Latin, an Italian language of the Indo-European language family, was widely spoken during the Roman and Greek periods. Latin dates back at least to the time of Emperor Augustus in the Roman Empire, when the written language used was called "Classical Latin".
1. History. Latin was one of the first languages spoken in the Latin region (Lazio in modern Italian) and in the Roman Empire. Although Latin is now generally considered a dying language, Latin is still listed as one of the official languages in the Vatican. In addition, there are still a small number of clergy and scholars of the Catholic denomination of ** religion who are fluent in Latin. Roman Catholicism traditionally uses Latin as the language of formal meetings and liturgies.
In addition, universities and high schools in many Western countries still offer courses on Latin, and the examination requirements are relatively strict, similar to that of Chinese classical Chinese.
Latin is a highly inflected language. It has three different natures, nouns have seven cases, verbs have four parts of speech, six tenses, six personal pronouns, three moods, three voices, two bodies, and two numbers. One of the seven squares is a directional case, which is usually only used with a directional noun. The accusative is highly similar to the nominative case, so Latin generally has only five different cases. Different authors may use five or seven types of case in their writing. Adjectives are similar to adverbs, with zigzags and turns in case, sexuality, and number. Although Latin has demonstrative pronouns to refer to near and far, it does not have articles. Later, Latin simplified the twists and turns of word endings in different ways, forming the Romance language family.
Latin and Greek are the languages that have had the greatest influence on European and American scholarship and religion. In the Middle Ages, Latin was the medium of communication between the different countries of Europe at that time, and it was also an essential language for the study of science, philosophy, and theology. Until modern times, proficiency in Latin was a prerequisite for the study of any humanities education;It was not until the 20th century that the study of Latin gradually declined, and the focus shifted to the study of contemporary languages.
Latin has been used throughout the creation of new words in English and other Western languages. Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages, are the only remaining languages in the Italian language family. A study of the texts left in early Italy confirms the existence of other branches of the Italian language family, which were later gradually assimilated into Latin during the Roman Republic. Latin's relative languages include Falsk, Oskand, and Umbria. However, Veneto may be an exception. In Roman times, Veneto, the language of the inhabitants of Venice, was spoken alongside Latin.
In the largest part of the Roman Empire, Latin usually had the status of a native language in all regions of the Roman Empire, except for the ancient Greek common language, which dominated the eastern regions.
2. Features. Ding is a highly inflected language. It has three different natures, nouns have seven cases, verbs have four parts of speech, six tenses, six personal pronouns, three moods, three voices, two bodies, and two numbers. One of the seven squares is a directional case, which is usually only used with a directional noun. The accusative is highly similar to the nominative case, so Latin generally has only five different cases. Different authors may use five or seven types of case in their writing. Adjectives are similar to adverbs, with zigzags and turns in case, sexuality, and number. Although Latin has demonstrative pronouns to refer to near and far, it does not have articles. Later, Latin simplified the twists and turns of word endings in different ways, forming the Romance language family.
Latin and Greek are the languages that have had the greatest influence on European and American scholarship and religion. In the Middle Ages, Latin was the medium of communication between the different countries of Europe at that time, and it was also an essential language for the study of science, philosophy, and theology. Until modern times, proficiency in Latin was a prerequisite for the study of any humanities education;It was not until the 20th century that the study of Latin gradually declined, and the focus shifted to the study of contemporary languages.
Latin came to China in the Ming Dynasty and had many translations:
There have been more than 40 different translations of Latin Chinese names in Ming and Qing documents, such as "Daxi characters", "red hair characters", "fan characters", "latino", "la dino", "la tinu", "laiding", "luodian" and so on.
Positioning in the history of language.
In English, "i" (nominative case), "me" (I accusative), "is" (is), "mother" (mother), "brother" (brother), "ten" (ten), these words are actually words that have been spoken by Europeans and Asians for thousands of years in some way.
3. Evolution. Prehistoric Latin
Prehistoric Latin: (before 250 BC), the oldest source is the 4-word inscription on a Prenestai gold pins from the 6th century BC: Manios med Fhefhaked Numasioi
The classical Latin equivalent of manius me fecit numerio, means: "This pin was made by Manius for Numeliu".
Archaic Latin
Archaic Latin: (250 BC - 90 BC), Rome began to expand outward from the 4th century BC and by the 1st century BC had Latinized all of Italy. However, there was no uniform norm for Latin during this period. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, the ancient Latin language was represented by the poet Enrius and the Greek-influenced comedy writers Plautus and Terentius.
Classical Latin
A mosaic from the 3rd century AD. Virgil is shown sitting between Cleo and Melpomene. From Hadlumitam (present-day Sousse in Tunisia). Virgil is known as the greatest poet of ancient Rome.
The written language used in the time of Emperor Augustus of the Roman Empire was: "Classical Latin" (80 BC 2nd century AD, i.e., late republican to early empire) roughly corresponds to the ** era (90 BC 14 AD, i.e., at the time of Octavian's death) and ** era (14 years 117 AD, i.e., at the time of Trajan's death) in the history of Latin literatureor 180, at the time of Aurelius' death). By the time of the first century, Latin had formed a unified and standardized standard language, with rich vocabulary, perfect syntax and strong expressiveness.
* The main representative authors of the Latin language of the era are:
Cicero, Caesar, Nepos, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC - 17 AD), etc., these representatives reflected the classical Latin, which became a compulsory subject in later European schools and the main object of academic research.
Late classical writers include: Tacitus, a former Roman consul and a famous historian. Seneca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD), Quentilian (35 - 95 CE), Matthiar, Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 CE) were scientists and prose writers.
Pliny the Younger (Latin: 61 or 62 - 113) was the adopted son of Pliny the Elder, a former consul and a nine-volume anthology of letters, reflecting the state of Rome's heyday and of social value.
Late Latin
Augustine of Hippo.
Late Latin (the period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD, i.e. between the late Roman Empire and the 100 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire), and the colloquial language spoken by the people of the 2nd-6th centuries is called"Vulgar Latin".。The main exponents were some ** clergy. These men were well educated and, owing to the need to preach, were more aware of the spoken language of the popular population, and thus adopted an enlightened attitude towards the popular Latin.
The most influential figures are:
Jerome (Jerome, St, 347 – 419 or 420) was a learned man who, during the period 383 to 405, translated the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New Testament into Latin, which was close to the spoken language of the common people. He declared: "In order to make it easy for the reader to understand, I have deliberately used the colloquial language spoken by ordinary people. This translation was later Xi called vulgate, ieVulgate Latin translation, which had a great influence on the Middle Ages.
As can be seen from this Bible, written in 1407 in ecclesiastical Latin, the language of ancient Rome had a profound influence on later cultures, mainly European cultures.
Augustine, St. Augustine(354-430) is the author of the Confessions and On the City of God, etc., and the language is close to the popular colloquial (Latin:). He claimed that as long as the barbarians were ** disciples, even if they conquered Rome, it would not matter.
4. Decline. The Latin language changed during the decline of the Roman Empire. The popular Latin of the 6th to 8th centuries changed rapidly. Most of the declension endings have disappeared, prepositions and auxiliary verbs have become more widely used, and subjunctives are often mixed with declaratives. As a result, classical Latin gradually became disconnected from popular Latin, and finally became a written language.
And in the Middle Ages,Regional variants (dialects) of Popular Latin diverged over the next few hundred years, giving rise to a number of separate "Romance languages."”。Among them are the Eastern Romance languages: Romanian, Dalmatian (extinct in 1898);Sardinian;Italian;Western Romance languages: French, Romansh, Catalan, Occi (including the famous Provençal dialect), Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Aragonese. After the 16th century, Spain and Portugal expanded their influence throughout Central and South America, so Central and South America is also called "Latin America".
In the process of the evolution of Latin to Romance languages, many words lost grammatical endings. In particular, the declension endings of nouns have been completely lost in many Romance languages (with the exception of some pronouns). But noun declension still has reservations in Romanian. 
As shown in the figure above, although the Latin vernacular has evolved into a variety of Romance languages, and the Romance language has taken deep root in their respective nation-state systems and has become the main medium of national literary creation, Latin continues to be used in a few specific social spaces and classes, and plays the role of the common written language of the European "republic of learning" outside the languages of the emerging nation-states.
This process was strengthened by the Renaissance renewing interest in classical works. Since then, Latin has been the subject of many neologisms, especially scientific vocabulary.
5. Development of branch languages.
After the 15th century, in Europe, except for a few Latin experts, the level of Latin of generally educated literati, scholars, and clergy was already declining. A friend of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) kindly reminded the pastor when he heard a pastor misuse the Latin word in a sermon that "sumpsimus" was "mumpsimus", but the pastor replied nonchalantly that he had been saying it for more than 20 years and that there was really no need to correct it.
The first question faced by Renaissance European intellectuals in writing was what language to choose. Their initial education was based on multilingualism: Latin, Ancient Greek, which were religiously required, and indigenous languages for local missionary and cultural transmission. The average European priest and scholar is proficient in three or four languages, including Latin and his own Chinese. This is a characteristic of European education after the twelfth century, which is completely different from traditional Chinese education.
French:
After the 12th century, various European nation-states began to brew, and it was a long-term process to reduce and weaken the influence of Latin. Even in France, where the national language was the earliest and best developed, the poet Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) still felt the negative influence of classical language on the development of French national literature. In his Déffence et illustration de la Language Fran Aise (1549), he stressed the need to breathe new life into the French language and to be bold and innovative in poetic form.
In 1549, Du Beret published his famous manifesto "The Defence and Promotion of the French Language", which represented the ideas of the Seven Star Poetry Society. This manifesto was written by the poets of the Poetry Society. The gist of the manifesto was as follows: that the French national language was perfectly comparable to the Greek and Latin languages, and that it was perfectly possible to write literary masterpieces in French, but that it was necessary to find ways to make it more colorful;Advocate the imitation of Greco-Latin writers, at least in poetry, but not the mere translation of ancient works;The various poetic genres that were popular in France were not worth preserving and should be replaced by ancient poetic rhythms. This article is almost a declaration of the independence of the French language from Latin.
In the practice of rectifying, standardizing, and unifying national languages and improving the status of national languagesFrance was ahead of England and established the Académie fran aise (Académie fran Aise) as early as 1635 to oversee and manage the use of the French language and its related affairs. At the time, Britain and France were rivals in almost all important areas, but France continued to lead the continent's cultural and aesthetic tastes, with French being spoken more widely and more recognizable than English.
English: A similar situation was seen in Renaissance England, where Bacon and Hobbes wrote a large number of Latin works. It was not until the middle of the 18th century, as the British Empire flourished and the status of English continued to rise, that the overall level of Latin in Britain declined. Even so, at the time, writing in Latin was still fashionable for elegance.
English is derived from the Anglo-Saxon language, which is cognate with Latin. Anglo-Saxon had earlier borrowed some words from Latin.
In the 7th century, more Latin words were absorbed, largely due to the writings of St. Augustine of Canterbury (not the famous Augustine of Hippo), who was sent by Pope Gregory I to England as a missionary and converted a large number of Anglos to Christianity.
After William the Conqueror ruled England in 1066, Norman French became the upper language, and Anglo-Saxon was seen as an inferior language spoken by the conquered and serfs. Anglo-Saxon is no longer the language of the upper class, but has become the vernacular of everyday life.
However, after another two centuries or so, Old English was reaffirmed at the top as the descendants of the Normans finally merged with the local British, but by this time it had absorbed hundreds of Norman words.
In the century, with the increasing number of such borrowings, Middle English slowly developed, and its representative died in 1400Geoffrey Chaucer。In addition to these French words with Latin roots that were absorbed, there were also words borrowed directly from Latin.
Previously, most British scholars looked down on their mother tongue as a "dry and barren" language that lacked expressiveness, but with the strengthening of national identity and the rise of cultural nationalism, the status of English has risen significantly, and it has naturally become a vibrant, "rich" language in the minds of readers.
The unification and standardization of languages is crucial to the development of national languages, and it is necessary for authoritative national institutions to formulate, promote and implement relevant norms.
Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), the first modern book in the history of English literature, was keen on the reform and management of the English language. He once called for the establishment of a body similar to the National Academy of Sciences to regulate the use of English, arguing that English would inevitably become "the noblest and most complete vernacular" in the world as long as it was systematically "polished and refined".
Eventually, the burden of regulating the use of English fell on the shoulders of individuals and academic organizations, and British scholars gradually guided and regulated the use of English by writing dictionaries and grammar guides.
17th and 18th centuries,The most influential English dictionaries include Robert Robinson's The Art of Pronunciation (1617), William Johnston's Pronouncing and Spelling Dictionary (1764), and Dr. Johnson's English Dictionary.
It can be seen how ridiculous the pseudo-historical rumors about the English language are. ）
German
Martin Luther (1483-1546) was the founder of the standardization of the German language, and although he was still predominantly Latin for an intellectual audience, he was more interested in how he could reach out to the lower classes of society and write for the German-speaking "common people".
Luther's Latin was excellent and no less fluent than German. He is said to be able to talk to his students in Latin about what he saw in his dreams and about the appearance of the devil. However,There is no uniform modern German for this fashionThe two villages are less than 50 kilometers apart, and the language is no longer incomprehensible. Luther's choice to translate the Bible into German laid an important foundation for the construction of a unified modern German.
Luther claimed that of all languages, including Latin, "German is the most perfect."
During this period, the admiration for the value of language, especially the value of national languages, pushed the European perception of language to a new level, and laid the foundation for the emergence of scientific linguistics in Europe.
6. Past and future.
Although Latin died out as a colloquial language, it continued to be used as a written lingua franca in European societies for around 1,000 years. * After the rise of Christianity in Europe, the influence of Latin deepened. From the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century, Latin was not onlyThe liturgical language and common language of the Catholic ChurchIt is also the writing language of academic works, academic ** and even literary works. Many world-famous scholars have written in Latin, such as Copernicus in Poland, Descartes in France, Bacon and Newton in England, Leibniz and Gauss in Germany, Spinoza in the Netherlands, Euler in Switzerland, Linnaeus in Sweden, etc.
In addition, Latin was used as a diplomatic language until the 18th century, while some scholarly vocabulary or texts in fields such as medicine and biology, such as the naming conventions of the taxonomy, are still widely used today.
To a certain extent, Latin has also had a direct or indirect influence on the Chinese language.
Since 50 to 80 percent of the words in English come from Latin (the more scholarly the literature, the higher the Latin component), many Latin words have found their way into Chinese through English. Such as Chinese".card(English: card) comes from the Latin charta (earliest from Greek). Transliteration of bus".BusThe term "bus" comes from 19th-century France, when the French called the bus omnibus (Latin: "for all", "for all") and the word "for all" is still present in Romance languages, such as the Spanish word for bus.
In addition, some expressions in modern Chinese, although they do not have an obvious "foreign flavor", are actually related to Latin. For example, the word "love" comes from the English word ardently love, which is derived from the Latin word ardenter amare. This statement, like the use of the word "card", is not found in ancient Chinese.
Now only the Vatican still uses Latin. Latin and Greek are two of the most influential languages in the cultural history of Western Europe. Therefore, there are a large number of Latin loanwords and so-called international words created using Latin word (morphemes) and then widely used in European languages.
Latin alphabet: The Roman alphabet used today is thousands of years old. They date back to the Carolingian script of the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Martin in Tours, France, in the 9th century, perfected by the Carolingian Renaissance and survived through centuries of manuscripts and the oldest Italian print from the 15th century. These monks developed lowercase letters based on the semi-uncial script, which in turn derives from the uncial script and block capitalization of the Roman Empire. Nowadays, it is Xi to distinguish the Roman alphabet from the Greek alphabet, but in fact the Romans learned to write from the Etruscans, who in turn learned to write from Greek immigrants who settled near Naples in the 8th century BC. Thus, the Roman alphabet is really just a form of the Greek alphabet. But in this regard, the Greek alphabet was obtained from a branch of the Semites, the Phoenicians. Going back further, the early Semites seem to have been inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The Roman alphabet is the source of the English alphabet, except that the letters j (long-i) and w (double-u) are missing, and the letter v was originally equivalent to both the vowel u and the consonant w. Although the form of the round bottom of the u did not appear until the 2nd century AD, for convenience, most of the current versions use both v and u. The letter k (pronounced the same as c) is rarely used, and only a few words ** appear before a. By the end of the Roman Republic, the letters y and z began to be used to spell words of Greek origin.
Reference: Xiao Yuan, ed., Fundamentals of Latin, The Commercial Press, 1983
Translated by Zhang Butian, A Course in Willow Latin, Beijing United Publishing Company, 2009 (New Edition, 2017).
Latin and Greek (1st edition, January 2007), Sindelin, p13, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.