ed.: M., 2001).
• Yarkho V. N., Loboda V. I., Katsman N. L. Latin language. - M .: Higher School, 1994.
• Dvoretsky I. Kh. Latin-Russian dictionary. - M., 1976.
• Podosinov A. V., Belov A. M. Russian-Latin Dictionary. - M., 2000.
• Belov A. M. Ars Grammar. A book about the Latin language. - 2nd ed. - M .: GLC Yu. A. Shichalina, 2007.
• Lyublinskaya A. D. Latin paleography. - M.: Higher school, 1969. - 192 p. + 40 s. ill.
• Belov A. M. Latin accent. - M .: Academia, 2009.
• A short dictionary of Latin words, abbreviations and expressions. - Novosibirsk, 1975.
• Miroshenkova V. I., Fedorov N. A. Latin textbook. - 2nd ed. - M., 1985.
• Podosinov A. V., Shchaveleva N. I. Introduction to the Latin language and ancient culture. - M., 1994-1995.
• Nisenbaum M. E. Latin language. - Eksmo, 2008.
• Kozlova G. G. Latin self-instruction manual. - Flinta Science, 2007.
• Chernyavsky M.N. Latin language and basics of pharmaceutical terminology. - Medicine, 2007.
• Baudouin de Courtenay I. A. From lectures on Latin phonetics. - M.: LIBROKOM, 2012. - 472 p.

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