Latin language
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- Key People:
- Erasmus St. Jerome John Amos Comenius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Nicholas Oresme
- Related Topics:
- de facto Vulgar Latin de jure annus horribilis carpe diem
What is the Latin language?
Why is Latin a dead language?
Why is Latin used for scientific taxonomy?
Latin language, Latin lingua Latina, Indo-European language in the Italic group and ancestral to the modern Romance languages. Originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River, Latin spread with the increase of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then throughout most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa. The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and ...(100 of 2193 words)