Medieval Latin was used during the Middle Ages as a literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance, which then used Renaissance Latin. Late Latin is the written language from the 3rd century until the 9th century. By the late Roman Republic (75 BC), Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, first form of Literary Latin used by educated Roman elites. Up until today, it appeared in multiple forms, succeding each other. By contrast, Literary Latin was a variety of Latin specially developed for literary purposes. It developed in the 6th to 9th centuries into the modern Romance languages. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken at that time among lower-class commoners and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence and author Petronius. Latin can be divided into two forms: Vulgar Latin and Literary Latin. The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders, six or seven noun cases, five declensions, four verb conjugations, six tenses, three persons, three moods, two voices, two or three aspects, and two numbers. Even after the fall of Western Rome, its literary form, Literary Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome (then known as Latium), but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Latin ( latД«num, or lingua latД«na, ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

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Range of the Romance languages, the modern descendants of Latin, in Europe.

Latin word of the day