Latin Derivatives

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       Latin was spoken during the ancient Roman era, and after the fall of the Western Empire in 476 CE, it was used during mass in Catholic churches. The language is inflected, meaning the endings on the words (masculine, feminine, neuter) determine the essence of the sentence, not the placement of the words. For example, in English we say, “The cat chased the mouse.” In Latin, “cat” would have a specific subject ending, “mouse” would have a unique direct object ending, and “chased” would be in the singular past tense; the words could be placed anywhere in the sentence. Latin is made up of five declensions, or noun groups with general endings, and four verb conjugations. There are many endings to be memorized (i.e. singular vs. plural, gender, case, etc), and the language is no longer spoken in daily life. Although linguists don’t really know how the language actually sounded in antiquity, certain vowel phrases (i.e. “ae” is pronounced “aye” and “i” is pronounced “e”) are known. Here are a few Latin vocabulary words with interesting derivatives—most of the English words we use today come directly from Latin!

Latin inscription