What is Latin?

Latin is the language of the Latin people who lived in Rome in Apennine Peninsula more than 2000 years ago. Later, this nation conquered most of Europe and parts of the Middle East and established the Roman Empire. Latin became the official language of the whole Roman Empire.

With the development and progress of history, the Roman Empire disintegrated and many independent countries were formed. These independent countries combined local dialects on the basis of Latin and formed their own languages. For example, the languages of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania and other countries have many similarities, and they are often called Latin family, which is the reason.

(Photo: Logo engraved with ancient Latin)

Latin was originally the dialect of Latium (Italian for Lazio) in central Italy. Later, due to the expansion of the Roman Empire, Latin spread widely in the Empire and became the official language. After Christianity spread widely in Europe, Latin became more influential. From the Middle Ages in Europe to the beginning of the 20th century, Roman Catholicism was the common language, and most academic papers were written in Latin. Although only the Vatican still uses Latin, some academic words or articles, such as the naming rules of biological taxonomy, still use Latin.

Vatican in the city

The classical Chinese used by Emperor Augustus of the Roman Empire was called "latina classica", and the vernacular Chinese used by the people in the 2nd-6th century was called "vulgar Latin". In the Middle Ages, some "romantics" were derived from popular Latin (including central romantics: French, Italian, Sardinian dialect, Catalan; Western romance: Spanish, Portuguese; Romance with the East: Romania. /kloc-After the 6th century, the influence of Spain and Portugal spread all over Central and South America, so Central and South America was also called "Latin America".

The difference between Romance and Latin is that Romance has lost the grammatical inflections of many words, especially nouns, and has completely lost them (except some pronouns). The inflectional changes of nouns still remain in Romanian.

trait

Latin is a comprehensive language, and the complicated inflectional system constitutes the main part of Latin grammar. These changes are usually achieved by adding suffixes (external inflections) at the end of words or changing consonants or vowels (internal inflections) at the stem. For nouns, adjectives and pronouns, this change is called "downward inclination", and for verbs, this change is called "upward inclination".

noun

Generally, every noun has a difference of six cases; You can have seven more or two less. The seven situations of nouns are:

* "nominative case" (indicating subject or predicative)

* "possessive case" (indicating all relations, expressed in English possessive case)

* "He Ge" (indicating indirect object or other indirect grammatical meaning)

* "objective case" (meaning direct object, also called objective case or objective case)

* "Duoge" (used with some prepositions, or used alone, indicating tools and means)

* "Hugue" (used to address someone)

* "Orientation grid" (used for some specific words to express orientation)

Because the change of case has expressed the grammatical relationship between noun verbs in Latin, the Latin word order is highly free and does not follow the subject-predicate-object format. For example, Chinese, English and French can only have one word order, that is, subject, predicate and object. But in Latin, there can be six word orders, namely:

Pat Ahmad Filioud.

Father Filioud Ahmad.

Filioud Ahmad Pate.

Filioud Pate Ahmad.

Ahmad Pate Filioud.

Ahmad Filioud Pate.

The above six sentences have the same meaning. If you want to express "son loves father", you need to make a change. There are six word orders to express this sentence: Filioud Patrum Ahmad. Other word orders are omitted.

Although word order is not important to Latin, the most commonly used word order in Latin is subject-object predicate structure.

There are five Latin nouns and two Latin adjectives, each of which distinguishes the above six situations in different ways. Nouns are determined by singular possessive suffixes.

verb

Verbs are different in person, number, tense, mood (direct, imaginary, imperative) and state (active, passive). Except for some irregular verbs, Latin verbs have four different inflections.

Regular verbs are mostly inflected by infinitive suffix: the infinitive suffix of the first inflectional method is "-āre", the second inflectional method is "-ēre", the third inflectional method is "-ere" and the fourth inflectional method is "-and re".

The relationship between Latin and English

English and Latin belong to the same language family (Indo-European family) but different language families (English belongs to Germanic family and Latin belongs to Italian family), so they are grammatically different. Modern English writers try to apply Latin grammar to English, for example, the rule of forbidding adverbs between to and verbs, but they can't be successfully applied to everyday language. However, more than half of English words come from Latin. Many English words have evolved from Roman languages such as French or Italian. These Roman languages have evolved from Latin (for example, Latin: Merc → French: Merci → English: Mercy), while others have evolved directly from Latin (for example, Latin: serēnus → English: serene). Some of them are adopted directly without change (for example, Latin: lārva → English: Larva), which shows that a considerable number of English words have evolved from Latin. In addition, some Latin words are derived from Greek (for example, Greek: Schǒ l ē→ Latin: Schǒ la → old English: Scūl→ modern English: school). The use of so many foreign words in English really enriches the monotonous English vocabulary world.

Many people are used to calling A-Z "English alphabet", but it should be called "Latin alphabet" or "Roman alphabet". Because the 26 letters A-Z in English are all Latin letters.

The following is a comparative list of some special nouns in Latin and English, showing the influence of Latin on English:

English-English translation Latin translation

January symbolizes the god of end and beginning.

Febris has a fever in February (February is the season that is easy to catch a cold)

The god of war in Mars mythology.

May May Maya, the God of Spring

I am not the Queen of God in June; God of fertility and women

July July Julius Caesar's name (G. Julius Caesar)

Auguste Auguste Auguste, king of ancient Rome

September September September September September Saite "Seven"

October October oct is not "eight"

November November November "Nine"

December tenth

Saturday Saturday Saturn, Saturnalia.

Mercury Mercury Mercury Mercury Mercury, Messenger (Mercury travels fastest around the sun)

Venus Venus Venus Venus Venus, the god of love and beauty (gold symbolizes beauty)

Mars Mars Mars myth, God of War (red symbolizes blood, and blood symbolizes war).

Jupiter Jupiter, the king of the gods (Jupiter is the largest)

Saturn Saturn Saturn Saturn Saturn, the father of Jupiter (Jupiter defeated Saturn; Jupiter is bigger than Saturn)

Neptune Neptune Poseidon (blue symbolizes the ocean)

Pluto Pluto is not Prouteau, Pluto (Pluto is farthest and darkest)

Aries Aries ram

Taurus Taurus bull

Gemini Gemini and twins

Cancer cancer

Leo Ole is not a lion.

Virgo Virgo Virgo is not a virgin.

Libra Libra Libra Libra

Scorpio Scorpio Scorpio is not a scorpion.

Sagittarius Sagittarius shooter

Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn: Capricorn.

Water bottle, water bottle, water bottle, water bottle.

Pisces Pisces Pisces [plural]

Note: April and Uranus come from Greek mythology.