latin

Latin is an Italic language of the Indo-European family that originated in Latium, the region surrounding ancient Rome. It developed from Old Latin into Classical Latin, which flourished in literature and public life during the late Republic and early Empire, and into Vulgar Latin, the vernacular speech of Roman speakers. From Vulgar Latin, the Romance languages, including Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian, ultimately emerged.

Latin became the language of administration, law, science, and theology across the Roman world and beyond during the medieval and early modern periods. Medieval Latin varied by region but retained core grammar and vocabulary, serving as the common written medium in scholarship and ecclesiastical affairs. In the Renaissance, scholars revived and refined Classical Latin as a model for educated writing, and Latin remained the scholarly lingua franca across Europe for centuries.

Latin is highly inflected. Nouns are declined in five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative) and marked for gender and number. Verbs are conjugated across four regular and several irregular conjugations, with voices, moods, and complex tense forms built from stems, participles, and auxiliaries. Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in case, number, and gender. The language is written with the Latin alphabet, whose letters and spelling have varied over time.

Today, Latin has no native-speaking community but remains active in education, classical studies, and ecclesiastical contexts. It has profoundly influenced the vocabularies of many languages and contributes to science, medicine, law, and theology through terms and phrases. Latin continues as the official language of the Roman Catholic Church for liturgy and doctrinal writings and survives as a living subject of study in schools and universities worldwide.