First, the language developed on the basis of local spoken forms and evolved into the modern Romance languages and dialects. Subsequent development of Latin continued in two ways. Augustine, however, in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, wrote good literary Late Latin. During the Classical and immediate post-Classical periods, numerous inscriptions provide the major source for spoken Latin, but, after the 3rd century ce, many texts in a popular style, usually called Vulgar Latin, were written. Spoken Latin continued to change, and it diverged more and more from the Classical norms in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Except for the i-stem and consonant stem declensional classes, which it combines into one group (listed in grammar books as the third declension), Latin kept distinct most of the declensional classes inherited from Indo-European.ĭuring the Classical period there were at least three types of Latin in use: Classical written Latin, Classical oratorical Latin, and the ordinary colloquial Latin used by the average speaker of the language. Latin of the Classical period had six regularly used cases in the declension of nouns and adjectives (nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative), with traces of a locative case in some declensional classes of nouns. Early Latin had a stress accent on the first syllable of a word, in contrast to the Latin of the republican and imperial periods, in which the accent fell on either the next or second to the last syllable of a word. It shows the preservation of full vowels in unstressed syllables-in contrast to the language in later times, which has reduced vowels. The oldest example of Latin extant, perhaps dating to the 7th century bce, consists of a four-word inscription in Greek characters on a fibula, or cloak pin. Until the latter part of the 20th century its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes.

The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire. 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. Latin language, Indo-European language in the Italic group and ancestral to the modern Romance languages.

During the 18th century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus simplified this practice by creating binomial nomenclature, whereby an organism is identified by genus and species names, both of which are Latinized words. 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.

Latin trainslation