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Oct 22, 2024 · During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes. Until the latter part of the 20th century its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.
- Romance languages - Religion, Culture, Latin | Britannica
Romance languages - Religion, Culture, Latin: With the...
- Romance languages - Religion, Culture, Latin | Britannica
Latin's relevance as a widely used working language ended around 1800, although examples of its productive use extend well into that century, and in the cases of the Catholic Church and Classical studies, continue to the present day.
- Overview
- The development of the Romance languages
With the spread of Christianity, Latin penetrated to new lands, and it was perhaps the cultivation of Latin in a “pure” form in Ireland, whence it was exported to England, that paved the way for an 8th-century reform of the language by Charlemagne. Conscious that current Latin usage was falling short of Classical Latin standards, Charlemagne invited Alcuin of York, a scholar and grammarian, to his court at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen); there Alcuin remained from 782 to 796, inspiring and guiding an intellectual renaissance. It was perhaps as a result of the revival of so-called purer Latin that vernacular texts began to appear, for it now became obvious that the vernacular and Latin were not the same language. Thus, in 813, just before Charlemagne’s death, the Council of Tours decreed that sermons should be delivered in rusticam Romanam linguam (“in the rustic Roman language”) to make them intelligible to the congregation.
Latin has remained the official language of the Roman Catholic Church and as such has been in constant use by most Romance speakers; it was only within the last half of the 20th century that church services began to be conducted in the vernacular. As the language of science and scholarship, Latin held sway until the 16th century, when, under the influence of the Reformation, nascent nationalism, and the invention of the printing press, it began to be replaced by modern languages. Nevertheless, in the West, along with the knowledge of Greek, the knowledge of Latin has remained a mark of the educated person throughout the centuries, although in the mid-20th century the teaching of classical languages in schools declined significantly.
The question of when Latin ended and Romance began, which has occupied scholars in the past, is largely a problem created by terminology. In some senses, modern Romance languages are regional varieties of one uniform set of speech patterns that resembles the Vulgar Latin of attested texts fairly closely—indeed, the analyses of generative phonologis...
Jan 18, 2024 · The fall of the Western Roman Empire around AD 476 marked the end of Classical Latin as a widely spoken language but it continued to be used in religious, scientific, legal fields well into the Middle Ages.
The invention of the designation “Hispanic” by the U.S. government in 1970 was an effort to identify individuals and groups who shared a common language, ethnicity, and cultural heritage.
May 17, 2017 · Ariel was used by the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó as the prototype of Latin American culture, capable of readapting the classical and humanistic values of Western culture, in precise opposition to Caliban who is instead held to embody the materialist spirit of North America.
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Sep 19, 2023 · The term Latin originates from a language – a dead one, in fact, since there are no native speakers of Latin anymore. This language spread due to the Roman Empire's expansion, evolving into what we know as the Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian.
