Latin

Overview

Latin is an Indo-European language of the Italic branch, originally spoken in Latium (the region of Rome, in central Italy). Carried by the expansion of Rome, it became the administrative, legal, literary, and liturgical language of an empire stretching from Britain to the Near East. It produced an immense body of literature (Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Tacitus, Seneca) and remains the official language of the Roman Catholic Church and of scientific nomenclature. Popular spoken Latin (Vulgar Latin) evolved to give rise to the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, etc.). Latin is one of the best-documented and most-studied ancient languages in the world: its grammar, phonology, and lexicon are extremely well known, and it never needed to be "deciphered" in the sense of lost scripts, since the tradition of its teaching has been uninterrupted since antiquity.

History of the people

The Latins were an Italic people settled in Latium as early as the 2nd millennium BC, organized into city-states including Rome, founded according to tradition in 753 BC. Rome moved from monarchy to Republic (traditionally 509 BC), then to Empire (27 BC, Augustus). Through conquest and alliance, Rome unified Italy and then dominated the Mediterranean basin (the Punic Wars against Carthage, the conquest of Greece, of Gaul by Caesar, of Egypt, etc.). The Roman Empire reached its territorial apogee in the 2nd century AD. Romanization spread the Latin language, law, and culture through the western provinces, while the East remained Greek-speaking. The partition of the Empire (395), the Germanic migrations, and the fall of the Western Empire (476) did not cause Latin to disappear: the Church, the administration, and the successor kingdoms perpetuated it. The Roman legacy—law, language, alphabet, institutions—durably structured Europe and, through the Romance languages and learned vocabulary, much of the wider world.

History of the language

Latin descends from Proto-Italic, itself derived from Common Indo-European. Several stages are distinguished: Archaic Latin (up to the 2nd century BC: inscriptions such as the Praeneste Fibula and the Forum cippus/Lapis Niger; the comedies of Plautus and Terence); Classical Latin (1st century BC–1st century AD: the Golden Age, with Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, then the Silver Age, with Seneca and Tacitus); post-Classical and Late Latin (2nd–6th centuries). Alongside it existed Vulgar Latin, the popular spoken register, whose divergent evolution produced the Romance languages. From the 9th century onward, Latin ceased to be a mother tongue (the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842 already attest Romance) and became a learned language: a scholarly, legal, diplomatic, and liturgical tongue. Medieval Latin, then the Humanist Latin of the Renaissance (a return to the Ciceronian model), Scientific Latin (Newton, Linnaeus), and Ecclesiastical Latin (the official language of the Vatican, still today) prolonged its written use. Latin is thus a "dead" language in the sense of a language without native speakers for more than a millennium, yet uninterrupted as a language of culture.

The script

Latin is written with the Latin alphabet, derived from the Etruscan alphabet, itself descended from a western variant of the Greek alphabet (via Cumae), ultimately going back to the Phoenician alphabet. Writing runs from left to right (after an archaic period in which boustrophedon and right-to-left writing existed). The archaic Latin alphabet had 21 letters. C served for both /k/ and /g/; the letter G (a differentiated C marked by a stroke) was introduced in the 3rd century BC, its introduction into teaching being traditionally attributed (according to Plutarch) to Spurius Carvilius Ruga. The letters Y and Z were added at the end of the Republic to transcribe Greek loanwords, placed at the end of the alphabet. The classical alphabet therefore comprises 23 letters. There were no lowercase letters in antiquity: monumental writing employed capitals (capitalis monumentalis/quadrata), everyday writing used cursives. Present-day lowercase letters derive from the Carolingian minuscule (8th–9th centuries). The letters J, U, and W are medieval and modern differentiations: J = consonantal I, U/V = the vowel/consonant distinction, W = the Germanic double V. In classical inscriptions, words could be separated by mid-dots (interpuncts), but scriptio continua (without separation) was common in manuscripts. There were numerous standardized epigraphic abbreviations.

Sign system

A purely alphabetic system (one sign = one phoneme, approximately), unlike logo-syllabaries. The classical alphabet of 23 letters: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z. Peculiarities of value: C = always /k/ (never /s/ in classical Latin); K rare (chiefly before A, e.g. Kalendae); Q appears only in the digraph QV /kw/; X = /ks/; I denotes the vowel /i/, /iː/ AND the semi-consonant /j/; V denotes the vowel /u/, /uː/ AND the semi-consonant /w/; H = the aspiration /h/ (lost in Vulgar Latin); Y = /y/ (as in French u) in Greek words; Z = /dz/ or /zz/ in Greek words. Digraphs representing sounds: PH /pʰ/, TH /tʰ/, CH /kʰ/ (the Greek aspirates), QV /kw/, GV /gw/ (after n, e.g. sanguis). Written diphthongs: AE, OE, AV, EV, VI. Vowel quantity (short vs. long), which is phonemic, was normally not marked; modern editions add the macron (ā ē ī ō ū) and sometimes the breve for teaching. The apex (an acute accent above) sometimes marked long vowels in certain inscriptions.

Phonology

Consonants: voiceless stops p t k (c/q), voiced b d g; nasals m n (+ [ŋ] before velars); liquids l r (rolled r); fricatives f s (s always voiceless), h; semivowels j (i) and w (v/u). Aspirates borrowed from Greek: ph th ch. Vowels: five qualities a e i o u, each short or long, quantity being PHONEMIC (contrasting in meaning: short liber = book / long liber = free; malus = bad/apple-tree depending on quantity). Classical diphthongs: ae [ai̯], oe [oi̯], au [au̯], plus rare eu, ui. Word stress governed by the penultimate law: on the second-to-last syllable if it is long (long vowel or closed syllable), otherwise on the antepenult; two-syllable words are stressed on the first. Syllable quantity governs quantitative meter (the dactylic hexameter, etc.), based on the alternation of long and short syllables, not on stress. Evolutions toward Vulgar Latin: loss of phonemic quantity in favor of quality oppositions, loss of /h/, monophthongization of ae > e, palatalization of c/g before front vowels (yielding the /tʃ/, /s/ of the Romance languages). Reconstruction supported by the ancient grammarians (Quintilian, etc.), Greek transcriptions, scribal errors, and Romance comparison.

Grammar — essentials

An inflectional language with relatively free word order: function is marked by the ending, not by position. NOUNS: 3 genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), 2 numbers, 6 cases: nominative (subject), vocative (address), accusative (direct object, goal of motion), genitive (noun complement, possession), dative (indirect object, attribution), ablative (means, place, time, separation, often with a preposition). 5 declensions according to the stem (1st in -a, feminine; 2nd in -us/-um; 3rd consonant-stem/in -i; 4th in -us; 5th in -es). ADJECTIVES and participles agree in case, gender, and number with their noun; comparative in -ior, superlative in -issimus. VERB: highly developed. 4 conjugations (-āre, long -ēre, short -ere, -īre). Categories: person (1-2-3), number (sg/pl), voice (active/passive; deponents = passive form, active meaning), mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), tense (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, future perfect). Nominal forms: infinitive, participle (present, perfect passive, future), gerund, gerundive (verbal adjective), supine. The system of the infectum (present stem) vs. the perfectum (perfect stem). Characteristic constructions: the infinitive clause (accusative + infinitive) for indirect discourse; the ablative absolute (participle + noun in the ablative) expressing circumstance; the sequence of tenses (consecutio temporum) in the subjunctive within subordinate clauses. No article. Prepositions governing the accusative or the ablative.

Reading tips

1) Do not rely on word order: first identify the main verb and its personal ending (the subject is implicit in the ending). 2) Locate the nominative (subject) and the accusative (object) by their endings, even when they are far apart. 3) Beware of ambiguous endings: -a may be nom. fem. sg. (1st decl.), abl. fem. sg., or nom./acc. neuter plural (2nd decl.); -is may be gen. sg. (3rd), dat./abl. pl., 2nd pers. sg.; -us may be nom. sg. (2nd/4th) or genitive; -i is very frequent (gen. 2nd, nom. pl. masc., etc.). Context and agreement decide. 4) The ablative in isolation often marks means/instrument, place, or time; check the preposition. 5) Recognize the constructions: the infinitive clause (acc.+infinitive = "that + verb"), the ablative absolute (noun+participle in the ablative = "once X is done", "X being..."), the gerund/gerundive (obligation, purpose). 6) Check vowel quantity in cases of lexical homography (populus tree/people; malus). 7) Identify the register: Classical, Vulgar, Medieval, Ecclesiastical (orthography ae/e, u/v, fluctuating spellings). 8) Expand epigraphic abbreviations before translating. When an ambiguity is not resolved by context, note the competing analyses rather than deciding arbitrarily.

Pitfalls

1) Homography of endings: -a, -is, -us, -um, -i, -e are massively ambiguous between cases and declensions; morphological analysis in isolation is insufficient, and agreement and context are necessary. 2) I and V/U stand for a vowel OR a semi-consonant: a risk of faulty phonetic segmentation. 3) Unwritten vowel quantity: a source of lexical ambiguities (malus, populus, liber, os) and of metrical ones; do not invent macrons. 4) Free word order: never deduce function from position; rely on morphology. 5) Registers and periods: fluctuating orthography (ae/e, oe/e, u/v, i/j, ci/ti), abbreviations, Medieval/Ecclesiastical Latin differing from Classical. 6) Epigraphic and paleographic abbreviations (COS, F, D M, abbreviated nomina): expand them before translating. 7) Deponents (passive form, active meaning) and semi-deponent verbs: a voice pitfall. 8) False friends with the derived Romance languages. In cases of genuine doubt, state the uncertainty explicitly rather than produce a falsely confident translation.

Decipherment history

Latin never required decipherment: its reading, teaching, and writing were transmitted without interruption from antiquity to the present day, through the ancient grammarians (Donatus, Priscian), the medieval schools, the universities, and the Church. The uninterrupted manuscript tradition and the immense corpus of texts commented on since antiquity make it a continuously understood language. The only work comparable to a "decipherment" concerns secondary aspects: the fine reconstruction of classical pronunciation (established in the 19th–20th centuries from ancient grammarians such as Quintilian, from Greek transcriptions, from meter, from the orthographic errors of inscriptions, and from the comparison of the Romance languages, synthesized by W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina, 1965); the critical editing of texts (philology); and the interpretation of archaic or abbreviated inscriptions. On the contrary, Latin often serves as an anchor for deciphering OR understanding other languages (Etruscan via bilingual texts, the Italic languages by comparison).

Common formulae & expressions

SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus)

The Senate and the Roman People (the official emblem of Rome)

D M / DIS MANIBVS

To the divine Manes (a funerary formula, at the head of epitaphs)

HIC IACET / HIC SITVS EST

Here lies / here rests (epitaphs)

COS (consul), IMP (imperator), AVG (Augustus), F (filius)

Abbreviations of titles and of filiation in inscriptions

Anno Domini (A.D.)

In the year of the Lord (Christian dating)

SENATVS CONSVLTVM (SC)

Decree of the Senate

VOTVM SOLVIT LIBENS MERITO (V S L M)

He discharged his vow willingly and deservedly (votive dedications)

Requiescat in pace (R.I.P.)

May he rest in peace (a Christian funerary formula)

Corpora & reference editions

• Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL), Berlin, since 1863
• Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) Latin Texts (online database of classical texts)
• Perseus Digital Library (Latin texts with morphological analysis)
• Bibliotheca Teubneriana (critical editions, B.G. Teubner)
• Oxford Classical Texts (Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis)
• Corpus Christianorum (Series Latina), Brepols
• Bibliotheca Augustana (Latin texts online)
• L'Année épigraphique (AE), Paris, since 1888

Bibliographic references

• Charlton T. Lewis & Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, 1879 — The standard reference Latin-English dictionary (Oxford/Clarendon Press)
• P.G.W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary (OLD), fascicles 1968-1982 (2nd ed. 2012) — A dictionary based on the direct excerpting of classical texts (down to ca. AD 200); published in eight fascicles from 1968 to 1982
• Felix Gaffiot, Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, 1934 — The standard Latin-French dictionary in France
• J.B. Greenough et al., Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, 1903 — The standard reference Latin grammar in English
• Alois Walde & Johann Baptist Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed. revised by Hofmann, 1938-1956 — Etymological dictionary of Latin (Heidelberg, Winter)
• Alfred Ernout & Antoine Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: histoire des mots, 4th ed. 1959 (Klincksieck) — Etymology and history of Latin words; later reprints enlarged by Jacques André
• Leonard R. Palmer, The Latin Language, 1954 — A linguistic history and description of Latin
• James Clackson & Geoffrey Horrocks, The Blackwell History of the Latin Language, 2007 — A history of the Latin language, from Proto-Italic to Late Latin
• W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin, Cambridge, 1965 — The standard synthesis on the reconstructed pronunciation of Classical Latin
• Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL), since 1900 — An exhaustive historical dictionary of Latin, still in course of publication (Munich)