Latin

History
Classical Latin was used in the 1st century BC and was the official language of the Roman Empire. It was widely used in the western part of the Mediterranean. The Romance languages developed from its spoken informal version, called Vulgar Latin.

Latin was important to Christianity for many centuries. It is still spoken today during some religious activities. It is an official language in the Vatican, where the Pope leads the Roman Catholic Church. People in the Vatican sometimes speak to one another in Latin if they have different first languages. The Mass of the Catholic Church is often done entirely in Latin. It is called is the Mass of the Roman Rite (Extraordinary Form).

Latin was once the most important language in most of Europe during the Middle Ages. It was taught in many European schools, and all universities used it as their teaching language. In the Renaissance it was an important part of the learning system Studia Humanitatis.

Latin began to lose its importance in the Reformation, but it was still often used by writers of scientific books and encyclopedias. Until around 1900, many universities accepted dissertations written in Latin.

Today
Classics
People still read Latin classics such as the poems of Virgil, the memoirs of Caesar and the speeches of Cicero. 
Science
Also, Latin is widely used as an international auxiliary language, notably in the Catholic Church and by biologists when they describe and name new species. 
Medicine
Some terms used in medicine to name parts of the body (such as bones), and names of some diseases, are also written in Latin.
Varieties
There are three types of Latin: Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin. Classical Latin was used by the educated Romans and is still studied around the world. Vulgar Latin was the more common spoken variety used by the common Romans and was learned by the peoples conquered by them. Ecclesiastical Latin is common in Italian schools and still used by the Roman Catholic Church.
Romance languages
As people from other regions of Europe learned Vulgar Latin during Roman conquests, each region developed its own language, which was a simplified form of Latin. Those languages are called Romance languages and are still spoken today. 
Types
The five Romance languages with the largest number of speakers are Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. The Romance languages are very similar to one another, and speakers of one Romance language can understand many words and sentences in both texts and spoken conversations from another Romance language. For example, speakers of Portuguese can often understand Spanish. It can be said that the Romance languages are modern dialects of Latin.

Grammar
Latin has a similar inflection structure to Ancient Greek but a different alphabet.

Latin has seven different noun cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative. The vocative case is almost always the same as the nominative case. The locative usually takes the form of the dative. Only place names and some nouns have the locative case. Latin nouns are declined, or changed, according to how they are used in the sentence. A noun can be declined five different ways. These ways are called declensions. The declensions are numbered 1 to 5 (first declension, second declension etc.), each having different endings that identify the noun's declension. When a noun is declined, twelve forms are made, two for each of the noun cases (the locative is omitted).

A similar thing is done to verbs, called conjugation. When a verb is conjugated, six forms are made. There are five factors that can change a verb: person, number, tense, voice and mood. In all, there are 120 possible forms Latin verbs.
Writing
Latin used to be written on plates of wax. There was little space and so words were run together, with no space between words. Sometimes papyrus was used, but that was expensive. Punctuation was an ancient idea but came to Latin later.The Mesha Stele or Moabite Stone is a stele set up around 840 BC by King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom in modern Jordan). The stele uses full stops. Lowercase letters (small letters) are relatively-modern inventions. The Roman alphabet was derived from Etruscan . The following is the introduction to the Metamorphoses by Ovid (Book 1, lines 89–100) amd describes the Golden Age.
Old writingModern writingAVREA•PRIMA•SATA•EST•ÆTAS•QVAE•VINDICE•NVLLO
SPONTE•SVA•SINE•LEGE•FIDEM•RECTVMQVE•COLEBAT
POENA•METVSQVE•ABERANT•NEC•VERBA•MINANTIA•FIXO
AERE•LEGEBANTVR•NEC•SVPPLEX•TVRBA•TIMEBAT
IVDICIS•ORA•SVI•SED•ERANT•SINE•VINDICE•TVTI
NONDVM•CÆSA•SVIS•PEREGRINVM•VT•VISERET•ORBEM
MONTIBVS•IN•LIQVIDAS•PINVS•DESCENDERAT•VNDAS
NVLLAQVE•MORTALES•PRÆTER•SVA•LITORA•NORANT
NONDVM•PRÆCIPITES•CINGEBANT•OPPIDA•FOSSAE
NON•TVBA•DIRECTI•NON•ÆRIS•CORNVA•FLEXI
NON•GALEAE•NON•ENSIS•ERANT•SINE•MILITIS•VSV
MOLLIA•SECVRAE•PERAGEBANT•OTIA•GENTESAurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,
sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.
Poena metusque aberant nec verba minantia fixo
aere legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat
iudicis ora sui, sed erant sine vindice tuti.
Nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem,
montibus in liquidas pinus descenderat undas,
nullaque mortales praeter sua litora norant.
Nondum praecipites cingebant oppida fossae,
non tuba directi, non aeris cornua flexi,
non galeae, non ensis erant: sine militis usu
mollia securae peragebant otia gentes.English translationThis was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the true. There was no fear or punishment: there were no threatening words to be read, fixed in bronze, no crowd of suppliants fearing the judge’s face they lived safely without protection. No pine tree felled in the mountains had yet reached the flowing waves to travel to other lands: human beings only knew their own shores. There were no steep ditches surrounding towns, no straight war-trumpets, no coiled horns, no swords and helmets. Without the use of armies, people passed their lives in gentle peace and security.
Post-Roman age
After the fall of the Roman Empire, many people still used Latin. Scholars such as Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Copernicus, Descartes and Newton wrote in Latin. For example, Hugo Grotius published his De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) in Latin as late as 1625, which is one of the bases of international law.
Related pages
 Ancient Greek
 Syriac language
 Byzantine Empire
 Hebrew language
 Yiddish
 Ladino language
 Judeo-Arabic dialects
 Judeo-Aramaic languages
 Aramaic language
 Phoenician alphabet
 Latin alphabet
 Greek alphabet
 Cyrillic alphabet
 Hebrew alphabet
 Aramaic alphabet
 Germanic languages
 Gothic language
 English language
 German language

References

Other websites


 Post-Classical Latin (including Medieval and Neo-Latin) 
 Beginners' Latin on http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
 Glossarium Anglico-Latinum  having many modern words
 Latin language Citizendium