Is Latin Still Alive?

Latin is all around us. It’s one of the official languages of Vatican City and also plays a key role in Catholicism. It’s common throughout the field of science, specifically in naming organisms, chemicals as well as body parts. It forms the root of certain philosophies. And it’s at the basis of the Romance languages, including Spanish as well as French. So, is Latin a dead language, really? The answer isn’t very straightforward.

When a language is not the native language of a community of people, it is considered to be “dead”. We need to carefully notice that this is different from an extinct language and individuals no longer speak that language. Latin falls into the first category however it certainly doesn’t belong to the latter category.

Italy is the birthplace of Latin, and it is an Indo-European language. However, Latin spread with the Roman Empire throughout much of Europe and parts of North Africa. Int terms of the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin nearly “died out”. But if you see the reality, then we can understand that ultimately it transformed. Likewise, it transformed firstly into a simplified version of itself called Vulgar Latin.

It gradually transformed into Romance languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Hence, slowly Classical Latin fell out of use, and it evolved as many other languages.

Yes, Latin Is Very Much Alive

It is well-established that Latin stopped existing centuries ago, or in other words, Latin died. However, is Latin actually dead? What if we told you that Latin is still alive and kicking? Would you believe that?

While Classical Latin is certainly a dead, though not an extinct, language there is some residue of this Classical Latin, called Ecclesiastical Latin, which still roams our society as we speak.

Modern Latin is what came to be known as Romance Languages, manifested in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan. These can be regarded as dialects of Latin. As change is the only constant, and as the thermodynamics of linguistics is language change, all languages must undergo change over time. Look no further than English itself.

What Are The Benefits Of Learning Latin?

So, Latin may be dead, however it’s clearly not extinct. And learning Latin can truly have quite a number of benefits:

• For one thing, it will assist you if you work (or even dabble) in law, science, Catholicism or philosophy Already knowing the terminology going in will save you time as well as give you a leg up at work.
• Studying Latin can also assist you to learn other languages, particularly Romance languages. A ton of prefixes, suffixes as well as even full vocabulary words in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese in addition to Romanian derive from Latin. This means that learning Latin can make studying these languages much simpler.

A case may also be made for the mental stamina as well as systematic thinking which learning Latin can garner. Studying the language will teach students discipline, logical thinking in addition to attention to detail, just like you’ll find in the tragamonedas Peru offers. Training your brain is definitely one of the great benefits of learning any language however Latin has a particular structure which requires increased mental fortitude.