When is latin used

Because it requires precision and logic, learning Latin is a challenge and requires a high level of intelligence to master, not to mention perseverance, enthusiasm and focus. Recent articles Nowruz Mubarak! A festival that celebrates light and life. Rabbit rabbit rabbit! Anyone for tennis? How do you preserve an ancient language?

How did the Romans develop writing so quickly? Well, they had a little help. They did not develop their own original alphabet. Instead, they borrowed the Etruscan alphabet and tweaked it slightly.

They spoke their own language. It did not belong to the Indo-European language family like the Italic languages. In fact, Etruscan is not related to any other known language, dead or alive! The Romans were mostly farmers, so they had much to gain from the more advanced Etruscans.

From an early point, the two peoples developed a close relationship and traded a great deal. Not only did the Romans borrow the alphabet from the Etruscans, but they also acquired a few new vocabulary words, like persona person and fenestra window. These vocabulary words indicate other things the Romans gained from their relationship with the Etruscans — like new technology!

From the Etruscans, the Romans learned how to build houses with fenestrae — windows. The Etruscan word persona originally meant a theatrical mask. This suggests that the Etruscans also introduced the Romans to theater, which would become a major part of Roman culture.

Today, this alphabet is known as the Roman alphabet, even though the Romans did not invent it. However, because of the influence of Latin, this alphabet has been inherited by all western European languages — including English. The Romans of Latium adopted the Etruscan alphabet as well as their technology and culture. What happened?

After murdering his brother, Romulus became the first Rex , or King, of Rome. He would be succeeded by six kings before a revolution ended the monarchy. While still a monarchy, Rome depended a great deal on its powerful neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. While Rome was a monarchy, it had been conquering its neighbors and slowly expanding until its walls were rebuilt to enclose the Seven Hills of Rome.

Rome was becoming more powerful. He was overthrown and with him, the monarchy fell. Rome transitioned from a Kingdom, under a Rex , to a Republic.

The word Republic comes from two Latin words: Res thing, affair and Publica the people. Beneath the Consuls, a few hundred other men formed a Senate. According to legend, the Republic was founded in BC. When Rome became a Republic, her expansion into an empire really took off. Since the 5th century, Rome fought war after war with her neighbors.

As her borders absorbed the neighboring states, the Roman tongue gradually became the standard language across the region. By BC, the Romans were the undisputed masters of the entire Italian peninsula. This meant that the Roman language was now coming into its own as a real, respectable language. It was now the language of the entire region of Latium. In fact, nobody called it the Roman language anymore. Now it was the Latium language — that is, Latin. Most of these languages no longer exist.

How did they disappear, and how did their speakers learn Latin? There were no Latin grammar books or dictionaries at this time. Not even Romans taught Latin in their schools. In fact, the Romans did not seem to be much interested in writing at all in these early centuries. The first individuals who could be called writers do not appear until the 3rd century BC, and what we have of these are mostly fragments. He died in BC. It forms the root of certain philosophies. So is Latin a dead language, really?

It should be noted that this is different from an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers at all. Latin falls into the former category, but certainly not the latter more on that in the next section. Latin is an Indo-European language that started in Italy, but spread with the Roman Empire throughout much of Europe and parts of northern Africa.

Thus, Classical Latin fell out of use. Latin may technically be dead, but its ghost is still very much present, haunting many aspects of our lives. Here are a few fields in which Latin is widely used. An exponent is a number placed outside of the writing line, and a radical is the root of a number. The square root of 9 is 3. Radicals, remember those? See Figure 8 There is something about actually knowing the root word that not only helps you remember a new term but also deepens your understanding of its meaning.

Not only does Latin provide the root words for all of the modern sciences Reason 3 , but Latin is the language of law, politics, logic, and theology. While a large number of words in science come from Greek, law is the exclusive domain of the Latin language.

All legal terms are Latin. The Romans excelled in the practical arts of law and government, and it is from them that we derive our legal and political language.

How many of these words do you know the meanings of? Figure 1 Latin is invaluable for the business and law student. And although logic was first explained by Aristotle in Greek, it was really developed and systematized by the schoolmen in the Middle Ages—in Latin, of course. And in the West, even Christian theology was worked out in Latin.

Figure 2 Many of the original words were Greek, but they were all filtered through the Latin language. In fact, everything that has come down to us from the ancient world was filtered through Latin. Sometimes they grabbed existing Latin words and gave them new meanings, like grace which meant favor or thanks.

Christians gave grace a new spiritual meaning—the undeserved favor of God, Christian grace. And sometimes they created new words, like the Latin word Trinity , a word not found in Scripture but one needed to express the doctrine of the three-in-one God. Tres, tria is three and unus is one , Tri unity. Both three and one at the same time. Many well know theological concepts are in Latin.

We are created Imago Dei , in the image of God, and ex nihilo , from nothing. Sola fide was the battle cry of the Reformation. How many new grammar programs have failed to produce results? First it was Easy Grammar and now it is Shirley Grammar.

The problem is not with these programs; the problem is with English grammar. Why is English grammar so difficult to teach? There are several reasons, the first of which is summed up by these observations:. The second reason is that English grammar is too abstract for the grammar stage. In my opinion it is about the same level of abstraction and difficulty as algebra. I think we have all made a serious mistake by emphasizing analytical English grammar in the grammar stage.

Memorizing, remember, is consistent with the grammar stage, not analysis, which belongs in the logic stage. English grammar is abstract and invisible because of its lack of structure and inflection. But Latin grammar is concrete and visible because of its structure and inflection. What is inflection? Inflected languages have noun endings that tell you what the noun is doing in the sentence.

Is the noun a subject, a direct object, or an indirect object? Look at the first two sentences to see inflection Figure 3. In the second sentence, Mary is the direct object; its ending, am , tells you so.

When Mary is the subject it ends in a , and when Mary is the direct object, it ends in am —similar to he and him in English. Do you see how the Latin grammar is visible and concrete? You can see and hear the difference between a subject and a direct object in Latin.

Inflected languages also have verb endings that tell you who is doing the action of the verb, and when. The personal pronouns, we and they , do not have to be expressed in Latin because they are contained in the verb endings -mus and -nt. Inflection makes grammar visible and concrete. English grammar is abstract and hidden because it is uninflected. It is unsystematic, unstructured, unreliable, and inconsistent.

We are a loose and freedom loving people. We break the rules. The Romans were the most disciplined, structured, organized people in history and so was their language; their conjugations and declensions march in disciplined rows just like their legions. There is a third problem with English grammar: English grammar!

Learning a foreign language is the most effective way to learn grammar. And what is more natural and hard to think about than your own native language? It is second nature. The child of three or four speaks in complete sentences with subjects and predicates, verbs, direct objects, indirect objects, prepositional phrases, possessives, participles, gerunds, and infinitives—all without instruction. You do not have to tell the child to put a predicate in his sentence, do you?

Of course not. So when the student tries to analyze something he uses naturally and has learned by imitation, he finds it rather useless and dull. Eyes glaze over. But a foreign language is foreign. The student has to break it down to learn it. Learning a foreign language makes use of a technique that is guaranteed to open eyes and develop deeper understanding—contrast and comparison.

Contrast and comparison deepens understanding. It makes the subject come into perspective, come alive. Depth perception requires two eyes. Until we see with two eyes we are like the Cyclops, one big eye that sees a lot but with little understanding.

Learning a foreign language is seeing with two eyes; it is an eye-opener.