From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

What is Latin?

Parts of this introduction were taken from The Latin Language on the Wikipedia.

Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around the city of Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire.

All Romance languages descend from a Latin parent, and many words in English and other languages today are based on Latin roots. Moreover, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and as such is the official national language of the Vatican.

Romance languages are not derived from Classical Latin, the language spoken by Caesar and Cicero, but rather from Vulgar Latin, the language spoken by the common people, or vulgus, of Rome. Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin (Romance) differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress whereas Classical had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive.

Another major distinction between Classical and Romance is that modern Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words (some pronouns being exceptions). Romanian is still equipped with several cases (though some, notably the ablative, are no longer represented).

It is also important to note that Latin is, for the most part, an inflected language — meaning that the endings change to show how the word is being used in the sentence.

Introduction to the Latin Language

Simple and Compound Words

In Latin, words are either:

• compound (words that consist of more than one part, for example, a root word combined with a prefix) or
• simple (words that consist of only one part).

Word Parts

Inflected words have a stem and a root.

The Root

The root is the most primitive part of the word that has meaning. For example the stem of agito (I drive onward) is agit-, whose root is ag, which is in common to words of similar meaning: ago (I do, drive), agmen (that which is driven, such as a flock), etc.

The Stem

The stem is the part of the word to which suffixes are added. These suffixes determine the role of the word in the sentence. For example, when a Roman slave wished to address his dominus (master), he used the vocative form domine. This vocative ending is equivalent to "O master" in English. In this case domin- is the stem and -us and -e are suffixes. The addition of such a suffix is called inflection. This is discussed further in the Summary.

In contrast, English uses word order more than inflection to determine the function of a word within a sentence.

Primitives

Primitives occur when both the stem and the root are the same. For example, the word agere (to do, drive) has the stem ag- and the root ag.

Derivatives

Derivatives occur when the stem is different from the root. For example, the stem flamm- from the word flamma has the root "flag."

Suffixes

Latin attaches suffixes ("endings") to stems to turn them into words (most stems and roots cannot be used in sentences without an ending). This inflection is essential to forming Latin sentences. The various suffixes and their translations will be learned in the later lessons.

Types of Words

Nouns

A noun (Latin: nomen) is "something perceived or conceived by the mind."

There are two kinds of nouns: Substantives and Pronouns. Nouns have changing endings on the stem (known as declension) and three incidents: number (singular or plural, determined by the ending), gender (masculine, feminine or neuter: almost never changes for substantives, determined by the ending for adjectives and pronouns) and case (determined by the ending). Adjectives and Pronouns must agree in all incidents when attributing a substantive.

1. Substantive (nomen substantivum) is a name simply denoting something perceived or conceived: psittacus - the parrot, nix - the snow, virtus - virtue.

2. Pronoun (pronomen) is a word used in place of a substantivum, usually when the substantivum is already known: ea - she, ille - that man

Verbs

Verbs (verba) express an action or a state of being, e.g., ago (I do), dixit (he said), venis (you come). "Conjugation" is the term for adding inflections to verb stems to indicate person (first, second or third), number (singular or plural), tense (present, future, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect or future perfect), voice (active or passive), and mood (indicative, subjunctive or imperative).

A verb can be either finite or infinite:

1. Finite verbs (verba finita) are inflected and have a subject, e.g., I run, you run, he runs, they drive, the computer is turned on.

2. The infinite verbs (verba infinita) are not inflected and have no subject, e.g. to run, to drive, to turn on, to have drawn. Participles, which are inflected as substantives rather than as verbs, may also be considered infinite, e.g., the running boy.

Modifiers

1. Adjectives (nomen adiectivum) are used to describe nouns. They indicate a quality perceived or conceived as inherent in something denoted. E.g., vir magnus (the great man), puella pulchra (the fair girl)

2. Adverbs are similar to adjectives, except that they are used to qualify verbs, rather than nouns. E.g., curro celeriter (I run quickly), pugnat fortiter (he fights bravely)

Other

Particles are uninflected words that provide extra meaning.

1. Prepositions (praepositiones) are used in conjunction with a substantive to define position or relation to another substantive. In Latin, the noun combined with the preposition takes the accusative, ablative or (rarely) genitive case, depending on the nature of the relationship, or on the nature of the preposition itself. E.g., ad, in, sub

2. Conjunctions (coniunctiones) join together clauses and sentences. E.g., et, atque, sed

3. Interjections (interiectiones) are exclamations used to express feeling or to gain attention. E.g., o! (oh!) eheu! (alas!) ecce! (behold!)

Articles

Latin has NO articles (words for 'the' and 'a'). When translating Latin into English, insert a 'the' or 'a' when appropriate.

Summary