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It was the dominant language of European learning, literature and academia through the middle ages, and in the early modern period.
Jan 18, 2024 · The history of Latin, also known as Lingua Latina, begins over 2500 years ago in a small region called Latium, near the Tiber River in central Italy. This was the birthplace of Rome and the Roman Empire, which would later influence much of Europe and other parts of the world.
on?that would ensure that Latin remained the official language of Western Europe. The Eastern part of the Empire had never given up Greek for Latin, and after the two halves of the Empire split away from each other, Latin became essentially a foreign language in the Greek speaking East. In the West, however, Latin became more entrenched,
Oct 22, 2024 · The Latin language is an Indo-European language in the Italic group and is ancestral to the modern Romance languages. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes.
- A “dead” language is one no longer learned as a first language or used in ordinary communication. Classical Latin, the language of Cicero and Virgi...
- Latin was the lingua franca of scientific work in the West during the Middle Ages, so Western scientists used Latin for naming species of organisms...
Mar 6, 2016 · Through the army and administrative framework of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout Europe, prompting Pliny the Elder in his Natural History to praise patriotically Rome’s ability to “draw together the discordant and wild languages of so many peoples” into “a shared form of speech.” After the fall of the Empire, newly harnessed ...
1400-1650 — During the Renaissance, which spreads from Italy to France and finally to England, people start reading Latin classical authors and bringing Latin words into their languages. In England, this is called "aureate diction" and is considered evidence of great learnedness.
The educational reforms initiated or pursued by Charlemagne in his Epistola de litteris colendis (Letter on the Cultivation of the Sciences), promulgated in about 785, and the Admonitio generalis (General Admonition) of 789 proved a crucial turning point in the history of Latin.
