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This article is written so that only specialists could readily understand it. Encyclopedias are usually written so that an intelligent motivated person can understand the subject matter WITHOUT a technical reference manual. I just wanted to know how Latin was prounounced - but these symbols are meaningless to me - and to most of those people using this site. At least provide a translation so I know what these symbols mean - otherwise this is NOT a encyclopedia article meant for general knowledge but a wank-fest for experts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.88.5 ( talk) 15:57, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
"Despite common belief, English is not a Romance language, but rather comes from the family of Germanic languages."
Well, it is not common belief that English is a Romance language. I never heard of it. The first time I ever saw the theory was in a cladistics study of letter sequences and that was recent and not generally accepted. My teachers were unexceptionally careful to point out that English is a Germanic language by the traditional definitions. But, this is not an article about English. Moreover, we already have an extensive presentation on the influence of Latin on English. I believe I took this out once before as being inappropriate. It is not on the subject and contradicts material given below, which presents Latin as an influence on English. Let's not invent paper opponents. If you really think it should be back I must insist on a reference to the idea that thinking English is a Romance language is a common belief. Otherwise it should stay out as unreferenced and disputed conjecture. If I see it back I will treat it as vandalism. Dave ( talk) 13:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
there is a template error - the template referring the reader to the Latin wikipedia obscures the picture above. I am unsure how to fix this. It looks unsightly. 125.238.245.219 ( talk) 09:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Hello!
For a while now, I've a few questions about how to translate a few items into Latin… and was hoping someone here might know or offer their expertise. I have asked my friends but none seem to know with confidence how to translate these words into Latin.
Firstly, I wish to translate first these names into Latin. Secondly, I wish to know how then would the supposential decedent family of these people be translated into Latin. For instance, the Julius Ceaser was a member of the Julii, yes? This is what I’d like to know.
The male name Jafan… how would that translate into Latin and what would his decedent’s family name be rendered? Jafanii?
The female name Kylantha, how might this name be rendered into Latin? What about people who support this person's rule?
The name of a river… Solleu. How would people from the Solleu river basin be known as? Sollensians? Sollensinii? But how does that translate into Latin?
Alsolso, the name Naboo. How would people from Naboo be known as? Naboo originates with Nabu.
One last question... when would it be appropriate to say a name like this... Atia of the Julii?
Any help anyone may offer would be greatly appreciated! ♦Drachenfyre♦· Talk 09:07, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
Should we just delete the language characteristics section? The information concerning Queen Elizabeth's education is unverified (I could only find small amounts of info related to her overall studies elsewhere) and would probably fit better in the section detailing Renaissance Latin, if anywhere. Also, the information regarding the understandability of Latin among different generations is also unverified and possibly only relevant at the beginning of the "History of Latin" section, if this info is actually true. Icountryclub ( talk) 02:04, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
After looking at the See Also Guidelines and also some other language articles, I cut down the Latin "See Also" section, removing most of the links which would have already appeared at the top of the article and those which seemed to be not extremely relevant to the article, like "Pig Latin" or "Dog Latin". Did I cut too much, do you think? Icountryclub ( talk) 00:16, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
*AP Latin: Vergil This is now in the article in a sentence on the Latin College Boards
*Latin alphabetReferenced as a main article.
*Alphabets derived from the LatinThis is under Latin alphabet
*Latin characters in Unicode Placed this under Latin alphabet
*Latin-1Placed this under Latin alphabet
*Western Latin character sets (computing)Placed this under Latin alphabet
*List of Latin lettersPlaced this under Latin alphabet
*Latin encyclopedia This is a category so I put it at the bottom of the page
*Latin Wikipedia (Vicipaedia) This is a duplicate and has a box.
*Latin grammarReferenced as a main article.
*Latin conjugationReferenced as a main article>
*Latin declensionReferenced as a main article
*Golden line This went under Latin poetry
*Latin literatureThis is in the Ages of Latin box
*Latin translations of modern literature I put the under Contemporary Latin
*Latin poetry Went under Latin literature
*List of Latin language poets Went under Latin literature
*Panegyrici Latini I put this under Late Latin as that is its period
*Latin profanity This article is suspect so I am omitting it from anywhere for now
*Latin spelling and pronunciationIn this group of 3, the first is referenced as a main article here, so we don't need it here also. The other two are special topics of the first. They DO appear under the see also of the other article, so we are just repeating ourselves to put them here. That's what we have the other aricle for.
*Latin regional pronunciationSpecial topic under the above article.
*Traditional English pronunciation of LatinSpecial topic.
*LatinismThis went on the disambig page
*Greek and Latin roots in English This is a questionable article I think will be removed - see its discussion
*Latin honors disambig - not really about Latin
*Latin influence in English I used the main template with this in the article
*Latinization (literature)This went in disambig
*List of songs with Latin lyrics This is under Contemporary Latin
*National Latin Exam This is now in the article - I put it there
*Latin edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaLatin edition of Wikisource, the free-content library This has a box.
*Ancient Rome There's a whole box on this one at the bottom of the page
*Culture of ancient Rome In the bottom box
*Brocard This is under List of Latin Legal Terms
*Carmen Possum This is discussed and linked in Macaronic Latin. It sure does not go here. It isn't even Latin.
*Dog Latin Placed in disambig
*Pig Latin Placed in disambig
*Hiberno-Latin This went in the ages of Latin box
*Interlingua Not relevant, Latin not in name, not the immediate basis of its formation.
*Internationalism The topic is too broad to appear here; this is language
*Judeo-Latin Placed in ages of Latin box
*Latin liturgy This went under Ecclesiastical Latin
*Latin Mass This went under Ecclesiastical Latin
*Latin Rite This went under Ecclesiastical Latin
*Macaronic Latin Placed in disambig
*Latino sine Flexione Placed in disambig
*Loeb Classical LibraryThis is referenced in text as part of subject material of THIS article
*Orbis PictusThis is covered in
New Latin
*Romance languages In the bottom box
*Romance peoples Not about peoples
We need a working principle here as the list of possible see also candidates is incredibly long when you do a search, much longer than this one. Let us say, anything for which a disambig entry might be made should not go here. Also, as has already been pointed out, things links in the article above should not go here. I think whatever supplements this article and is of general character should go here. I would keep most of the lists. Unless I hear otherwise from you editors, these are the principles I will follow. I wrote or heavily edited many of the articles in the footer box so I have an idea of what might be too specific for this see also. We just can't have an endless column of see also. Dave ( talk) 22:23, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
I finished checking these out. It appears as though I very nearly agree with Mr. icountryclub. What seems to be left are the lists, which are clearly supplementary material without any other natural home. Also there is nothing really on education in Latin. At this point I feel the ones that are left are fairly solid candidates for see also. I notice there has been practically an explosion of Latin articles. I can't really check them all; you will have to do that. Probably the coverage of these topics is going to change so see also will no doubt need further updating later. I did not check every possible article beginning with Latin or with Latin in the title to see if it might be linked in see also. So, what I say is by no means cast in concrete. My explanations in the cross-outs I believe reflect WP thinking so you can get an idea from that, or else investigating what I say will give you a better idea. Sorry this took so long; it is somewhat tedious work. One of the problems of WP is that on some topics the editors load it down with so much questionable material in such bad format that it takes a long time to address the article properly. Meanwhile they get to keep their advertising or their political opinions or whatever it is that motivates them. I'm going to make the interim see also conform to the survivor list and put it in the right location. Then I may go on to some of the other issues. Dave ( talk) 17:02, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
PS. The situation has already changed and I changed it myself by putting some links in the article, so as to cut down on this list. Dave ( talk) 13:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
You seem to be doing your level best to get me back on this article. First you make these changes, then you send me a message. The first few changes I noticed I would revert. But, let me preface my remarks by saying, the convention is, unless you have a good reason, you leave what is there in place. Maybe not as such, maybe you are going to make some additions and you need to blend it in better or organize it better. Most articles have a "see also." It was there; I would have left it there. Your change is not going to fly, believe me. Others will be putting in see also items; they may even restore what you have done. You've just taken on the whole WP Latin-literate public! Do you remember what I said to you? If you do not know Latin, stay out of the content! You've chosen to ignore that. Now, do Dog Latin and Pig Latin belong there? Well, they are incidental to the topic. Such terms presume the existence of Latin and derive their meaning from legitimate Latin. I would either put them back or I would put them on a disambig page. Now, as to some of your other excisions, unfortunately you betray yourself as being somewhat scanty in general Latin knowledge. True, I did not put a reference in to Elizabeth's capabilities. However, it is pretty well known. Such a reference is quite easily obtained, probably on the first pass at the Internet. The reputation derives essentially from the written works of her tutor. What you should have done here, Mr. countryclub, is ask for a reference! I do not know fully what you have taken out of here. If I were you I would stop forthwith. Don't wait until someone labels you as a vandal and blocks your userid. By the way, what experience have you to be taking stuff out of here? I saw two months of experience on your site! You have the mark of a vandal and if I were you I would stop right now. You did not, as I suggested, start with the links and references. Despite your efforts to attract me, however, I am NOT coming back on this article right now! This is admission on my part that the article still needs a lot of work. A few reversions of your changes is not going to fix it. When I do come back it will be with the intent of turning this into a good article. I will not necessarily start with YOUR changes - there are still a lot of problems. You can be sure, I will be making the fur fly and if that is what you wanted you will be getting your wishes. I think you could better use your time studying up on WP policy and looking at some good articles. Prepare for battle, figuratively speaking. Excellence must be fought for. You can be sure, however, that I will give every idea and change of yours a fair break. Be assured, the Latin articles are in my agenda. I wanted to supply the historical and geographical background to the language and its cousins, so I am off doing that. You know how it is on WP, one thing leads to another, ad infinitum. That is its great advantage, but on the other hand sometimes you only half-finish things leaving them open to attack. I am making a note to myself: ATTENTION DAVE: when you get back on this article check all of icountrycub's excisions. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 00:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Well it seems to have changed quite a lot since I worked on it. I'm not going to chase all the way back through all those changes. When I do work on this article I will be addressing the inaccuracies. For example, I don't know what on earth you mean by "two dialects" developing as early as the empire. It looks a though you have a medievalist as a source there. That was a mistake, unless you have misunderstood your source or read more into him than he said. Have you never heard of Plautus and Terence? Early Latin inscriptions? Gentlemen, vulgar Latin was the original language, and it goes back as far as the early republic. Classical Latin is an educated version developed in the late republic. This is what I mean about knowledge of content. Unless you know the period just about anything you might say is going to be wrong. That is true of any period, any language. If you don't know any Latin, if you don't know the civilization, do not work on the content of these articles! You can still work on the formatting and graphics. Now, if you will check the box at the bottom of the page on the periods of Latin, you will see such terms as golden Latin, silver Latin, medieval Latin. Just what did you think these words might mean? If there are only two dialects, what are all these phases? Moreover, the Roman writers themselves mention different dialects, of which little or nothing survives. And finally, vulgar Latin was not a dialect, it was a set of dialects spoken by the ordinary people, who varied widely in speech. You see what I mean, if you have not studied the topic you just do not know what sort of thing to say as introduction. You do as you please, of course, but my suggestion is to work on some topic in which you DO know what to say. The dead language idea - well you need to reference some definitions there. For a dead language it seems pretty lively. There are different arguments and different definitions and they are covered by WP articles. Was renaissance Latin dead? The intro must not make over-definite statements that can be and have been questioned but must be sufficiently general and abstract to cover the variants. Dave ( talk) 00:36, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Nice try but no fly. The whole point of the harvard ref is so you do not have to repeat the book title. You need to use "ref=CITEREFnameyear" in the biblio item, which is referenced in "harvnb". Also we have the named note to collect all the refs with the same page number under one ref. Those have the a, b, c, etc. While you are waiting for me to come back, why don't you try to format these properly? I'm over there on Vesuvius, Avellino eruption and Apennines and others if you want to look at my note formatting. It looks as though I will be there for a while, but don't despair, I promise you a good fight (figuratively speaking) when I get back. Get ready. Oh by the way for the links WP uses "cite web", "cite journal", "cite book" and the like, which standardize the reference information. Please use. Thanks. Dave ( talk) 00:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Lead section says noun has 6 cases, one of which is locative. Section Latin#Nouns says (more correctly if I remember rightly) that locative is a 7th case. -- Stfg ( talk) 21:32, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
This translation is to be found on the latin-language.co.uk site, which is going to be listed for about 2 minutes more. It seems clear the site is all unencyclopedic. I've been saying, if you have no knowledge of the content, it most likely is not a good idea to be writing about it in full public view. You just don't know what to say! If you worked strictly from the sources it probably would not be so bad, but I don't see anyone doing that, either. This lower-than amateur site is not a kind of reference for anything. I've known amateurs who taught themselves Latin and became leading figures in the world of enthusiasts, and it did not take all that long either. It is a lot of work I dare say. If you are not willing to dance the dance, spare us from your trying to talk the talk, will you? Thanks. Dave ( talk) 00:34, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
This is a personal site. Ray says, his teachers so confused him concerning Latin pronounciation he decided to do a web site to straighten us all out in case we were confused also. What I would like to know is, if his teachers could not straighten him out, how can he straighten us out? Be of good heart, no one except him needs any unconfusion. There's no confusion in the subject, all this ground was covered decades ago. As for his audio segments, he might as well not have bothered. He still isn't straight. Ray, if you are reading this, you need work on the accentuation, the vowel quantity and the consistency. Also, you STILL are not distinguishing system and time period. Are you going to palatalize before front vowels or not? Make up your mind. Also, for that wierd rythm, are you trying to adopt an Italian accent for Latin? Don't bother, the pronounciation is totally different. Moreover Italians don't really talk like movie actors giving us their best Italian accent in English. You make it sound like Roddy McDowell moaning "tofoodee" into a big sea shell. Well, this is an encyclopedia not an amateur student web site. Ray gives us no scholarship here only a bunch of moans, which he deems are better than those of his attempted teachers. I don't know what to do with this personal site. It isn't right, it isn't wrong. For the moment I left it in. What do you want to do with it? Remember, we are trying to build a good article here. Also, this is not the main article only related or supplementary external material. We don't vouch for any of that stuff, only cite it. Dave ( talk) 04:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
"Unlike Classical Latin, Old Latin had a more complex system of inflection [9], and its existence is attested in old Roman inscriptions, like in the Praeneste fibula and in the writings of older Roman authors, as Plautus."
Unlike? But, classical Latin comes from Old Latin. It can't be unlike. More complex? I don't know what you mean. Maybe slightly. I think what you are trying to mean is, some forms are more archaic. Let me check your source. and its existence is attested - these independent clauses are whacked together with an and. Why? They aren't related in any way, and the moon is made of green cheese. The Praeneste Fibula is pretty consistently characterized as a fake so we don't want to use it. This sentence needs to be rewritten. One principle practiced by all the best writers is, edit your writing when you are done. Dave ( talk) 22:28, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
"Starting about the 5th or 6th centuries, Late Latin contains minor features that are germinal to the development of the Romance languages. citation needed"
This is actually the major topic of historical Romance language studies. The sentence purports to settle questions about which libraries of books have been written. I don't know who put it in - maybe it was even me, or partly me - and it isn't worth the time to find out. In any case the topic would need expansion and references. The sentence presents a model. It would be necessary to define the terms of the model. We need to know whose model it is and what their terms are. WP editorial conclusions are no good here. This would take a lot more space. The topic is surely covered in articles about the Romance languages, so the best article strategy seems to me to be to develop this conclusion somewhere else if it can be adequately referenced. This section in here is only an introductory outline. The topic is a large and debatable one. The two don't match. Dave ( talk) 07:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
The original article here was off the wall - the total creation of students in any other field but Latin. I corrected the main myths and left it. Naturally what I said could be condensed and was. I am speaking now of the Vulgar Latin subsection. "Condensation" in that section went beyond the limits, which is amazing to me. All I can do is suggest you work elsewhere on the Internet if you cannot grasp the fundamentals of editing. Now, I'm keeping the condensation with a few exceptions. "(Even in Romanian there are only as many different case endings for nouns as there are for pronouns in the other languages; cf. Romanian endings i, lor with the Italian pronouns gli, loro)." I don't see any logic in this strange parenthetical expression. Examples go in the text not in parenthetical expressions. This is not a treatise in Romanian, only an example. The significance of "Even in Romanian" is totally obscure. This is English-seeming English, it looks like English but says nothing. You can't just throw around connectors in English without any regard for their meanings. Your English could use some improvement; I suggest you hold off on WP for the time being. Work on the Romanian WP. However, the worst offense is the French word example. Someone added the Italian words. Well if that were your example, that would be fine, but it isn't, or mine either. I took that right from the referenced source. You cannot do the source one better by altering his example and still claim him as a source. We don't improve on our sources, we only report them. I don't think you are understanding the concept that WP is not the original invention of the editor. We do not make the story up as we see fit. This is an encyclopedia article. We report on previously established material. Your example looks great to me, but I'm not reporting on YOUR example. Please. And finally there is a commented-out example in there. It looks valid to me; I don't know why it is commented out. We don't need it though, one example is enough in this short introductory section. I'm taking it out and putting it here. "Some of the differences between Classical Latin and the Romance languages have been used in attempts to reconstruct Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance languages have distinctive stress on certain syllables, whereas Latin had this feature in addition to distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants as well as stress; in Spanish and Portuguese, only distinctive stress; while in French, length (for most speakers) and stress are no longer distinctive." Dave ( talk) 08:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
"For example, Latin was still the official language of Portugal until 1296, when Portuguese replaced it. Portuguese had already developed and was in use under the umbrella of the vulgar language. citation needed"
Due to the popularity of WP a sort of ridiculous and circular sourcing has surfaced. There is a work, Officiating: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases, which uses the online versions of many works originally converted from paper, which accounts for the name of Webster being associated with it. This is specious. One of its sources is WP and that is tha case for this 1296 and Portugal business. The article entries are marked with the initials of the source. This one, Latin, is marked WP. This is the only place I can find this on the Internet. I do find that Castilian replaced Latin as the official language of Castile in 1296. Any published book that uses WP as a source has gone far wrong epistemologically. WP must use external sources. If those sources use WP they are not external. A kind of infinitely circular self-perpetuation of lies occurs. The book uses WP, WP uses the book. If this practice becomes widespread we are going to have total chaos in the book publishing industry in short order. The book is dated 2010. My advice to you is, STOP! before it is too late, before we lose whatever truth we do have in books and history becomes whatever some WP editor says it is. WP is unique. It is a clearing-house of ideas and cannot, must not, be used as a source of ideas. I'm removing this questioned passage. If anyone finds a genuinely external credible source, by all means put it back in. Dave ( talk) 11:42, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
This consonant table is a duplicate of a more extensive one in the other article. Moreover, the section here first gives a table and then tells them what it says in a bulleted list. Having gone into such detail it says next to nothing about vowels. The section in the other article has a table for vowels also. And finally, this table does not make use of phonemic transcription. Now, the other article is by no means perfect either. But, let's not duplicate everything. This Latin article is turning necessarily into an overview article. Let's complete that process. Let's offload this level of detail onto the article specifically designed for it. This process will entail a lot of work on the other article to straighten out the annotation system and check the consonants. However it needs work anyway. This article will become simpler and more in keeping with an overview. This is not a job for the least experienced WP editor, but why should we have to look at gobbledeygook year after year? Let's do it and get it done. Dave ( talk) 19:16, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
I know you meant well but the insertion of "later" is too much of an overcondensation. It gives the impression that the Veneti settled later or that Roman control of Venetia dates to the Late Latin Period. Not so, the Veneti were as early as any and Venetia became part of the Roman Republic. Venice was built later, and the Venetian Republic was later, but the people and the language were quite early. There is a good write-up in Veneto although I have not verified it in detail or checked for plagiarism. It seems good on first reading. So, if you don't mind, I think "later" ought to go. Whatever you mean needs more explanation, but it seems good enough for an introduction. Thanks. Dave ( talk) 10:31, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
The meaning of this last passage under "Vocabulary" is unclear. What do you mean, formed? You mean today or in the past? Your source means in the past. Do you mean, individual Romans went around producing words from these elements at will? Immo vero, no! Words were traditional, just as they are today. One uses the traditional words. If they were formed already, fine, if not, they weren't used. Now, no doubt individuals might now and again produce a new words, or neologisms, from these segments. They would no doubt be understood. Unless they "caught on" they would not be used again. If you mean today, can we just go around forming new Latin words, well, no. Some people are authorized to form them. You need a franchise from someone, say the International Committee on Zoological Nomenclature. I think you were definitely talking past tense. The topic is generally called morphology, word formation. Only societies do meaningfull morphology; we don't. The passage as you wrote it needs to clarify these things so I am altering it, not much I hope. I don't want to discourage you. Dave ( talk) 23:05, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
"However, during the Renaissance, because of the humanist movement’s emphasis on maintaining Classical Latin form and vocabulary, the vocabulary did not expand considerably."
Well, this is an interesting guess. But, that is what it looks like to me, a fill-in guess. You wanted to say something about each period but you didn't know anything about this period, so you made up the most logical guess. The ancient authors did that also; they didn't know what was said in a given speech so they filled in the appropriate sentiments. Authors of books can take that liberty, but not us. You need to come up with an author who voiced that opinion. In today's world of scholarship, in order to make anything like that stick, you would need a study of the number of neologisms associated with a certain amount of sample text from each period. The results would most likely go in a philological journal, so we would look for a "cite journal" giving that reference. Any professional worth his salt would have to do that. That would make a good topic, "measuring the production of new Latin vocabulary over the ages." Dave ( talk) 03:30, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I just noticed the location of the see also is open to question. One of the editors refers us to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (layout). I'm sorry to take so long to notice this. According the the manual page it should go before the notes. For myself I like it before the links. What do you want to do? If someone puts it back before the notes I will not change it again. A few observations more: the works referenced on the layout page must not be the bibliography associated with the notes, but must be the works of the subject of the article, if it is about a person. The "harvnb" template references a bibliography after the notes. The layout page does not go into this level of detail; it only mentiona additional reading. But, if you are are going to use the template:harv system you need the notes and the bibliography together, so you might have two bibliographies, the one for the notes and the additional. Dave ( talk) 14:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I started in on the declension section and found it pretty much gibberish. The problem is the attempted use by the editor of "updated" traditional grammatical concepts. There are a lot of new English grammatical concepts that attempt to bring the concepts developed for Latin grammar more into line with what the authors perceive is current English syntax. English, you know, has lost most of its inflection. These new concepts can be pretty confusing. It wouldn't be so bad except the associated articles on WP are all tagged as unsourced and they don't make any sense either. In this section, I'm going to take us back to the traditional concepts of Latin grammar. This is not English, it is Latin, so we don't have to put up with badly comprehended English updates to Latin grammar, we can just use the Latin grammar. A second point - the running girl. I changed that to imperfect. Any running in general is done in the imperfective or continuous aspect. If you use the perfective aspect (perfect tense) you are signifying an alteration of the native aspect of "run" to some sort of completed running, such as, if you had a choice to run or not run, you ran and that decision was all over with before you began to speak. Just general running in the past is imperfect tense, regardless of whether you say the girl ran or the girl was running. Ciao. Dave ( talk) 11:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
The article leans heavily on the book by Diringer for its alphabetic information. A location of "Indian" made me suspicious. Sure enough the bibliographic information was partly wrong. This is a reprint of the 1947 Hutchinson edition by a New Delhi firm. The date is 1996. If the editor had the book in hand he should have been able to read this information. I suspect he copied the ref from somewhere else. If that is so then he did not verify those page numbers. Moreover, unless someone has the book he can't vouch for them either: this book is not accessible by Internet. That often happens with authoritative current references. If anyone has the book and can verify those Diringer page numbers I would appreciate that. This editor apparently does not know English as a first language. I suspected as much when he attempted to parody good English obviously without the judgement. Sorry, my friend, maybe you are fluent in spoken English - keep on working on the written. Eventually it will happen. You do need to get in an English-speaking environment, no matter how embarassing. Meanwhile if someone could check out the refs on this reprint available mainly in India that would be nice. Thanks. Dave ( talk) 13:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
Name_of_Argentina claims that argentum comes from ἀργήντος. Is that correct? -- Espoo ( talk) 06:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The light green, easternmost part of the map that is modern Iran was never taken over by the Romans and it was also the core of the Iranian(Parthian/Sassanid Dynasty) Empire and culture. Middle Persian, Parthian, Old Azeri, and local Iranian languages were spoken there. Can someone please put a better map instead or atleast teach me how to replace images on Wikipedia? ( Kaveh94 ( talk) 01:19, 23 November 2010 (UTC))
"Other branches, known as Italic languages, are attested in documents surviving from early Italy, but were assimilated during the Roman Republic. The one possible exception is Venetic, the language of the people who settled Venetia, who in Roman times spoke their language in parallel with Latin." Is there any reason to think that Venetic survived in any way? Nothing that I have ever seen suggests this, and if I recall correctly, it's not exactly clear whether Venetic was Italic or not. If the editor who put this up means that Venetic may have spoken during Imperial Roman times, I'd like to see a reference. I'd especially like to see it if the editor who put this up means that Venetic was spoken after Roman times, e.g. as Romance may have developing. Some of the languages of the peninsula did survive to be spoken in late Republican times, at least marginally (I think of the emperor Claudius's claim to be the last person able to speak Etruscan, though Etruscan of course is not Italic), but the statement here is unclear and needs citation. Wabbott9 ( talk) 03:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Since when were dark and light el distinct phonemes? — kwami ( talk) 06:01, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
I've removed the "Alternative theories on the origin of Latin" section. The only alternative theory it gives is based on M. Harper's The Secret History of the English Language, which is a bizarre fringe theory, not taken seriously in the field. You can read some reactions to it here and here. In any case, it's far too fringe for this article. garik ( talk) 04:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Shouldn't this be called Latin Language because other topics are called the something language 92.30.195.42 ( talk) 19:45, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be a mini-edit struggle going on about calling Latin a "Indo-European" vs. "European" language between Erutuon and 212.3.13.219. I've advised the IP to discuss the matter here before further changes. As a reminder, if you make a change that gets reverted, no matter how simple it may seem to you, please discuss it here on the talk page. Wabbott9 ( talk) 22:43, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
The claim that letter z was not originally used and was introduced for transcription of Greek words, though cited from a scholar is false. I am not a latinist but as I wrote something on Roman religion and I also remember it from my studies it was used since archaic times in the Carmen Saliare: "Cozeulodorieso..." Aldrasto11 ( talk) 09:12, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I am a latin teacher, graduated in University of Venice and with a PhD in etimolgy of latin language. I've never heard or read about a locative case. It is "included" in genitive or ablative. If you really find out a grammar textbook or any other written source for this, please add it in the article. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.45.34.169 ( talk) 11:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
The example of domi clearly indicates that the locative is a separate case although admittedly restricted to a few specific uses.-- rossb ( talk) 21:31, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
"In terms of vocabulary, however, Latin tends to preserve the original forms of many Indo-European roots. Compared to other Indo-European languages of antiquity, such as Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, the word forms in the Classical era are far more reflective of their etyma. citation needed Languages such as Sanskrit, however, tend to be more conservative with regards to grammar. citation needed"
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce to you a concept from linguistics, which may help you to cope with the often confusing different approaches to Latin morphology, the formation of words. I apologize in advance for speaking so patronizingly. It is obvious none of you know the concept or this issue would never have come up. While I appreciate so great an interest in the Latin language on the part of the general public, I must say, it might have been better if you had had some Latin before you decided to write an encyclopedia article on it. Stulti ingrediuntur ....
Let me approach the topic the way you have been approaching it. Someone refers to the locative case. Someone else says, Oh that is not really a full case. Yes it is. No it isn;t. Yes it is. No it isn;t. I'm changing it back. No you aren;t. Ladies and gentlemen, this approach is not PRODUCTIVE! Productivity is when you start from known objects and put them together to form a third object in which the two components are still visible and effective. You're not forming anything here but dissent and delay. Garbage in equals garbage out. In linguistics if you form a meaningful utterance (morpheme) by putting together two or more other meaningful utterances, you have produced an utterance. The important point is, they mean something independently, giving them a certain universality. Take, for example, English Proto-. Not a complete word, but it means something by itself. You can combine it with any English word whatsever to form a produced, meaningful word, even if that production is a neologism. Each element retains its meaning. In contrast, if the linguistically unsophisticated speaker cannot disassemble the word into meaningful components and put those components together in new and creative ways, the word is not produced, it is learned. Names are a good example. How many people know what their name originally meant? And yet, chances are, it was once a produced word.
Latin inflection, or turning the word through all its different forms, is for the most part production. The meanings of the case endings are known. Let us take -ae, the first declension plural. The speaker can put -ae on any first declension word he pleases, even on words that are not nouns, to form a plural nomintive noun (or adjective. He knows that -ae is a pluralizer (I just produced that word and you understood it). These universal productive endings are characteristic of five cases. Now let's take the locative or the vocative. A few words have an ending that marks the word as a locative or vocative. However, those ending are NOT universal. You can;t take them off the words in which they occur and put them on anywhere. For the most part locatives do not differ from genitives and you have to LEARN or deduce from the context which they are. If you can figure it out, it is produced. If you have to know it, it is learned.
So there you have it. Some texts present the locative and vocative as different cases based on the few instances of different endings. Other point out that they are remnants of cases that once existed but are not universal cases. As another example, many adverbs (which are mainly uninflected) were originally ablative cases, in which case the ablative is often called the adverbial case. The concept of "merge" is used. There once was an instrumental case. In Latin it became non-different from the ablative, while in other languages it did not. Those latter produce their instrumentals; Latin speakers learn theirs, or rely on context. It seems clear that the simpler these inflected languages get, the more they have to rely on syntactical structures = word order, phraseology and the like.
So there it is - what do you want to do? I'm the main contributor on the article. If you don't like it, too bad. But you see, my contributions are not really original contributions. I've only been trying to correct the errors I saw. So, I do not take responsibility for this article. Much of what I corrected was put back or rewritten again by Latin theorists with little or no Latin at their command. Bad idea. You persist when you are right, not when you are wrong, but the problem is to tell the diff. Tough job. I've been asked to clarify production. OK. I don't have time right now to wrestle through the whole thing again. What I suggest is, you editors need to keep an open mind and also do some work. Needs references. Now that you have brought this to my attention I perceive a need to go over it again so I will put it on my list. Just a couple of ground rules. If you are going to argue, know enough to have something to argue about. I'll be back when you've given up on the contention. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Dave ( talk) 00:58, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
This organization has gotten out of control. For example, there is an outline in the intro, but things do not follow the outline. I'm going to reorganize that a bit. We don't need the outline. I put it in originally but it does not now fit. Dave ( talk) 13:53, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
The linguistic level attempted (or attempts) to be way beyond the average reader. The same generally is true of other linguistics articles. You will find that many of them are so tagged. I've seen some simply marked as "incomprehensible." To my way of thinking, and maybe you disagree, we are not, like sophomores, trying to dazzle with the brilliance of our linguistics knowledge, only trying to present standard concepts. In fact that is the better approach. We don't have the space for advanced linguistics presentations in articles such as this. People want to know about Latin in language they might understand if they try. I've tried to ignore this fancy and fanciful approach, and this has kept me off many basic language articles, but I can't, really. Some of this stuff has to go. Naturally I don't think we always have to be at the elementary level, no. We want to encourage the reader to educate himself further. But, when I look at the more detailed material I find it shot through with bad errors. This is disappointing, because it means that either the original editor did not know what he was talking about, and no one knows enough to see that, or subsequent editors did not know enough to leave his material alone. We need a change for the better here. I'm adding some explanations, trying to correct the errors, and dropping the incomprehensible pseudo-technical quasi-write-ups. Oh, by the way, graphemes get the angle brackets, phonemes get the slashes, and phonetic transcriptions get the square brackets, please. Thanks. Dave ( talk) 11:54, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
I would be reluctant to go as fare as pseudo linguistics, but I think the grammar summary as written could use some improvement. The biggest problem is that it is a poor summary of the more expended Latin Grammar section. where the terms synthetic, fusional language; linguistic typology; objective semantic element; marker; affixing and infixing; prefixing and suffixing do not appear at all. Nor is the preceding terminology sufficiently integrated innto the grammatical summary in this article. So we're left without a basic understanding of for example: can Latin nouns be marked by gender through declension, can adjectives? Can adjectives serve as abstract nous. Which markers are productive. In what ways is Latin similar to other Indo-European languages contemporary with it. In what ways is it different? How about for world languages as a whole? From my perspective it's not that the more advanced linguistic technique are uninteresting or pseudo-science, but that there is a much wider spectrum of opinion, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rettkent ( talk • contribs) 10:46, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
This is a pretty good list of tools carefully assembled by someone. Things change. The "Latin Composition Tool" is not that, but is a blank screen identified only as "Rubicon" with one useless tip to nothing, as nothing can be entered and there is no explanation of why anyone would want to enter anything. Dead Internet space. Waste of time and money. if it ever comes back as a Latin Composition tool, by all means put it back in the list. Dave ( talk) 09:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Shalom. Thanks for the help. I have to do the linguistic polishing, though. For example, /v/ is not the same as consonantal /u/, and we never use v when we mean u, although they often didn't keep the graphic distinction. We do. It is nice to know someone notices. I will be working my way through the rest of the article. Shouldn't take too long. I'm getting sick of it already, but I refuse to jump out of it again. Dave ( talk) 19:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
You changed the consonantal u write-up to mention upper case and lower case graphemes. Classical Latin had no lower case. "Case" is a term taken from the printing business, obviously irrelevant, no matter what the Vindolanda tablets say. We have an article, Roman cursive. There it explains about the majuscule and miniscule cursive. Very good, and these may be the very kernal of incipient upper and lower case, but the problem is, the miniscule is not in the classical period either. There is not an equivalence, upper=majuscule, lower=miniscule. In the classical period, the alphabet contained only capital letters. A second problem is, you present the v as though it were an elective alternative of u. Not so. V was the main form of /w/, and they remembered when v was used and when u was used. Archaic Latin is a little different in that regard and so are the other Italic dialects, but this is classical. And finally, you have put in a "pseudo-reference." This is not a reference. Who, besides you, says that? A reference is not an additional editorial comment, but is a source of information. Where did you get that information? You can use blue links in lieu of refs, but so far the Roman cursive article does not support your statement. I'm going to revert ths for now pending a genuine reference. Also that whole upper-case/lower-case thing would have to be introduced, because, as far as we know now in the article, there is only majuscule and capitals. I would ask, from now on, please start giving refs, whether blue links or notes citing encyclopedic material. I think the article's existing refs can serve as a model for you of how it is done. By the way, you can request refs of me also. Thanks. Dave ( talk) 11:27, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
All right. That's fine. I've been shooting for simplification so the reader can understand it, but without denuding it of essential detail. I think this time you hit the nail on the head, so I'm going on. Can't spend the whole day on this. We have other isssues to discuss I am sure. Coming down the road, can you find a ref on your version of the vowel triangle? I was going to use Buck for mine. Also, since we did not use IPA transcriptions in the consonant table, but put them in the tabularized notes, I think we should do the same with the vowel triangle, restoring the macrons. English uses the macrons. If you don't see me right away, I'm doing something else, but I am trying to be dedicated to getting a good-looking and correct article here sometime this year, so I will be sticking with it. I think there should be a section on length so I am working on that. We do have those two paragraphs following the consonant note table. Ciao (or shalom, whichever). Dave ( talk) 13:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
The presentation of 4th principle part is off the beaten track. The supine is not a regular 4th principle part, the participle is. The supine is a specialized and somewhat rare construct that should be treated along with gerunds, gerundives, passive periphrastics, future infinitives, defective verbs and all that good stuff. We aren't handling it here in this intro, so I'm simplifying it out. Did you know that Latin grammar takes a whole book (at least one) to present? We don't want to get into that here. Usually you try to learn it in a course of composition. For an intro, we've already given them more than most intros do, and undoubtedly more than they want to know. If they already know it, they wouldn't read this part of the the article anyway. Dave ( talk) 16:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Although it is considered a dead language... By which scholars or which institution? Latin knows an estimated of 10.000 speakers worldwide, including children who actually learned the language from their parents. The Ciceronian Latin evolved in to the Romance languages we know today rather than abruptly coming to an end. It is true that we do not know how Cicero pronounced his day-to-day sentences, but there has always existed a tradition of Latin speakers right up until our days (although the Latin spoken during the darker middle ages wasn't exactly Ciceronian...). Sources on all this are abundant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Artaynte ( talk • contribs) 20:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
As vernacular Latin was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to expect that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically.
A bit of pedantry perhaps, but there would have been good reason to expect that Vulgar Latin would have stayed uniform geographically during the period of the Roman empire. (which it didn't). In the Eastern half of the empire Greek, rather than splitting up became unified and all the classical dialects where mostly leveled, even as the common language and the literary language grow further apart, and in spite of considerable political disunity in the Hellenic period up until the the territories in which Greek was spoken where finally acquired by the Roman empire. In light of this one could have expected Latin to have been at least as uniform as it had the full weight of the empire behind it. Yet even from a very early period the Vulgar Latin of acquired provinces began to diverge with that spoken in Rome and with each other. There are a large number of reasons why this might have been the case: Greek speaking provinces were perhaps more mobile, being on the Mediterranean, and comprising of a large merchant shipping class. Latin penetrated further into the lower classes than Greek did, perhaps making the spoken language less conservative, etc.
But in any case, it's a rather interesting question, and the article seems to imply there's no question at all.
Rettkent ( talk) 20:46, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
The first two paragraphs of the article are dynamic and really well-written: the best introduction to the topic of Latin one could hope for, really. Then the third paragraph... feels overly specific for the introduction, which after all is meant solely as an introduction to the topic, not a place for specifics. Obviously the information in the third paragraph is valid for this article, but it seems to me it should be placed in the appropriate section below. The first two paragraphs, in my opinion, stand on their own as a worthy introduction to the topic. Moncrief ( talk) 20:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm working on a new article on Volubilis in my user space. I'd be grateful if someone could help with translating an inscription - see User:Prioryman/Volubilis#Triumphal arch. Prioryman ( talk) 10:07, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Is there enough evidence for the use of alternate scripts for Latin? I mean, the Franks Casket has some Latin text rendered with runes. Has been other relevant examples of rendering Latin with, say, Greek, Arabic, Etruscan, Hebrew or Cyrillic letters? -- Error ( talk) 02:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi :dou
Bye : yay a — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.25.113.211 ( talk) 19:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
Hello:
I dispute that quattuor is disyllabic in verse, as this article states under "Phonology." It is trisyllabic in each of the following examples:
"Sis bonus o felixque tuis! En quattuor aras" (Vergil, Eclogues V:65)
"quattuor in partes certamina quattuor addit" (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI:85)
"voce, modo hac, resonat quae chordis quattuor ima" (Horace, Satires I:3:8) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raskolnikov 31 ( talk • contribs) 23:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
This article barely has any citations and reads like an essay. Half of the old complaints on this page are that is reads too much like a linguistics paper and is incomprehensible to the layman; apparently in an effort to make it more understandable to the average reader, the practice of writing in any sort of academic fashion and... you know... actually citing sources for massive chunks of this article was cast aside. Nick.anderegg ( talk) 21:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
The intro states that "Although it is considered a dead language, many modern languages (the Romance languages) are in fact living continuations of this language." Isn't this actually quite debatable, given that the Romance languages appear derived from Vulgar Latin, and not the Classical form? We don't exactly know how different Vulgar and Classical Latin were. (To say nothing of the fact that no Romance language could be considered mutually intelligible with Classical Latin.) Funnyhat ( talk) 21:20, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
I thought it might be nice to have an English translation of the example text given in the article. I just finished mine and it took me close to an hour! In any case, I'm sure the article was written by a Latin scholar, and people might like to see what's said in the paragraph from Caesar. It's up to you though!
Thanks...
70.72.45.131 ( talk) 23:55, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
(Apologies; this is not really the function of an article talk page...) There is a question at Talk:Ein_Karem#Saewulf that could benefit from someone fluent in medieval Latin. Thanks. Zero talk 12:43, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
There's this sentence in the article: "The extensive use of elements from vernacular speech by the earliest authors and inscriptions of the Roman Republic make it clear that the original, unwritten language of the Roman Kingdom was an only partially deducible[CLARIFICATION NEEDED] colloquial form, the predecessor to Vulgar Latin. "
Perhaps "deducible" in this case means: (only partially) "reconstructible" by us today. Or in other words no one can know for sure how exactly people used to speak in the Roman Kingdom.
Since it is just a layman's common sense, I do not dare to tamper with the article, leave it to someone who is sure about being able to decide whether it is right. 79.130.85.250 ( talk) 10:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
There is no mention of diphthongs! Worse still, the info in Help: IPA for Latin, e.g. /aj/, is incorrect according to Latin spelling and pronunciation (/ae̯/). That info in turn is unsourced but correct according to a reliable source, as explained on the talk page of that article by the linguist Florian Blaschke, who however uses slightly different symbols (e.g. /ae/). Here is a quote from that article's talk page:
ae was indeed pronounced [ae] in Classical Latin, much like English eye, and Caesar was pronounced [kaesar], much like German Kaiser. This would at least be the educated urban pronunciation. In rural speech, the monophthongisation to [ɛː] is already found in the Old Latin period, in the 2nd century BC, probably under Umbrian influence, although it is only by the 1st century AD that the monophthongal pronunciation is apparently fully established in popular speech (as attested by the Pompejan inscriptions). Proto-Romance also must have had the monophthongal pronunciation, but it was certainly considered nonstandard (rustic or provincial) by the urban elites. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 14:19, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
- @ Florian Blaschke:, if you can find sources for this, could you correct the article? It currently says ae was /aj/, which seems a bit unlikely to me as well. CodeCat ( talk) 00:02, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- My source for this is Meiser's Historische Laut- und Formenlehre des Lateinischen, but the article does not substantially contradict his account. The pronunciation in the Archaic/Old Latin period was /aj/, in the Classical period /ae/ (with lowered second element) and in the post-Classical period it was a monophthong /ɛː/. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk)
The German Wikipedia, which is normally much more reliable than the English one, claims that the pronunciation of "ai" was /aε/, but doesn't provide a source. -- Espoo ( talk) 08:11, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Wiktionary is even more chaotic. Just looking at the first few words beginning with "ae", we find /ai/, /aɪ/, and /ae̯ / in addition to the English WP's (incorrect) "official" IPA transcription /aj/ and Wiktionary's (almost correct) official and confusing "official" IPA transcription, which gives both [ae] and [ai] without any clarification:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aestas, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aeternitas, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aetas, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aedificium
-- Espoo ( talk) 10:48, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
I posted in WikiProject Latin on the use of small caps in Latin spelling and pronunciation. If you've got an opinion on whether they should be used or not, head over there. — Eru· tuon 04:41, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
I've removed some information about Latin's official status. The first sentence seemed to add nothing and the second was out of place in the infobox. See the edit here
Let me know what you think Catobonus ( talk) 20:05, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
In the third paragraph of the main article, would it be clear enough, or at least more clear if the sentence read "The extensive use of elements from vernacular speech by the earliest authors and inscriptions of the Roman Republic make it clear that Latin is a synthetic Language which is why spoken Latin is an only partially deducible colloquial form which is why it can be said that Latin does not exactly have an original spoken only, or unwritten beginning. This being the predecessor of Vulgar Latin." - Dirtclustit ( talk) 23:17, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
http://vk.com/latinapopacanski — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.104.198.5 ( talk) 07:18, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
See the External Links, right side there is a link to the Latin Wikipedia. Could a link to the Wikipedia Latin article, which is written in Latin, be written in the article? https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Latina I think many readers do not know(I did not) that if an article exists in other languages, the article in another language is in the Language list on the left vertical sidebar. Jcardazzi ( talk) 18:10, 26 April 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi
I saw Latin has its own Encyclopedia. I did not know the sidebar was to get to other languages of the article being read, I thought it was just a list of other language Encyclopedias. I asked Wikipedia if they could rename the Language title to a more explanatory phrase. Jcardazzi ( talk) 23:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi
In the external Links section, on the right I see, there is already a Link to the Latin Wikipedia. Jcardazzi ( talk) 23:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)jcardazzi
The result of the move request was: not moved. Jenks24 ( talk) 10:43, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
– Per this discussion. Shhhhwwww!! ( talk) 00:31, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
I noticed that ecclesiastical records have not been mentioned in this article. In Europe and the United States of America, some ministers recorded religious sacraments or ordinances in Latin—even after regional languages had become established. This custom persisted into the 1900s. I added a paragraph under "Early Modern Latin," in order to provide readers with more information. If you have any feedback on the information, let me know.
Bbdavies ( talk) 21:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
This
edit request to
Latin has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
In the phonology section of the article, the letter "v" is not located in the IPA chart. Though I would not call myself an expert of the Latin language, I seem to remember quotes such as "veni, vidi, vici" that are both Latin and contain the voiced labiodental non-sibilant fricative. Yeuxiveaux ( talk) 05:03, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
The linked word "Latin" in the following phrase only leads back to this very same page.
"According to Roman Mythology, Latin was established by a tribal people..."
-- 23.119.204.117 ( talk) 17:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
There is no information regarding natural language processing tools in the language tools section. I added a link and a brief description regarding the "classic language toolkit" package to this section JonathanSchoots ( talk) 22:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Some recent 'edits' or 'revisions' show the need to ban/block anonymous 'contributors'. Peter Horn User talk 10:53, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
The item Regulated by in the infobox is not correct. It is unclear to me that this is a useful field for any language except arguably French. At any rate, the PAL is not a regulatory agency and should not be listed as such. Rwflammang ( talk) 19:03, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
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Official status
Latin was or is the official language of European states:
- Holy See – used in the diocese, with Italian being the official language of Vatican City
- Hungary - Latin was the sole official language of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11th century to the mid 19th century, when it was replaced by Hungarian in 1844. The best known Latin language poet originating from Hungary was Janus Pannonius.
- Croatia – Latin was the official language of Croatian Parliament (Sabor) from the 13th to the 19th century (1847). The oldest preserved records of the parliamentary sessions (Congregatio Regni totius Sclavonie generalis) – held in Zagreb (Zagabria), Croatia – date from 19 April 1273. An extensive Croatian Latin literature exists.
- Poland – officially recognised and widely used [1][2][3][4] between the 10th and 18th centuries, commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility. [1]
I feel that this section is unnecessary. Latin has been the official language of lots more countries, but why only list those ones? – Nixinova ⟨ T| C⟩ 01:08, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
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The Greek name for the Jewish Messiah transliterated into English becomes 'Iesous' or 'Joshua'. On the placard written by Pontius Pilate placed on the Cross was 'IESVS' in Classical Latin. This became 'Iesvs', then 'Iesus' in the 1611 King James Bible, then 'Jesus' in the 1629 1st revised KJV. Y'shua is how Messianic Jews have written his name since the 1960s. GOD=7_4, Jewish=74=J10+E5+W23+I9+S19+H8, Messiah=74, Y'shua=74, Iesous=73/88, Joshua=74, IESVS=74, Jesus=74=J10+E5+S19+U21+S19, placards=74, Cross=74=C3+R18+O15+S19+S19. 2601:589:4700:2390:C530:8663:9D18:9179 ( talk) 20:06, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
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It would be if this article contained a section on the case system and listed the six cases in Latin in the section on Latin grammar. Vorbee ( talk) 16:58, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Due to our common saying of classical Graeco-Roman culture, many people seem to assume that (Old) Latin and Koine Greek would be about as close to each other as English and Norwegian, or even English and Scots. I'd therefore suggest to add a small section comparing Latin and Greek, noting that they don't even belong to the same language families (Italo-Celtic vs. Balkano-Illyrian) and, not counting loanwords from about the late Republic onwards, are basically about as close to each other as they are to Sanskrit. The bulk of similarities readily notable to laypeople is due to scholarly loanwords from about the late Republic on. What else is there is an earlier spurious, hardly tangible, and speculative Hellenic substrate particularly in Southern Italic dialects such as Oscan, Sidicini, Pre-Samnite, and Sice due to early Hellenic colonization. Finally, what such a section would need would be a sourced percentage of how much of Old vs. Classical Latin vocabulary were scholarly Greek loanwords (one column) and has other Greek roots (second column) vs. native Italic vocabulary. -- 93.223.194.254 ( talk) 21:02, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
Why is this article named simply "Latin" instead of "Latin language", consistently with most articles on languages? Thanks, -- Checco ( talk) 10:04, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
It is true that Latin is a highly inflected language, as the introduction states, but many of the examples to demonstrate that were flawed.
First, the locative is not a case in Latin (at least not a productive case) as only about five nouns take it (by the time of Classical Latin, which is what this article deals with, as opposed to Old Latin and Proto-Italic, where there very much was a locative case). So I changed "seven noun cases" to "up to seven noun cases".
Second, the number of principal parts that a verb has has nothing to do with the level of inflection in the language. A principal part is not a grammatical feature (syntactically, morphologically, or otherwise); rather, principal parts are merely a helpful tool to help the Latin user inflect the verb in all of its forms. That is, principal parts are not evidence of inflection: tense, mood, aspect, voice, and agreement are. For this reason I removed "four principal parts" from the list of examples of high inflection. They do, of course, belong in the "Verbs" section, where they remain.
Third, Latin has only three tenses (past, present, future), not six. Pluperfect, Perfect, and Future perfect are not distinct tenses; they are just conflations of tense (past, present, and future, respectively) and aspect (perfect). Whether there are two or three aspects is not obvious, as the perfect forms can double as perfective, while the imperfective forms (imperfect, present, and future) are consistently imperfective in meaning (habitual, continuous, progressive, gnomic, etc.). In any case, the three tenses combine with the two formal aspects to create the six forms that some people would call "tenses", but, again, in reality these are just combinations of tense and aspect. And although there are only two aspects formally (forming the perfective-imperfective dichotomy), as I said, one of them (the perfective) can be also be used with perfect meaning, so there may in effect be three aspects.
Dylanvt ( talk) 14:40, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
The section on grammar as it stands currently is excessively detailed for a general introduction. It seems to me that details of grammar, such as the fact that some adjectives end in -er, should be left to the specific pages on grammar and conjugation. Kanjuzi ( talk) 09:06, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
Not clear why Greek is being mentioned here, particularly.
In how many primary schools is Latin taught? Does this give a misleading impression? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.190.155.162 ( talk) 02:09, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
The history section is a little disappointing. I was hoping for the Sanskrit origins, traces in Anatolia, etc. Can some expert expand this section, please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:336F:DF00:C5F2:414:4D07:24B2 ( talk) 09:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
This gives the impression that Roman Catholic masses are still held in Latin. They aren't. The Roman Catholic church switched to vernacular after the second Vatican council (1965). -- Ligneus ( talk) 12:10, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
I know we have numerous SME linguists on board that can address this! SOS!!! Mayday! 50.111.51.247 ( talk) 04:00, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
The external links seems to be some auto promoted, like the Discord server or the courses. -- The typos fixer ( talk) 21:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Hello, everyone. I believe that the section listing the principle parts of verbs is too detailed for an overview of the language. It is even more detailed than the Latin conjugation#Principal parts section. I advocate removing that list in favor of a simple mention of the fact that verbs have four principal parts, with a link to this page and perhaps an explanation of what the principle parts are for (used to form the inflected forms of the verb). Some of the overly detailed content can be moved to the Latin conjugation#Principal parts page if necessary. I would be happy to make these changes, but would like verification first that this is a reasonable change since I am new to Wikipedia and don't want to do dumb things. Thanks! TheBlueComb ( talk) 17:26, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Hi there, I thought I would remark that the "modern Latin speaker" video presented by Wikitongues is OK, if a bit stilted; but there are many, many better examples of modern Latin speakers or conversationalists than this, including some already hosted on Wikimedia. Would anyone mind if I replaced it? See Wikimedia Commons for a full selection; I would probably opt for this video, as it has English and Latin subtitles, and features two quite obviously fluent speakers showing reasonably natural conversational interactions.
Jim Killock (talk) 09:50, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
This page has been translated into Māori and the translated page needs to be connected: https://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reo_R%C4%81tini?venotify=created Thomas Norren ( talk) 03:50, 22 September 2022 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there exits crazy parents that teach their children Latin as their first language. There also exist ~1000 having Esperanto as their native language, so I expect there also will be more than 100 native Latin Speakers on the world. — Johannes Kalliauer - contrib. 00:34, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
I never spoke latin language but i don't no how to 71.28.254.156 ( talk) 05:19, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
QUESTION - If possible, what is a Latin phrase for the following very popular Wikipedia quote by co-founder Jimmy Wales => " We Help The Internet Not Suck" - may help improve presentation of a "Wikipedia Overview" effort (see below for current version) - Suggested Latin Translations and/or Comments Welcome - Thanks in advance for your help with this - and - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan ( talk) 12:23, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
(Overview by Dr. Dennis Bogdan)WIKIPEDIA – The 5th most popular site on the Internet, was launched on January 15, 2001 ( 1st edit by co-founder Jimmy Wales), is currently published in over 300 languages, has been freely available worldwide for 23 years, 3 months and 16 days – Wikipedia has 62,910,538 total articles (6,818,898 in English (stats); 251,095 in Simple English) – * VITAL ARTICLES*: 10– 100– 1000; * BEST ARTICLES*: 50,376; * POPULAR ARTICLES*: Last 24 hours; Last Week: Top25; Top5000 – and has (for the English version) 859 administrators and 122,676 active editors (includes over 1,400 stated PhDs and over 130 MDs) – as of 02:51, May 1, 2024 (UTC).
- Wikipedia => Is "over 90 times" the size of Encyclopedia Britannica (2021). ( calc)
- Wikipedia => Is encoded in synthetic DNA strands (2019).
- Wikipedia => Is laser-etched in glass on the Moon (2019).
- Wikipedia => Is available as 7,473 Books for $500,000 (2015).
- Wikipedia => Is honored with a Monument (2014).
- Wikipedia => Is the name of an Asteroid (2013).
- Wikipedia => "Is one of the Jewels in the internet’s crown."
- Wikipedia => "Nos Auxilium Facere Interrete Non Lactaverunt."
- Wikipedia => "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's what we're doing."
Drbogdan ( talk) 12:23, 23 July 2023 (UTC)