History of Latin

Common card · No. 309254

Latin is a member of the broad family of Italic languages. Its alphabet, the Latin alphabet, emerged from the Old Italic alphabets, which in turn were derived from the Etruscan, Greek and Phoenician scripts. Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed. How and when Latin came to be spoken has long been debated. Various influences on Latin of Celtic speeches in northern Italy, the non-Indo-European Etruscan language in Central Italy, and the Greek in some Greek colonies of southern Italy have been detected, but when these influences entered the native Latin is not known for certain. Surviving Roman-era Latin literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin pieces usually chosen for their importance as help for people learning to write in Latin. Survivals emphasise polished and sometimes highly stylized literary language texts sometimes termed Golden Latin, which spans the 1st...

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