Language

The Latin language was originally brought about by the Indo-European people who had migrated to eastern and southern Italy towards the end of the Trojan War. It then evolved into Latin and was spoken mostly by the Romans in their city of Rome and the regions that surrounded it. The following are some of the different periods of literary Latin; the Early Period, the Golden Age, the Silver age and the Late Latin Period. Each of these periods changed Latin, and how later forms were added to the language.

Latin is a part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. It was influenced a great amount by the non-Indo-European Etruscan language, that came from central Italy, the Celtic tongues from northern Italy and especially by the Greek language.

Latin gradually began to spread through the entire western Mediterranean areas as more and more people came to Rome. There were more complicated reasons for this huge change. There was always a fight between the Latin languages and the Italic languages and the Social War of 90-88 BC, between Rome and the Italians. These fights were over an unspoken rule, stating that all of the different communities were allowed to speak different languages than their neighbors. In the end of the Social war, this rule went away, because of the new idea of political unity for the Italian people. And with this political unity, came the presentation of Latin as the new language for local, as well as federal business.

Ancient literary Latin can be divided into four periods. . .

• 240 to 70   BC included writings from Plautus, Ennius, and Terence.

• 70 BC to AD 14, was called the Golden Age. This period included writings from Livy, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Hoarse, and Ovid.

• 14 to 130 was known as the Silver Age. It was famous for striving for rhetorical elaborate, ornament, concise and epigrammatic expression.

• The end of the 2nd century to the end of the 6th century was the last period, the Late Latin Period. During this time, the Romans invaded the barbarian tribes. This changed the Latin language by bringing in a whole lot of unknown forms and idioms. This resulted in a sort of "corrupted" form of Latin, which was later called Lingua Romana, which is different from Lingua Latin.

Here are a few words that we learned in our Latin Class:

            Nouns:

                        Aqua' [Aquae f.] Water

                        Insula, [ Insulae f.] Island

                        Silva, [ Silvae f. ] Forest, Woods

                        Via, [ Viae f. ] Road, Way, Street

                        Puella, [ Puellae f. ] Girl

                        Vita, [Vitae f. ] Life

           Verbs:

                      Est is, there is, he/she/it is

                      Sunt are, there are, they are

                       Amo, Amare, [Amavi, Amatus ] Love, Like

          Adverb:

                      Non not

                    Cras  Tomorrow

         Conjunctions:

                     Et and

                     Sed but