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The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1998
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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Latin
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INFOTEXT
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1992-09-03
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Indo-European language of ancient Italy.
Latin has passed through four influential
phases: as the language of (1) republican
Rome, (2) the Roman Empire, (3) the Roman
Catholic Church, and (4) W European culture,
science, philosophy, and law during the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance. During the
third and fourth phases, much Latin
vocabulary entered the English language. It
is the parent form of the Romance languages,
noted for its highly inflected grammar and
conciseness of expression. The direct
influence of Latin in Europe has decreased
since Renaissance times but is still
considerable, and indirectly both the
language and its classical literature still
affect many modern languages and literatures.
The insistence of Renaissance scholars upon
an exact classical purity, together with the
rise of the European nation-states,
contributed to the decline of Latin as an
international cultural medium. Latin
vocabulary has entered English in two major
waves: as religious vocabulary from
Anglo-Saxon times until the Reformation, and
as the vocabulary of science, scholarship,
and the law from the Middle Ages onward. In
the 17th century the makers of English
dictionaries deliberately converted Latin
words into English, enlarging the already
powerful French component of English
vocabulary into the language of education and
refinement, placing fraternity alongside
`brotherhood', comprehend beside
`understand', feline beside `catlike', and so
on. Many `Latin tags' are in regular use in
English: habeas corpus (`you may have the
body'), ipse dixit (`he said it himself'),
non sequitur (`it does not follow'), and so
on. English that consists of many Latin
elements is `Latinate' and often has a
grandiose and even pompous quality. Today,
with fewer students studying Latin in schools
and universities, there is a tendency to make
Latin words more conventionally English; for
example, `cactuses' rather than cacti as the
plural of `cactus'. This tendency is
accompanied by some uncertainty about usage,
for example whether words like data and media
are singular or plural. They are technically
plural and are so treated by scholars,
writers, and editors.