Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Latin was the first “World Language” of human history. As the language of the Roman Empire and then the Roman Catholic Church it has spread around the globe, and today well over a billion people speak a language derived from Latin as their first or second language (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.). Although there are no native speakers of Latin still alive, Latin has a cultural prestige matched by no other language in the West. In religion, in law, in medicine and in science, Latin terms and phrases are still employed on a daily basis. Latin's position in the modern world reflects its importance as the language of many of the most influential texts written between antiquity and the Early Modern period, from Virgil's Aeneid and Tacitus’ Annales through the works of Augustine and the church fathers, to the use of Latin by Newton, Milton and Spinoza. Despite Latin's enormous cultural significance, this is the first single volume companion to the Latin language, both enabling the reader to access reliable summaries of what is known about the structure and vocabulary of the language, and setting the language in its cultural milieu from its first appearance, in short inscriptions in the first half of the first millennium bce , to its use as a language of scholarship, of law and of the church in the modern period. Latin comes after Greek. The initial impetus for ... log in or subscribe to read full text