Latin

From Metapedia

Latin (Latīna, pronounced [latiːna]) is an ancient Indo-European language that was the language of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The conquests of the Roman Empire spread the Latin language all around the Mediterranean and the large part of Europe in both its forms: the poet's Classical and the people's Vulgar. After the Roman Empire fell and the Roman Catholic Church rose, Latin became used universally as the sole language of the Church and as the sole universal language of the educated European.

After living and developing over the course of at least 2,200 years, Latin began its slow death around the 1600s. By the 1500s, it was hardly modified; by the 1700s, it was hardly spoken; and in the 2000s, it is hardly remembered except by scholars. But Vulgar Latin never died: rather, after the fall of the Roman Empire it split into several regional dialects, which by the 800s had become the ancestors of today's Romance languages. In addition, English derives 60% of its words from Latin: largely indirectly through French, but partly through direct borrowings made especially during the 1600s in England.

In addition to the Romance languages, Latin lives on, much less changed though much less spoken, in the form of the Ecclesiastical Latin spoken in the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Latin is a source of vocabulary for science, academia, and law. Classical Latin, the literary language of the late Republic and early Empire, is still taught in many primary, grammar, and secondary schools throughout the world, often combined with Greek in the study of Classics, but its role has diminished since the early 20th century. And the Latin alphabet remains the most widely used in the world.