Julius Caesar once wrote that all of Gaul was divided into three parts, but when it comes to Latin, you can really find only two groups: those who have some knowledge of the language and those who don’t. Whichever group you fall into, this is the book for you. You might want to get a better handle on this language for so many reasons. Perhaps you remember a few Latin words from when you were in school and want to dust off the cobwebs and refresh the knowledge you once had. Then again, you may just want to find out what all the fuss is about and discover for yourself why so many people still read, write, and even speak a language that has been popular for more than 2,000 years.

Sure, you have to know a few rules and master a few tricks, but after you do, Latin is actually pretty easy to figure out, and you’re going to have fun doing it! Latin was the language of the Romans, the movers and shakers of the ancient world. These are the folks who built a republic and then an empire that stood for hundreds of years, created (and destroyed) Caesars, and produced the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and Hadrian’s Wall. They can also take credit for one of the most lasting man-made concoctions of all time: concrete.

As if that wasn’t enough, Latin continues to influence the world through the many languages, such as French, Italian, and Spanish, that come from it. And Latin has had much influence on English, too, given that more than half of all English words are derived from Latin words. (In fact, you use Latin words without even knowing it.) One of the best-kept secrets about Latin is that not only does figuring out Latin help you understand Latin, but it also helps you understand English, too.

Not too shabby for what some people call a dead language!

About This Book

What’s great about this book is that it leads you step by step to understand how Latin works. With more than a century of combined teaching experience, we (the authors) give you the information that you need without distracting you with things that you don’t. Oh, we offer up plenty of fun facts along the way, but we also give you a lot of practice exercises to help you become comfortable with your new favorite language.

Each chapter is divided into sections, and each section contains information about some part of understanding Latin, such as

• How to decline Latin nouns and adjectives and how to conjugate Latin verbs
• How to translate a sentence so that it makes sense in English
• How Latin continues to influence English
• All sorts of interesting tidbits about Roman culture

Conventions Used in This Book

To make this book easy for you to navigate, we set up a few conventions:

• Latin terms are set in boldface to make them stand out, and their English translations are in italics.
• Verb conjugations (lists that show you the forms of a verb) appear in two-column tables. The first column contains the singular forms in this order: the I form, the you (singular) form, and the he/she/it form. The second column lists the plural forms: the we form, the you (plural) form, and the they form. Here’s an example, using the verb amo, amare, amavi, amatus (to love):

  Singular	Plural
  amo	amamus
  amas	amatis
  amat	amant

Language learning is a peculiar beast, so this book includes a few elements that other For Dummies books don’t include:

• Talkin’ the Talk dialogues: One of the best (and most fun) ways to really understand a language is to see it in action. The dialogues under the heading “Talkin’ the Talk” show you a conversation in Latin, as well as the English translation.
• Words to Know lists: You do have to memorize key words and phrases when you get familiar with a language, so we collect important words within the chapters (or sections) and place them in these lists. Some things to keep in mind about these lists are

  • The function of Latin nouns depends on their declension (the term for the grammatical groupings into which Latin nouns are divided and their gender). The nouns in these lists include the first two dictionary forms (which tell you the noun’s declension) and the gender. Here’s an example: coquus, coqui, m: cook.

    For more on gender, see Chapter 2.

  • Because Latin adjectives have to match the nouns that they modify in case, number, and gender, adjective entries show the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms: frigidus, frigida, frigidum: cold.
  • The translation of a verb depends on its conjugation, so the Words to Know lists include the four dictionary forms of the verb. For example: paro, parare, paravi, paratus: to prepare.
• Fun & Games activities: On top of all these other language-specific sections, we provide fun activities to reinforce what each chapter shows you about Latin. These word games give you a fun way to gauge your progress.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, we made a few assumptions about you:

• You know no Latin — or if you took Latin a long time ago, you may not remember much of it.
• You don’t want to be intimidated or made to feel foolish while you try something new.
• You want to have fun and learn Latin (or refresh your knowledge of it) at the same time.

How This Book Is Organized

To help you find the information that you want more easily, this book is organized into five parts, each covering a particular topic. Each part contains several chapters relating to that part.

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading right now, this book comes with a free, access-anywhere Cheat Sheet containing helpful tips and techniques (as well as some handy tables) for understanding Latin. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com, type Latin For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the search box, and click the Search button. Then select the Cheat Sheet from the drop-down list of results that appears to open the Cheat Sheet in all its glory.

IN THIS PART …

See the links between Latin and English

Master the basics of Latin grammar

Pose questions

Say "Hello" — and "Goodbye"

Familiarity Breeds Comfort: Latin You Already Know

Have you ever sent someone a memento? Have you watched a video? Listened to an audio cassette? If you understand the italicized words in the preceding sentences, then you’re already using Latin. Memento is the Latin word for remember, video is the Latin word for see, and audio is the word for hear. Are you a homo sapiens? Not only are you a member of the human race, but the Latin says that you’re a wise person, as well. Do you watch sporting events in a coliseum? Then you’re tipping the hat to ancient Rome’s most famous gladiatorial arena — the Colosseum.

Some Latin expressions are so much a part of the English-speaking world that you know what they mean, even when changed. “Veni! Vidi! Visa!” for example, has become a popular slogan that even non-Latinists recognize as “I came! I saw! I shopped!”

English uses many Latin words without any change in spelling or any significant change in meaning. You can read more about these words in Chapter 17, but here are a few to get you started:

• senator (senator)
• gladiator (gladiator)
• consul (consul)

Many other Latin words involve the change of only a few letters:

• copiosus (copious)
• defendo (defend)
• signum (sign)

The following sections take a look at some Latin derivatives and loanwords, proving why Latin is anything but a dead language.

From A to Z: The Latin Alphabet

One feature makes Latin easier to understand than some other languages: the alphabet. Latin has no strange characters and no funny accent marks. If you know the English alphabet, then you already know the Latin alphabet and then some. Present-day readers can also remember a couple of tricks to help them decipher Latin:

• Latin uses the same letters as English with a few exceptions:
  • Latin never uses the letter W.
  • Few Latin words use K; they use C instead.
  • Latin used I and V as both consonants and vowels until much later, when someone had the bright idea to bend the I into a J and round the V into a U.
• Everything ran together. That’s right. No spaces, no punctuation.

Here’s an example of what that would have looked like:

INTHEEARLYSTAGESOFTHELANGUAGEYOUCANSEETHATLATINWASWRITTENONLYINMAJUSCULEORCAPITALLETTERSANDWITHOUTANYPUNCTUATIONTHEREWASNOMORESPACEBETWEENWORDSTHANTHEREWASBETWEENLETTERSAPPARENTLYTHEROMANSHADNODIFFICULTYWITHTHISSYSTEMBECAUSETHEYCARRIEDLATINTOTHEENDSOFTHEIRWORLD

Here it is again with spacing and punctuation:

In the early stages of the language, you can see that Latin was written only in majuscule, or capital, letters and without any punctuation. There was no more space between words than there was between letters. Apparently, the Romans had no difficulty with this system because they carried Latin to the ends of their world.

Fortunately, most Latin texts today include modern conventions, such as punctuation and capitalization. Most texts also make a distinction between V and U, but many still keep I as both consonant and vowel.

SOUNDIN’ LIKE A ROMAN: PRONUNCIATION

You may hear that Latin is not a spoken language, and it’s true that no one learns Latin as a native language anymore. In its heyday, however, everyone in the civilized world — that is, the part of the world the Romans considered civilized because they’d conquered it — spoke Latin. In fact, more people spoke Latin than read or wrote it because most folks were illiterate. An education was available only to families who could afford it.

Fortunately, later Latin grammarians who taught the increasing number of barbari (foreigners) how to speak the language of the new world power left some pronunciation clues. Latin literature itself also offers hints about pronunciation. In one of his poems, for example, the poet Catullus (84–54 BCE) pokes fun at someone for the way he pronounces certain words. Arrius, the object of the poet’s wit, over-aspirates some of his words. That is to say, he puts the “h” sound in front of vowels, perhaps to sound more Greek and, therefore, more refined. Understanding that Catullus is making fun of Arrius, you can reason backward to see that such pronunciation wasn’t common — or at least not acceptable — among Romans of that time.

Combining these clues with knowledge of how languages form and change over the years (called historical linguistics), scholars have more or less established an agreed-upon pronunciation, which is often referred to as the Classical pronunciation. Another system for pronouncing Latin comes from a later period of the language and is sometimes called the Ecclesiastical pronunciation (also called “Church pronunciation”) because of its use in the Latin Mass and church hymns.

If you deal mostly with secular texts before the second century CE, then you need to focus on the Classical pronunciation. If your primary interest is in Latin related to the church or in secular writings from the second century onward, then you should know the Ecclesiastical pronunciation.