Meanwhile, an Italian poet named Petrarch decides that plague-infested professors and anyone else who doesn't write the classical Latin used by Cicero is a moron.. 1400-1650 — During the
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include St Thomas "The Dumb Ox" Aquinas and
John "Dunce" Scotus, as well as Petrus Hispanus,
a pope who was killed when a ceiling collapsed
on him All learned writing is done in Latin, a
practice which persisted until the 20th century at
some fairly silly universities
Mid 14th century — The Black Death kills a lot of
people, including students, professors and other
people who live in crowded, unsanitary cities
This is bad for the educational system
Meanwhile, an Italian poet named Petrarch
decides that plague-infested professors and
anyone else who doesn't write the classical Latin
used by Cicero is a moron In fact, everyone
between Cicero and Petrarch was a moron in the
latter's opinion, so it was high time to have a
Renaissance and make fun of everything
medieval
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 Furthermore, as science develops,
Europeans find it useful to have a universal
Latinate terminology to facilitate international
research
up till 1900 — Almost everyone who goes to
college has to learn Latin, and most humanities
majors have to study Greek as well Many of the
Latin roots borrowed during the aureate diction
period have come to seem native and can be
used in forming new words
mid 1960s — The Catholic Church decides that
Latin is no longer the obligatory language of
Catholic liturgies Meanwhile, what with free love
and everything, most young people of the 60s
figure they have better things to do than learn
Latin
Today — Nobody speaks Latin well, and few
people can write it, but lots can read it Many of
them are tenured professors, so they'd be hard
to get rid of even if we wanted to
Latin Grammar
In Latin the syntactic role of a word is expressed
by declension generating a sentence that does not depend on word order
In Latin there is no indefinite article or definite article
On the noun tables there are usually 5 (sometimes 7) cases:
Nominative: indicates the subject of the sentence, or a predicate nominative
Vocative: case of direct address
Genitive: indicates possession (most of the time) Dative: indicates an indirect object
Accusative: indicates a direct object The accusative may also indicate the extent of time or space
Ablative: - the object of a preposition: He is inside the palace - time: At the tenth hour he died - means: He yelled with a great voice - agent of a passive verb: The cookie was thrown
by Cornelia across the room
Locative: used to describe the location of something
There are 5 declensions Most nouns in the 1st are feminine, most in the 2nd are masculine and neuter (usually distinguished by the m -us and n -um endings), 3rd can either be masculine, feminine, or neuter, 4th is either masculine or neuter, and 5th is usually feminine with a couple masculine
All adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in number, case and gender
Adjectives are either 1/2nd declension or 3rd declension In 1/2nd declensions, -a endings are treated as feminine and are declined like 1st declension nouns, and -us endings are treated as masculine, and -um endings are treated as neuter and both are declined like second declension nouns In 3rd declension adjectives, for masculine and feminine, most of the time there are no changes which are needed to be made to match gender as both masculine and feminine decline the same (make note that in the ablative usually you use an -i instead of -e as most 3rd declension adjectives are -i stemmed) Neuter has one important difference, as nominative and accusative in all declensions are
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the same (-um for 2nd etc.) and for plural
nominative and accusative have -a (all neuters in
all declensions do this as well)
Adjectives can also have comparative forms and
superlative forms Basically, you drop the ending
(-a, -us, -um) and place -ior to get the
comparative or add -issimus to make superlative
form
There are four conjugations in Latin A verb either
falls into one of these conjugations or is
considered irregular In Latin, a verb is defined by
its person, number, tense, mood and voice Each
verb has two stems - a present stem and a
perfect stem, to which various endings are added
to make individual forms of verbs
There are six tenses in Latin:
Present, indicates actions happening at the time
of speaking
Imperfect, describes actions which were going on
over a period of time
Future, used for actions which have not yet taken
place, but will do so at some point
Perfect, describes actions in the past which have
finished
Pluperfect, describes actions further in the past
Future Perfect, used for actions which will be
completed some time in the future
There are three moods:
Indicative, which states indisputable facts
Subjunctive, which is used for possibilities,
intentions, necessities etc
Imperative, used for commands
There are two voices:
Active, where the verb is done by the subject
Passive, where the verb is done to the subject
Latin Pronunciation Guide
Consonants
Consonants in Latin are basically pronounced in
the same way as in English, bar the following
exceptions
c - This is always pronounced hard - like a 'k', not
an 's'
g - Also a hard sound in Latin, pronounced as in
'great'
i - When before a vowel, it is a consonant and is pronounced like a 'y'
r - Roll your 'r's
t - Always pronounced hard in Latin, like 'time' not soft like 'lotion'
v - Pronounced like a 'w'
Vowels
Vowels can be pronounced either long or short
In English this affect isn't very noticeable, but in Latin, it's important to get right Additionally, long vowels should audibly be held for longer This is because Latin rhythm in poetry depends upon the length of syllables, instead of stresses
Short
a - Like the English 'car'
e - Like the English 'met'
i - Like the English 'skip'
o - Like the English 'for'
u - Like the English 'put'
Long
a - Like the English 'ha!'
e - Like the English 'they'
i - Like the English 'pea'
o - Like the English 'low'
u - Like the English 'true'
Diphthongs
Latin has three diphthongs (two vowel sounds pronounced as one syllable), ae, au, and ei
ae - Pronounced as the y in the English 'fly'
au - Pronounced as the ow in the English 'cow'
ei - Pronounced as the ay in the English 'day'
Stress Accent
Just as in English and other languages, certain syllables were stressed A general rule for working out where the stress should fall is the following:
If a word has only two syllables, the accent will fall on the first syllable eg, ámo, únus
If a word has more than two syllables The stress will fall on the second last syllable if that syllable contains a long or a short vowel followed by two consonants, eg amátis, deféssus;
Otherwise the stress will fall on the third last syllable, eg celériter, sollícitus
Ngô Đình Bảo Thoa