Latin

[Erased]

Hey I was just wondering - does anyone know how the Latin language sentences are structured? I know its a dead language, but its interesting... Especially the way its in some FF songs Also, I just think I should add this... Besides knowing how the latin language is structured, what do people know about it? I only know that its used for scientific names(because they never change) and a few words.
>--Erased

[Jebus]

Latin sentences have no structure. How you tell the context is by how the nouns are declined.

For example: To say "I ate dinner" you would say "ego consumo cenam", the "ego" is not necessary, but for the sake of my example it is.

If for example you said "meum consumat cena" then you would be saying "The dinner ate me."

Same word order, different forms.

[escobert]

And latin is the offical language of the Vatican City so yes it may be dead in most of the world but still in use somewhat there.

[Erased]

Interesting, Jebus. But I still don't quite get it. What do those words mean? I may get it then...
(ego, consumo, cenam, meum, consumat, cena) And why isn't "ego" necessary? (It's pronounced, "ay-go" right?)

[Jebus]

Ego means "I"
Consumat means "he/she/it eats"
Consumo means "I eat"
Meum means "me" (technically it is the accusative form of I, but it means the same thing)
Cena means "dinner"
Cenam is the accusative form of dinner, which means that the action in the sentence is happening to it.

Anyway, ego wasn't necessary because saying "Ego consumo" like I did means "I I eat."
I just used it to make the example more obvious.

[Meow]

As Jebus said, Latin is an inflected language: rather than a dependence on word order, such as English (highly, highly order-dependent), Latin structures itself around suffixes that define words' syntax within a given sentence and context.

<i>Ego</i> is the first person singular pronoun, "I." However, because Latin conjugates its verbs very definitely according to person (and tense), pronouns are often unnecessary. <i>Consumo</i> ("to eat") then, is present active first person singular, as designated by the "-o" suffix. i doubt <i>ego</i> was ever used except as an intensifier in conversational Latin. Suffixes, though, are the key to learning and understanding the language. For verbs, there are endings for each person (6) in each tense (6), divided up into multiple standards of conjugation (4), which of course all come in active and passive form. And that's just verbs. Word order is of little ultimate importance, though there are tendencies in word placement and of course breathing room to rearrange for emphasis.

But, while decently complex for its many suffixes, Latin is in no way the most complicated. A few Native American languages are expansively inflected, Navajo for example being powerful enough to use as code during World War II.

[Armisael]

And latin is the offical language of the Vatican City so yes it may be dead in most of the world but still in use somewhat there.

And in our school we are obligated to learn Latin(2nd class of highschool) even we're not gonna use them anywhere.

[Dr Unne]

Learning Latin is just learning huge lists of word endings. For example nouns have 5 (or so) cases, and three genders, and five (or so) declensions, and singular and plural, so you're almost into the hundreds of word endings just for nouns, not counting irregulars. And you basically have to memorize which word goes in which declension and such, though there are some patterns you can use to help you. But if you actually learn all that crap, it does make some things nice and easy. "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog" mean opposite things in English, but in Latin you'd know which one was doing the biting just by the word ending, and you could mix the words up in any order and still know what it means.

Latin is extremely useful to learn, if only to better understand English. And if you ever want to learn Spanish or French or German, Latin will almost get you halfway there.

[Nait]

As people have already said, latin is a free-word-order inflected language, with some agglutinative tendencies. *_* Unlike Chinese or English, which are rigid-word-order analytical languages.

[Dixie]

I like Latin.

My sn in Latin is "Dioxippe."

My real name in Latin is "Lea." It isn't any different than my name in english, exept I have an h at the end. I don't think it's pronounced a different way, either.

[escobert]

I wish they had Latin at my old high school. I would have taken that over french any day.