Latin

Latin

Spoken by:	extinct
Spoken in:	the Vatican City
Language family:	italic

Latin, called and spelled lingua Latina or lingua latina (pronounced LING-gwa la-TEE-na) in Latin, is an ancient language spoken by the ancient Roman people from the Roman Empire (Imperium Latinum), and also a culturally important language. It is useful in the study of classics.

There are three common forms of Latin learned and studied today.

Classical is the most common, it is the version used in education, examinations and in the subject "Classics"; it is reconstructed from Roman literature. Second is ecclesiastical Latin which is the Latin used in Catholic liturgy and spoken in the Vatican; it is grammatically classical but has significantly different phonology. Vulgate Latin is used exclusively to understand the Vulgate Bible and other pre-medieval historical sources.

Phonology

Vocals

Reconstructed Classical Latin has six vowels: a, e, i, o, u, and y. A is pronounced like the a in "alot", e like the e in "entity", i like the i in "in", o like the o in "oracle", u like the u-sound in "boot", and y is difficult to explain in English because English doesn't have any equivalent. Even many other languages do not have this sound. Y lies near the sound of Latin i, like in Modern Greek poly (meaning "very"), and Swedish sy (meaning "to sew").

Consonants

Reconstructed Classical Latin has these consonants with the following pronounciation, similar to the pronounciation of the English consonants. Shown in alpabetical order:

• b - Like the b-sound in "be".
• c - Like the k-sound in "can".
• d - Like the d-sound in "day".
• f - Like the f-sound in "friend".
• g - Like the g-sound in "go".
• h - Like the h-sound in "here".
• k - This letter has the same pronounciation as Latin c.
• l - Like the l-sound in "life".
• m - Like the l-sound in "many".
• n - Like the n-sound in "no".
• p - Like the p-sound in "place".
• q - q is only used in combination with u as qu, and is then always followed by another vocal so it becomes qua, que, qui, quo, or quu. Example of Latin words: aqua, "water", consequentia, "consequens", quintus, "fifth".
• r - a thrilling r.
• s - like the s-sound in "send".
• t - like the t-sound in "tell".
• v - The ancient Latin letter for the Latin u-sound and the Latin w/v-sound had the same symbol: V. It is believed that Latin had w-sound instead of v-sound because of weak evidence we have found. But it's not certain, because a w-sound does not match the other Latin sounds, and make Latin sound strange. So logically, it could be v-sound instead. For the Latin u-sound it's like in English "boot", and for the v-sound it's like in English "victory", and for the w-sound it's like in English "wind".
• x - The x-sound is a combination of a k-sound and an s-sound, sounding like ks, like in the English "hexagon".
• z - The z-sound was probably like ts, like in the English "the monkey hits the ground".

Grammar

Morphology

Latin is a language that is very inflection rich and will take alot of time to lean properly.

Nouns

Five declensions.

Verbs

Four conjugations.

Common difficulties

• Speaking extinct languages requires more direction than living ones.
• Many inflections.

Resources

• Latin @ en.wikipedia.org
• The Latin Library
• The Latin Wikipedia, called Vicipaedia Latina
• Latin @ wikibooks
• Latinium - Latin learning pod-cast
• Online Dictionary
• Latin Online @ The university of Texas
• Latin the easy way
• Google in latin
• Ephemeris radio
• Latin poetry pod-cast
• Latin audio and video
• Perseus latin-English texts
• Latin @ Textkit.com
• YLE Radio1's Nuntii Latini
• Latin audio @ SORGLL
• Wilfried Stroh Reads in Latin Virgil's The Aeneid, Book IV
• Radio Bremen's Nuntii Latini
• Beginner's Latin lessons
• Advanced Latin lessons
• Rosetta Stone offers a course in Latin which utilizes the restored classical pronunciation