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What, When, Where, How, Who?
Latin
Introduction, Important Definitions and Related
Concepts:
Latin (lingua Latīna,
pronounced
[laˈtiːna]) is an ancient
Indo-European language that was spoken in the
Roman Republic and the
Roman Empire. It was also the de facto
international language of science and scholarship in mid
and western Europe until the 17th century. Through Roman
conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and
a large part of Europe. It later evolved into the
languages spoken in
France,
Italy,
Romania and the
Iberian peninsula, and through them to
Central and
South America. There are two distinctions of Latin:
Classical Latin, the form used in poetry and formal
prose, and
Vulgar Latin, the name given to a common set of
Latin based dialects, until they diverged into the
various
Romance languages. After the
fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the
Catholic Church Latin became the ecclesiastical
language of the
Catholic Church and the
lingua franca of educated classes in the West. After
2,300 years, Latin began a slow decline around the
1600s/a>. Vulgar Latin however was preserved in several
regional dialects, which by the
800s had become the ancestors of today's
Romance languages. Latin lives on in the form of
Ecclesiastical Latin spoken in the Catholic Church.
Some Latin vocabulary is still used in
science,
academia, and
law. Pronounced means
strongly marked : decided
<a pronounced dislike>.
The Indo-European languages comprise a
family of several hundred related
languages and
dialects,[1]
including most of the major languages of
Europe, the northern
Indian subcontinent (South
Asia), the
Iranian plateau (Southwest
Asia), and much of
Central Asia. Indo-European (Indo refers to
the Indian subcontinent) has the largest numbers of
speakers of the recognised families of languages in the
world today, with its languages spoken by approximately
three billion native speakers.[2]
Of the
top 20 (including 3 of the top 5, and 7 of the top
10) contemporary languages in terms of native speakers
according to
SIL Ethnologue, 12 are Indo-European:
Spanish,
English,
Hindi,
Portuguese,
Bengali,
Russian,
German,
Marathi,
French,
Italian,
Punjabi and
Urdu, accounting for over 1.6 billion native
speakers. The
Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch
of Indo-European in terms of the number of native
speakers as well as in terms of the number of individual
languages.[3]
The various subgroups of the Indo-European
language family include (in historical order of their
first attestation):
-
Anatolian languages, earliest attested branch,
from the
18th century BC; extinct, most notably including
the
language of the
Hittites.
Indo-Iranian languages, descending from a common
ancestor,
Proto-Indo-Iranian
Greek language, fragmentary records in
Mycenaean from the late
15th - early
14th century BC;
Homeric traditions date to the
8th century BC. (See
Proto-Greek language,
History of the Greek language.)
Italic languages, including
Latin and its descendants (the
Romance languages), attested from the
7th century BC.
Celtic languages,
Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the
6th century BC;
Old Irish texts from the
6th century AD, see
Proto-Celtic language.
Germanic languages (including
Old English and
English), earliest testimonies in
runic inscriptions from around the
2nd century, earliest coherent texts in
Gothic,
4th century AD, see
Proto-Germanic language.
Armenian language, attested from the
5th century AD.
Tocharian languages, extinct tongues of the
Tocharians, extant in two dialects, attested
from roughly the
6th century AD.
Balto-Slavic languages, believed by many
Indo-Europeanists (such as Schleicher 1861,
Szemerényi 1957, Collinge 1985, and Beekes 1995) to
derive from a common proto-language later than
Proto-Indo-European, while skeptical
Indo-Europeanists regard Baltic and Slavic as no
more closely related than any other two branches of
Indo-European.
Albanian language, attested from the
15th century; relations with Illyrian, Dacian,
or Thracian proposed.
The Roman Republic
was the phase of the
ancient Roman civilization characterized by a
republican form of government. The republican
period began with the overthrow of the
Monarchy c. 509 BC and lasted over 450 years
until its
subversion, through a series of
civil wars, into the
Principate form of government and the Imperial
period. The precise event which signaled the
transition of the Roman Republic into the
Roman Empire is a matter of interpretation.
Historians have variously proposed the appointment
of
Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the
Battle of Actium (2
September 31 BC), and the
Roman Senate's grant of
Octavian's extraordinary powers under the
first settlement (January
16, 27 BC), as candidates for the defining
pivotal
event. Determining the precise end of the
Republic is a task of dispute by modern historians;
Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that
the Republic had ceased to exist. The early
Julio-Claudian "Emperors"
maintained that the
res publica still existed, albeit under the
protection of their extraordinary powers, and would
eventually return to its full Republican form. The
Roman state continued to call itself a res
publica as long as it continued to use Latin as
its official language. The Roman Republic had many
different classes of people who existed within the
city-state. Each one of them had differing rights,
responsibilities, and status under
Roman law. An empire (from the
Latin "imperium",
denoting military
command within the
ancient Roman government) is a
state that extends dominion over populations
distinct
culturally and
ethnically from the culture/ethnicity at the
center of
power. Scholars still debate about what exactly
constitutes an empire, and other definitions may
emphasize economic or political factors. Like other
states, an empire maintains its
political structure at least partly by
coercion. Land-based empires (such as the
Mongol Empire or the
Achaemenid
Persia) tend to extend in a
contiguous area;
sea-borne empires, also known as
thalassocracies (the
Athenian,
Portuguese and the
British empires provide examples), may feature
looser structures and more scattered territories.
Empires predate the
Romans by several millennia: for example, the
Akkadian Empire of
Sargon of Akkad was the earliest model of a
far-flung, land-based empire, founded in the 24th
century BC. The New Kingdom of
Ancient Egypt, at one point in time another
major force of the
ancient Near East, was established as a loosely
defined empire in the 15th century BC under
Thutmose III by further invading and then
incorporating
Nubia and the
ancient city-states of the
Levant. It is worth mentioning, however, that
these early models of imperialism lacked effective
and administrative control of their conquered
territories. Empire contrasts with the example of a
federation, where a large or small multi-ethnic
state - or even an ethnically
homogeneous one — relies on mutual agreement
amongst its component political units which retain a
high degree of
autonomy. Additionally, one can compare physical
empires with potentially more abstract or less
formally structured
hegemonies in which the
sphere of influence of a single political unit
(such as a
city-state) dominates a culturally unified area
politically or militarily. France (pronounced
/fræns/ or /frɑns/,
French:
[fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French
Republic (French:
République
française,
pronounced
[ʁepyˈblik fʁɑ̃ˈsɛz]), is a
country whose
metropolitan territory is located in
Western Europe and that also comprises various
overseas islands and territories located in other
continents.[11]
Metropolitan France extends from the
Mediterranean Sea to the
English Channel and the
North Sea, and from the
Rhine to the
Atlantic Ocean. French people often refer to
Metropolitan France as L'Hexagone (The "Hexagon")
because of the geometric shape of its territory.
France is bordered by
Belgium,
Luxembourg,
Germany,
Switzerland,
Italy,
Monaco,
Andorra, and
Spain. Due to its
overseas departments, France also shares land
borders with
Brazil and
Suriname (bordering
French Guiana) , and the
Netherlands Antilles (bordering
Saint-Martin). France is also linked to the
United Kingdom by the
Channel Tunnel, which passes underneath the
English Channel. France is a
unitary
semi-presidential
republic. Its main ideals are expressed in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
France was the world's foremost
power in the 17th century. Italy (Italian:
Italia),
officially the Italian Republic, (Italian:
Repubblica Italiana),
is located on the
Italian Peninsula in
Southern Europe, and on the two largest islands
in the
Mediterranean Sea,
Sicily and
Sardinia. Italy shares its northern
Alpine
boundary with
France,
Switzerland,
Austria and
Slovenia. The independent states of
San Marino and the
Vatican City are
enclaves within the Italian Peninsula, while
Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in
Switzerland. Italy has been the home of many
European cultures, such as the
Etruscans and the
Romans, and later was the birthplace of the
movement of the
Renaissance, that began in
Tuscany and spread all over Europe. Italy's
capital
Rome has been for centuries the center of
Western civilization, and is the seat of the
Catholic Church. Today, Italy is a democratic
republic, and a
developed country with the
7th-highest
GDP, the 8th-highest
Quality-of-life index,[2]
and the 20th-highest
Human Development Index rating in the world. It
is a founding member of what is now the
European Union (having signed the
Treaty of Rome in 1957), and also a member of
the
G8,
NATO, the
Council of Europe, the
Western European Union, and the
Central European Initiative. Beginning
January 1,
2007 Italy became a
non-permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council. The origin of
the term "Italy" (It: Italia), from Latin
Italia,[3]
is uncertain. Romania (dated:
Rumania, Roumania;
Romanian:
România,
IPA:
[ro.mɨˈni.a])
is a country located in South-East
Central Europe, North of the
Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower
Danube, within and outside the
Carpathian arch, bordering on the
Black Sea.[2]
Almost all of the
Danube Delta is located within its territory. It
shares a border with
Hungary and
Serbia to the west,
Ukraine and the
Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and
Bulgaria to the south. Romania is a
semi-presidential
unitary state. As a nation-state, the country
was formed by the merging of
Moldavia and
Wallachia in 1859 and it gained recognition of
its
independence in
1878. Later, in 1918, they were joined by
Transylvania,
Bukovina and
Bessarabia. At the end of
World War II, parts of its territories (roughly
the present day
Moldova) were occupied by
USSR and Romania became a member of the
Warsaw Pact. With the fall of the
Iron Curtain in
1989, Romania started a series of political and
economic reforms that allowed for Romania to
join the European Union on
January 1,
2007. Romania has the
9th largest territory and the
7th largest population (with 22 million people[3])
among the
European Union member states. The Iberian
Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the
extreme southwest of
Europe, and includes modern day
Spain,
Portugal,
Andorra and
Gibraltar and a very small part of
France. It is the western and southernmost of
the three southern European
peninsulas (the Iberian,
Italian, and
Balkan peninsulas). It is bordered on the south
and east by the
Mediterranean Sea, and on the north and west by
the
Atlantic Ocean. The
Pyrenees form the northeast edge of the
peninsula, connecting it to the rest of Europe . In
the south, it approaches the northern coast of
Africa. It is the second largest peninsula in
Europe, with an area of 582 860 km². The name
"Iberia" was also used since the times of
Ancient Greece and
Rome for another territory at the opposite
corner of
Europe,
Caucasian Iberia, in modern day
Georgia. The term "Iberia"
is the
Greek equivalent of
Latin "Hispania".
Surviving
Roman texts always use Hispania for the
peninsula (first mentioned in 200 BC by the poet
Quintus Ennius) while Greek texts employ Iberia.
Central America (Spanish:
Centroamérica or América Central) is a
central
geographic
region of the
Americas. It is variably defined either as the
southern portion of
North America, which connects with
South America on the southeast, or as a region
of the Americas in its own right.[3][4]
Most of Central America is considered to be part of
the
Mesoamerican
biodiversity hotspot.[5]
Physiographically, Central America is a very
narrow
isthmus of southern North America extending from
the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec in
Mexico southeastward to the
Isthmus of Panama where it connects to the
Colombian
Pacific Lowlands in northwestern
South America. Alternatively, the
Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt delimits the region
on the north. Central America has an area of some
592,000
square kilometres. The
Pacific Ocean lies to the southwest, the
Caribbean Sea lies to the northeast, and the
Gulf of Mexico lies to the north. Most of
Central America rests atop the
Caribbean Plate.
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