Latin belongs to the Indo-European languages. Today it is one of the dead languages. But, unlike many of them, it has practical use, although quite limited. This language is actively used in many fields - in addition to Catholic rites, one can name biology, medicine and law. Books are translated into Latin, radio broadcasts are conducted in it, etc.
The Romans, who dominated many peoples and tribes, could not but influence their culture and, of course, their languages. The Roman Empire at its peak included most of Europe and parts of Africa and Asia. For some languages, this influence was decisive and they are considered descendants of Latin, but even those languages that have other roots would become an order of magnitude poorer if all Latin borrowings were removed from them. It is also worth noting that a significant part vocabulary and the writing of most European languages is rooted in Latin.
Latin had a special variety, Vulgar or Folk Latin, which differed from classical Latin and served as the spoken language in many provinces of the ever-expanding Roman Empire. It was this that became the basis for the Romance languages (from the Latin romanus - “Roman”) - Portuguese, Moldavian, Romanian and some others. By mixing with local dialects, Latin received impetus for the development of new branches.
One of the reasons for this was that the Roman conquest of other less developed peoples entailed the dominance of Latin in those areas where words native language lacked science, technology, medicine, etc. On initial period development, Romance languages did without writing and were considered common dialects.
At the same time, if the language was sufficiently developed, it could not be influenced too much and remain original, as happened with Greek.
Indirectly, other languages were influenced by Latin, such as. This was inevitable, since trade interactions took place between nations. In addition, the spread of Christianity also brought with it a whole layer of borrowings.
Besides for a long time Until the 18th century, Latin was in Europe not only the only language of science and education, but also the language of international communication. Without knowledge of Latin it was impossible to gain knowledge, read scientific works and the most famous literary works.
In the Russian language, many words also have their roots in Latin. For example, “animation” comes from the Latin root anima - “life”, vocals - from vox - “voice”, cabbage - from caput - “head”, etc. We also borrowed many everyday concepts from the Romans. Such, for example, as the names of months or the names of planets. And besides, in everyday speech we often use direct borrowings from Latin, such as incognito, status quo, et cetera, de facto, vice versa, etc.
Latin is so firmly rooted in so many languages and has become such an integral part of everyday communication and literature that the question of whether Latin is truly a dead language or whether it is alive remains an open question.
It still remains a mystery. However, the first historical account of the emergence of languages is given in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Babylon was a place where people lived in harmony and peace and spoke the same language. The inhabitants of Babylon decided to build a tower “high to the heavens... so as not to be scattered over the face of the earth,” thereby challenging God. As a result, God punished them and scattered them across the face of the earth and confused their languages. This, however, is all that we know about the origin of languages.
Do you know how many languages exist on planet Earth today? Apparently, in the world 2700 spoken languages And 7000 dialects. In Indonesia alone there are 365 different languages, while in Africa there are more than 1000. The most complex language The world's most popular language is the Basque language, spoken in North-West Spain and South-West France. Its main feature is that it is unlike any other language in the world and is classified as an isolated language. The self-name of the language is Euskara.
The youngest language is Afrikaans spoken in South Africa. One of the world's oldest languages, Aka-Bo or Bo, is now considered an extinct language as the last native speaker of Bo died on January 26, 2010, at the age of about 85. Bo is an ancient language once spoken in the Andaman Islands in India. The languages of the Andaman Islands are believed to have their origins in Africa, and some may even be as old as 70,000 years.
The Chinese language, or more precisely the Putonghua dialect, is the most widely spoken language in the world after English, and probably one of the most interesting and most complex. Among China's many other languages, Mandarin is by far the dominant one: it is spoken by about 800 million people, and another 200 million recognize it as a second language. Putonghua is spoken in much of northern and southwestern China. If you ever find yourself there to say hello to your interlocutors, all you have to do is say: “Nĭ hăo.”
Rotokas is the language of the province of Bougainville, on an island east of New Guinea. This language is known for having the smallest range of sounds. In the Rotokas language, the alphabet consists of twelve letters that represent eleven phonemes (AEIKOPRSTUV). The language has six consonants (K, P, R, S, T, V) and five vowels (A, E, I, O, U). The letters "T" and "S" represent the same phoneme /t/, while the letter "V" is sometimes written as "B".
The Vatican is the only state in the world where Latin is official language. In addition, the Vatican has the only ATM in the world, where you can read the instructions on Latin. And yet Latin is considered a dead language, since there are no people who consider it their native language. Latin is still taught in schools and universities and is spoken fluently by various scholars and clergy. It is enough to cite well-known Latin phrases: alea jacta est (“the die is cast”), veni vidi vici (“came, saw, conquered”), carpe diem (“break the day”), divide et impera (“divide and conquer”).
Latin language (lat. lingua latina), or Latin, is the language of the Latin-Faliscan subgroup of the Italic languages of the Indo-European language family. Today it is the only actively used Italian language (although there have been no people with native Latin for at least a millennium and a half, therefore it should be considered a dead language).
Latin is one of the most ancient written Indo-European languages.
Today, Latin is the official language of the Holy See (Vatican City State), as well as the Roman Catholic Church and other Catholic churches.
The Latin alphabet is the basis of writing for many modern languages.
Latin Wikipedia(lat. Vicipdia listen)) is a Latin section of Wikipedia, opened in 2002. As of January 1, 2008, there were 17,621 articles (55th place); in May 2008, it exceeded the threshold of 20,000 articles. It is also interesting because the Latin language is considered a dead language (although more than 20 members of the English Wikipedia and a number of members of other language versions of Wikipedia call Latin their native language).
Articles about Latin
Project "Living Latin" (www.school.edu.ru)
Visiting the Russian general education portal. Site editor Mikhail Polyashev answers questions
Wap version of the portal (version for mobile phone) is available from any mobile phone at: wap.linguaeterna.com
In Defense of the Teaching of Latin (filolingvia.com)
Everyone, unfortunately, knows that teaching Latin language in our universities it has become a tedious task, painful for both students and professors. All hope is for high school. Not only in specialized gymnasiums, where Latin is now fashionable, but also in ordinary schools, it is necessary to introduce courses on “Ancient Civilization”, where there would be a little bit of everything: the basics of the Latin language, the Greek roots of words, aphorisms, historical facts, mythology, philosophy, art, epigraphy .
How necessary and in demand is a course in popular practical Latin, where it would be studied as if it were alive, almost colloquial. And it is very useful to accustom our schools to this, so that students (and the teachers themselves) can always easily apply their knowledge at any step in life. So that they can immediately find Latin roots in complex scientific terms, foreign words, understand derivatives, read numerous epigraphs in Latin, quotes, inscriptions on houses and objects, mottos of companies and states. “Classics” guarantee: even if outwardly you are far from antiquity, the knowledge gained in this area will never lie as a dead weight on your soul. Someday they will definitely come in handy and help you.
1. The words “cheerfulness” and “tea” are denoted by the same characters in Chinese.
2. In the language of the Australian Aboriginal tribe living in the Murray River Valley, 1 sounds like “enea”, 2 sounds like “petcheval”, and 5 can be said as eight different ways, for example, “petcheval petcheval enea.”
3. The most meaningful word on Earth is considered to be “mamihlapinatana”, which means “looking at each other in the hope that someone will agree to do something that both sides want, but do not want to do.”
4. In Arabic there are 28 letters that are written at the end of a word differently than in the middle, in Hebrew there are 5 such letters, in Greek there is one, and in other European languages there are no such letters.
5. AD and BC in date designations mean Anno Domini and Before Christ.
6. Those whom we call “new Russians” in Cuba are called “masetos”.
7. “Absurd” translated from Latin means “from the deaf” (ab surdo).
8. " Solar eclipse" in Latin would sound like "defectus solis".
9. The abbreviated English name for Christmas “Xmas” contains in the first place not the Latin letter “X” at all, but greek letter"hi", which was used in medieval manuscripts as an abbreviation of the word "Christ" (i.e. xus=christus).
10. Residents of Papua New Guinea speak almost 700 languages (this is approximately 15 percent of all languages in the world). Among these languages, there are many local dialects used to communicate between villages.
11. B Explanatory dictionary 1940, edited by Ushakov, there is the following definition of the word “Figli-migli” (!): “... used to denote some tricks, jokes or some approaches to achieve something, accompanied by pleasantries, antics, tricks, winks.”
12. The names of the Zodiac signs in Latin sound like this: Aquarius - Aquarius, Pisces - Pisces, Aries - Aries, Taurus - Taurus, Gemini - Gemini, Cancer - Cancer, Leo - Leo, Virgo - Virgo, Libra - Libra, Scorpio - Scorpius , Sagittarius - Sagittarius, Capricorn - Capricornus.
13. “Hermitage” translated from French means “place of solitude.”
14. Cartoon "Cinderella" on Polish language called "Kopciusezek".
15. “Symposium” translated from Latin means “shared libation.”
17. The world's longest palindrome word is the Finnish word "saippuakivikauppias", meaning "silk merchant".
18. Karamzin came up with the word “industry,” Saltykov-Shchedrin came up with the word “softness,” and Dostoevsky came up with the word “to shy away.”
19. On the African continent there are more than 1000 different languages. And the Berber language in North Africa does not even have a written form.
20. The names of the days of the week among the Akan blacks are pronounced as (respectively): judah, beneda, munuda, yauda, fida, meneneda and quasida.
21. In Chinese writing, the character for “difficulty, trouble” is depicted as two women under one roof.
22. Almost is the longest word in the English language, in which all the letters are arranged in alphabetical order.
23. The words of Persian origin “pajamas” and “suitcase” have the same root (“pi-joma”, “joma-dan”).
24. The name of the island of Curacao literally translated from Spanish means “fried priest” (cura asado).
25. The word “mediocrity” was introduced into the Russian language by the poet Igor Severyanin.
26.V Ancient Egypt The apricot was called the “sunny egg.”
27. In Filipino, “hello” would sound like “mabuhay.”
28. “Fujiyama” means “steep mountain” in Japanese.
29. Until the 14th century in Rus', all indecent words were called “absurd verbs.”
30.V English language there are no words that rhyme with month, orange, silver and purple.
31. There are 72 letters in the Khmer alphabet, and only 11 in the alphabet of the natives of the island of Bougainville.
32. Unusual tongue twisters: “a crime for which revenge was a similar crime”, “a walk enjoying dried-out baking”, “the simultaneous failure of several pilots”.
33. In Georgian kebab is called “mtsvadi”, and in Armenian it is called “khorovts”.
34. In the 19th century, in Russian translations, “Ivanhoe” was called in Russian - “Ivangoe”.
35. In Spanish, a UFO is called OVNIS (“objeto volador noidentificado”).
36. The junior clergy - novice, in Georgian is called ... mtsyri.
37. There is a grammatical rule according to which native Russian words do not begin with the letter “a”(!).
38. The word "subway" in Japanese consists of three characters meaning "bottom", "soil" and "iron".
39. Artificial international language Esperanto was created in 1887 by the Warsaw doctor L. Zamenhof.
40. Dahl suggested replacing foreign word“atmosphere” in Russian “kolozemitsa” or “mirokolitsa”.
41. Swahili is a combination of African tribal languages, Arabic and Portuguese.
42. The longest English words, in which there is not a single vowel - “rhythms” and “syzygy”.
43. The American “okay” gesture (fingers clasped in a ring) means “homosexual” in Cyprus.
44. The nickname of Alexander the Great’s horse “Bucephalus” literally means “bull-headed”.
45. The oldest word in the English language is “town”.
46. In Chinese, the sounds “r” and “l” are not distinguished.
47. “Sahara” means “desert” in Arabic.
48. In Ukraine, the Milky Way is called Chumatsky Way.
49. The Serbian alphabet is called Vukovica.
50. There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
51. The Viking alphabet was called Futhark.
52. There are more than 600,000 words in the English language.
53. Latin name Mickey Mouse - Mikael Musculus.
54. The words “for future use”, “all-in” and “full face” are adverbs.
55. latin letters There is no W in the Latin alphabet.
56. Chinese writing has more than 40,000 characters.
57. Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby, which is over 50,000 words long. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.
58. Pomors have a sign: “The mother makes a fool of shame.” In modern language it would sound like this: “During the aurora, the compass does not work.”
59. American President Benjamin Franklin collected more than 200 synonyms for the word “drunk,” including such masterpieces as “cherry-merry,” “nimptopsical,” and “soaked.”
60. There are only six official languages of the United Nations: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
61. In the Eskimo language there are more than 20 words for snow.
62. Adverb mandarin Chinese language is the most widely used language in the world, spoken by more than 885 million people. Spanish ranks second (332 million), English is third (322 million), and Bengali is fourth (189 million). By the way, Russian is in 7th place on this list (170 million)
63. At one time, the ampersand (&) was a letter of the English alphabet.
64. Just like in America it is customary to ask “How are you?” when meeting someone. (the answer is usually “good” or “normal”), and in Malaysia it is customary to ask “Where are you going?” But since this is not a question, but a greeting, they usually answer “Just for a walk.”
65. Translated from Latin, the word “virus” means poison.
66. On average, priests, lawyers and doctors each have 15,000 words in their professional vocabulary. Skilled workers who have not received higher education- somewhere between 5-7 thousand words, and farmers - about 1,600.
67. The words harem, veto and embargo literally mean “ban.”
68. In the vast majority of languages of the world, the word “mother” begins with the letter M.
69. Victor Hugo's Les Misérables contains one of the longest sentences in history. French— 823 words.
70. There are approximately 6,500 languages in the world today. However, 2000 of them are on the verge of extinction. Each of them has less than a thousand speakers.
71. Some Bible scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not have a way to express “many” and used the word equal to 40. This means that in many places in the Bible, the reference to “40 days” means many days.
72. Seoul simply means “capital” in Korean.
73. English has the largest number of synonyms.
74. They say that “Thesixthsicksheik’ssixthsheep’ssick” is the most complex tongue twister in English.
75. Canada translates as “big village” in the language of one of the local Indian tribes.
76. The word “news” in English actually comes from the letters on the compass, indicating the cardinal directions: North, East, West, South. Therefore, this word has no distinction between singular and plural.
77. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, is credited with saying: “I speak Spanish with God, in Italian with women, in French with men, in German with my horse.” There are options for German: “with a dog”, “with enemies”; Italian is replaced by French in the case of women, men are replaced by friends. In any case, it turns out beautifully, but the semantics change a little. The Emperor meant in the case of German language the fact that German is suitable for teams.
78. The ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphs only for rituals and official inscriptions. IN Everyday life they used hieratic writing, and from 700 BC. Demotic script was used.
79. About half the world's population speaks languages that are descended from an Indo-European language spoken 6,000 years ago. Scientists suggest that Indo-European language originated in a temperate climate, since the languages that originated from it have similar words for flora and fauna, seasons, etc. For example: cold, Kalt, cold; snow, Snaw, snow, snow; etc. The territory most suitable for these parameters extends from Lithuania in the North to the Central regions of Ukraine in the South; Western voivodeships of Poland in the West to Eastern regions of Belarus in the East.
80. Sumerian is considered the oldest known written language. It originated in Mesopotamia 3500 BC. Main characteristics: cuneiform, syllabic representation of individual characters.
81. All major alphabets developed from a single alphabet invented 3600 years ago in the Middle East.
82. The word "gift" in English means "poison" in German.
83. The names of the state of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Winnipeg are translated the same way: in the language of the local Sioux and Cree Indians it is “dirty water”.
84. In Thai, to appear particularly polite, we use "slave" instead of "I".
85. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound structure of a language. One of the Khoisan languages, Hu, has about 141 phonemes, while Hawaiian has only 13.
86. The Cambodian alphabet has 74 letters, but the Solomon Islands alphabet has only 11 letters.
87. There are over 583 different languages and dialects in Indonesia alone, including English and Dutch.
88. In Mexico, the men of the Matsateco tribe came up with a special whistling language “for men”, which women did not understand.
89. Tongue twisters in different cultures were created to emphasize sound combinations characteristic of their language in order to distinguish “strangers” from “us”:
English~ She sells seashells by the seashore
French~ Combien de sous sont ces saucissons-ci? Ces saucissons-ci sont six sous.
Spanish~ Que rapido corren los carros, cargados de azucar, del ferrocarril!
German~ Zwei schwartze schleimige Schlangen sitzen zwischen zwei spitzigen Steinen und zischen.
90. Many African languages have a clicking sound that is pronounced at the same time as other sounds. To pronounce it correctly, you need to learn the language from childhood.
91. Most languages are found in Asia and Africa.
92. At least half of the people around the world speak two or more languages.
93. One way to say in German “None of your business!” will be “This is not your beer!” in original: DasistnichtdeinBier!
94. German has almost become an official language in the USA. During the revolution the question arose to accept new language for the future of the USA, as one of the methods to break ties with England. During the voting, the German was one vote short!
95. The most common sounds in the world's languages: /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/
96. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been translated into 321 languages. No other document has been translated into so many languages.
97. The most common words in the Russian language: and; V; Not; He; on the; I; What; That; be; With.
98. The most common words in the English language: the, be, to, of, and, a, in, that, have, I.
99. All Chinese dialects have the same base of about 40,000 characters that are “understood by everyone.” IN oral speech the varieties of Chinese are practically separate languages.
100. Originally Russian and Ukrainian words don't start with the letter "A". For example, in common parlance, some dialects in Ukraine have developed prefixed consonants like “Gamerika” for borrowed words.
Tribute to tradition
The very peak of the development of medicine occurred in antiquity, so it is not surprising that the works of the Aesculapians were created in the two most common languages of that time - ancient Greek and ancient Roman, that is, in Latin. If the peak of medicine fell on the Sumerians, who are considered the first written civilization on Earth (IV-III millennium BC), then most likely the recipes would now be cuneiform. But it is also possible Feedback- the development of writing and the education system made it possible to transfer knowledge from generation to generation.
Versatility
In the Middle Ages, Europe was fragmented into dozens of states, and the number of languages and dialects exceeded a dozen. At that time, students from all over the Old World came to the first established universities. To teach them all, they began to use Latin. It was not difficult to master it, since it was the basis of many European languages. This is how a universal tool for communication between philosophers, lawyers, and doctors appeared, and their books, treatises, and dissertations were in Latin. Catholic Church also significantly influenced this process, Latin was its official language.
The connecting role of Latin has not been lost to this day. A doctor with a classical medical education from any country in the world can easily understand the works written by his foreign colleague. The fact is that all drug names and anatomical names are Latin. Russian doctor can open an English-language medical journal and get a general idea of what it's about we're talking about in the article.
Aptitude test
Invia est in medicina via sine lingua Latina - the path in medicine without Latin is impassable, says the popular saying. Students' ability in short time learning another language has become a filter for professional suitability. English-speaking students have a harder time learning Latin than Russian because it has more in common with modern Russian than with English. For example, grammatical categories in Latin they are also expressed by inflection (declension, conjugation), and not by auxiliary parts of speech. Like the Russian language, Latin has 6 cases, 3 genders, 2 numbers, 3 persons, etc.
This is interesting
The famous Latin saying goes like this: “Mens sana in corpore sano” (“In healthy body- healthy mind"). In fact, the original looked different: “Orandum est, uit sit mens sana in corpore sano” (“We must pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body”). Such subtleties are interesting to study. Modern medical and biological Latin is a kind of Newspeak that arose during the Renaissance by “crossing” classical Latin with ancient Greek.
