Learning Latin – An Ancient Language

learning latin

Latin is an ancient language that is officially adopted in only one country: Vatican. It has no native speakers. However, most of western countries had influence of this language due to the Roman Empire. So, by learning Latin you’ll be able to understand many other languages, not only Latin derived languages like Spanish, French or Portuguese, but you’ll also be surprised to know how many words from Latin exist in English, German and other.

By the late Roman Republic literate persons mainly at Rome had created a standard form from the spoken language of the educated and empowered now called Classical Latin, then called simply Latin or Latinity. With the Roman conquest, Latin spread to countries around the Mediterranean, and the vernacular dialects spoken in these areas developed into the Romance languages, including Aragonese, Catalan, Corsican, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, and Spanish. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders, seven noun cases, four verb conjugations, six tenses, six persons, three moods, two voices, two aspects and two numbers. Adjectives and adverbs are compared, and adjectives are inflected for case, gender, and number. Later Romance language articles developed from the demonstrative pronouns, example : le and la from ille and illa. Romance languages were created by simplification of this inflectional complexity in various ways, example: uninflected Italian oggi (“today”) from the Latin ablative case, hoc die.

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