The legacy of a dead

The legacy of a dead

Latin’s influence on the modern European languages
Latin is no longer alive in point of being used as a language of its own in everyday talk. The Latin language has not been spoken as a native tongue for many, many hundreds of years. The only existing international radio show in Latin is a weekly news program broadcasted from Finland (yes, it is true). But is Latin really a dead language? Despite all that has been mentioned here, it is spoken and written every day, by nearly all Europeans.

Many of the words used by Europeans today are borrowed from Latin, e.g. (exempli gratia), senator, a.m. (ante meridian), p.m. (post meridian), dictator, consul, Fiat, Volvo, Securitas, etc. (et cetera), the list of examples has no end to it and the natural question is then, of course, why?

Reasons

Latin is a direct predecessor of the Romance languages, for example French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Rumanian, but is also related to the other European languages due to the fact that they all share a common origin in Indo-European. Even so, this kinship can in many cases only explain the more subtle similarities such as a certain extent of resemblance in the grammatical structure. The likeness of words has other reasons. As the Romans occupied large parts of Europe, including England and parts of Germany, for several hundreds of years, the native population embraced much of the Latin culture and language. This inheritance is very clear today, especially in English. Yet, the Romans themselves can only be given a part of the credit for today’s Latin vocabulary. Another vital cause is the fact that Latin for man

Latin	English	Swedish	Italian
nota	note	notera	notazione
dialogus	dialogue	dialog	dialogo
numerus	number	nummer	numero
civilis	civil	civil	civico
passivus	passive	passiv	passivo
imitari	imitate	imitera	imitari
planta	plant	planta	pianta
cathedralis	cathedral	katedral	cattedrale
musica	music	musik	musica
consolari	console	konsoll	consolare
magica	magic	magi	magico
Note: Those of you who are familiar with Greek might recognize some of these words to have their origin there. This may very well be true since the Romans borrowed many words during their long occupation of Greece.

centuries was the foremost international language of Europe. The Catholic Church had monopolized all education during this period of time and since the church had its roots in Rome, Latin was the language that they taught. Since most people of that time did not study any academics whatsoever, the native tongues, which were used by the commoners, were not considered to be as cultivated as Latin. Latin became the language of the learned and hence was preferred for all scientific and religious documentation. When scholars and priests later on began to use their native languages, much of the terminology and expressions were borrowed since they had no real counterparts anywhere else. Today Latin is used in these areas mainly because it is often not worth the effort to try to change set expressions but also due to the fact that Latin has stopped to evolve as a language of its own. The meaning of Latin words will therefore not change over time and thus will not be misinterpreted in the future. This ‘fact’ however, is only true when relating to Latin exclusively as a language of its own; Latin words that long ago were assimilated into other languages will change and evolve in according to their new hosts.

Corollary
In ‘The importance of Latin’ Dr. David Daintree writes, on the usage of Latin in English, that English now has reached phase two. By that he means that instead of borrowing new words to any great extent, English has begun to recycle what was long ago taken, giving old Latin words new meanings and significance. As an example he points out the relatively new word ‘proactive’ that, although basically derived from Latin, would perhaps have no meaning at all to a native Latin speaker. This shows that Latin is not only frequently used today but is also evolving and that leads to the corollary of this article, the question that was asked in the introduction; is Latin really a dead language?