:: wikimiki.org ::

Classical Latin

Classical Latin

Classical Latin is the language used by the principal exponents of that language in what is usually regarded as 'classical' Latin literature. Its origins within the framework of Indo-European are well understood, but there is much work still to be done on details. Classical Latin is the Latin language of the Golden Age (broadly the 1st century BC), possibly extending to the Silver Age (broadly the 1st century AD). What we call "Classical Latin" was, in fact, a highly stylized and polished written literary language selectively constructed from early Latin, of which we have far fewer remains. Classical Latin is the product of the reconstruction of early Latin in the prototype of Attic Greek. The earliest Latin literature, such as that of Cato the Elder, Plautus, and to some extent Lucretius, differs from the Latin of the "Golden Age" to some degree. The spoken Latin of the Roman Empire, especially from the second century forward, is generally called vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin differed from classical Latin in its vocabulary and grammar, and as time passed it differed from the classical language in pronunciation as well. Category:Ancient Rome Category:Latin language ja:古典期ラテン語

Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages, those being most notably Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics.

Main features

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. There are six noun cases: #nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative), #genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun), #dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), #accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases), #ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), #vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express location (otherwise expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, small islands, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. There are six general tenses in Latin (technically they are tense/aspect/mood complexes). The indicative mood can be used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative. The following examples are of the first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") in the indicative mood and the active voice:
Primary sequence tenses
# present (laudo, "I praise") # imperfect (laudabam, "I was praising") # future (laudabo, "I shall praise," "I will praise")
Secondary sequence tenses
# perfect (laudavi, "I praised", "I have praised") # pluperfect (laudaveram, "I had praised") # future perfect (laudavero, "I shall have praised," "I will have praised") The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the primary sequence.
Latin and Romance
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative. In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico Ancient Greek is a compulsory subject.
Latin and English
See Latin influence in English for a more complete exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, hundreds of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink). Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/teachem2/thennow/]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages.
Latin education
The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts), backed up by the Senior Classical League for college students. Many would-be international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua considers itself to be the modernized and simplified version of the language (le latino moderne international e simplificate). Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat have also helped boost interest in the language.
See also

About the Latin language

- Latin grammar
- Latin spelling and pronunciation
- Latin declension
- Latin conjugation
- Latin alphabet
- List of Latin words with English derivatives
- Latin verbs with English derivatives
- Latin nouns with English derivatives
- ablative absolute
- Word order in Latin
About the Latin literary heritage

- Latin literature
- Romance languages
- Loeb Classical Library
- List of Latin phrases
- List of Latin proverbs
- Brocard
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- Carmen Possum
Other related topics

- Roman Empire
- Internationalism
References

- Bennett, Charles E. Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0195208293
- Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1859844022; translated from the French by John Howe.
- Wheelock, Frederic. Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0060784237
External links

- [http://www.jambell.com/latin.html Latin Phrases for after dinner conversation (Thanks to Elaine Poole)]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lat Ethnologue report for Latin]
- [http://forumromanum.org/literature/index.html Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum] is a comprehensive webography of Latin texts and their translations.
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ The Perseus Project] has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin an interactive Latin dictionary].
- [http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe words by William whitaker] is a dictionary program online capable of looking up various word forms.
- [http://retiarius.org/ Retiarius.Org] includes a Latin text search engine.
- [http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar from U of Notre Dame]
- [http://latin-language.co.uk/ Latin language] History of Latin language, Latin texts with English translation and a collection of dictionaries.
- [http://augustinus.eresmas.net/scl/ Societas Circulorum Latinorum] gathers together Latin Circles all over the world.
- [http://www.learnlatin.tk LearnLatin.tk] - Free online course in Latin
- [http://www.latintests.net/ LatinTests.net] - Lets Latin learners test their grammar and vocabulary with self-checking quizzes.
- [http://thelatinlibrary.com/ The Latin Library] contains many Latin etexts
- [http://www.textkit.com/ Textkit] has Latin textbooks and etexts.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Latin-english/ Latin–English Dictionary]: from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.language-reference.com/ Language reference] Cross-foreign-language lexicon powered by its own search engine. All cross combinations between Latin and French, German, Italian, Spanish.
- [http://comp.uark.edu/~mreynold/rhetor.html Rhetor by Gabriel Harvey] was originally published in 1577 and never again reprinted.
- [http://freewebs.com/omniamundamundis omniamundamundis] Latin hypertexts from fourteen ancient Roman authors.
- [http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pron.htm Pronunciation of Biological Latin, Including Taxonomic Names of Plants and Animals]
- [http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii Nuntii Latini (News in Latin)], written and spoken (RealAudio) news in latin. Weekly review of world news in Classical Latin, the only international broadcast of its kind in the world, produced by YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
- [http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=Replace%20Me&from=eng&to=ltt InterTran Latin], Translate from Latin to ENGLISH or vice versa.
- [http://www.latinvulgate.com Latin Vulgate] The Latin and English of the Old & New Testaments in parallel, along with the Complete Sayings of Jesus in parallel Latin and English. Category:Classical languages Category:Ancient languages Category:Fusional languages Category:Languages of Italy Category:Languages of Vatican City als:Latein zh-min-nan:Latin-gí ko:라틴어 ja:ラテン語 simple:Latin language th:ภาษาละติน

Indo-European

Indo-European was originally a purely linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. By extension, it became a collective name for cultures and religions associated with these languages. Hypothetically, these cultures arose from the expansion of an ancient people, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, from a homeland that has remained obscured, although opinion is generally divided between southern Russia and eastern Anatolia.

Language Family

See main article Indo-European languages. The Indo-European language family is attested in twelve branches, some of them extinct, with a historical distribution over most of Europe, North India, Pakistan, Anatolia, Armenia, Iran, and parts of Central Asia (East Turkistan). The word Indo specifically refers to India alone. India has the largest single Indo-European speaking population on the planet where 75% of the non-Dravidian population (some 700 million people) speak many different Indo-European languages and dialects, which are descendents of a language called Proto-Indo-Aryan by linguists. During the age of colonialism, Indo-European languages spread from Europe to all continents, and today there are over three billion speakers of Indo-European languages, distributed all over the world. The languages are traditionally separated into a Satem group in the east (Baltic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Armenian) and a Centum group in the west (Greek, Italic, Celtic, Germanic), according to their different treatment of PIE velar sounds. The two groups are considered paraphyletic, i.e. there are no separate proto-languages for each group and their common characteristics are likely due to prolonged contact because of their geographical proximity. Also, there is evidence that the Anatolian, Tocharian and Albanian branches belong to neither of the two groups.

Comparative Linguistics

See main article Indo-European studies. The existence of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been inferred by comparative linguistics. The discovery of the genetic relationship of the various Indo-European languages goes back to William Jones, a British judge in India, who in 1782 observed the strong affinity of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. The language group was briefly referred to as "Indo-Germanic", until it became apparent that the group included most of the other languages of Europe, as well. "Indo-European", the term now current in English, was coined in 1813 by the British scholar Sir Thomas Young. Franz Bopp performed extensive comparative work. At first, the related languages were simply compared, with no attempt at reconstruction. August Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a tentative text in the extinct "common source" Jones had predicted. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) represents, by definition, a hypothetical model of the common language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, great progress was made due to the discovery of more language material belonging to the Indo-European family, and by advances in comparative linguistics, by scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure.

Proto-Indo-Europeans

See main article Proto-Indo-Europeans.

Origins

The scholars of the 19th century that originally tackled the question of the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans (also called Urheimat after the German term), were essentially confined to linguistic evidence. A rough localization was attempted by reconstructing the names of plants and animals as well as the culture and technology. The scholarly opinions became basically divided between a European hypothesis, positing migration from Europe to Asia, and an Asian hypothesis, holding that the migration took place in the opposite direction. However, from its early days, the controversy was tainted by romantic, nationalistic notions of heroic invaders at best and by imperialist and racist agendas at worst. The question is still the source of much contention. racist according to the Kurgan hypothesis. The purple area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture). The red area corresponds to the area which may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to ca. 1000 BC.]] In the twentieth century, Marija Gimbutas (1956) created a modern variation on the traditional invasion theory (the Kurgan hypothesis) which regards the Indo-Europeans as nomadic horsemen in what is today South Russia and Eastern Ukraine, expanding in several waves during the 3rd millennium BC. However, others have associalted the Kurgans with the Indo-Iranians. Colin Renfrew (1987) is the main propagator for another theory according to which the Indo-Europeans were farmers in Anatolia who introduced agriculture into southeast Europe around 7000 BC and assimilated the Preindoeuropeans. This is also problematic, however, as the Indo-European language had words for things such as yoke and plough which were not present at the introduction of agriculture to Europe. The rise of Archaeogenetics, which uses genetic analysis to trace migration patterns, added new elements to the puzzle. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza recently used genetic evidence to in some ways combine Gimbutas' and Renfrew's theory.

Religion

Main article: Proto-Indo-European religion The hypothetical PIE religion was centered on sacrificial rituals where animals were slaughtered to establish good relations with the gods. The chief god of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon, probably mirroring the position of the king in human society, was the sky-god Dyeus.

Golden Age of Latin Literature

The golden age of Latin literature (Latinitas aurea) is a period consisting roughly of the time from approximately 75 BC to 14 AD, covering the end of the Roman Republic and the reign of Augustus Caesar. Classical Latinists believe that this period represents the peak of quality of Latin literature, and that its Latin usage represents the best norm that other writers should follow.

Grammatical differences between early Latin and Golden Age Latin

Classical Latin basically had changed the very early -om and -os endings to -um and -us. Some lexical differences to later Latin include the broadening of meaning later on (eg. forte meant not only 'surprisingly' but also 'hard').

The Classical Golden Authors

Poetry

The earliest poet considered to be Golden Age Latin is the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius, who wrote a long didactic poem On the Nature of Things in which Epicurean philosophy is expounded. Catullus was a slightly later, but more important poet. Catullus pioneered the naturalization of Greek lyric verse forms in Latin. The poetry of Catullus was personal, sometimes erotic, sometimes playful, and frequently abusive. He wrote exclusively in Greek metres. The heavy hand of Greek prosody would continue to have a pronounced influence on the style and syntax of Latin poetry until the rise of Christianity made a different sort of hymnody become needed. The Grecianizing tendencies of Golden Age Latin reached their apex in Virgil, whose Æneid was an epic poem after the method of Homer; in Horace, whose odes and satires were after the manner of the Greek anthology, and who used almost all of the fixed forms of Greek prosody in Latin; and in Ovid, who wrote long and learned poems on mythological subjects, as well as semi-satirical pieces such as the Ars Amatoria, the Art of Love. Tibullus and Propertius also wrote poems that were modelled after Greek antecedents.

Prose

In prose, Golden Age Latin is exemplified by Julius Caesar, whose Commentaries on the Gallic Wars display a laconic, precise, military style; and by Marcus Tullius Cicero, a practicing lawyer and politician, whose judicial arguments and political speeches, most notably the Catiline Orations, were considered for centuries to be the best models for Latin prose. Cicero also wrote many letters which have come down to us, and a few philosophical tracts in which he gives his version of Stoicism. Historiography was an important genre of classical Latin prose; it includes Sallust, who wrote of the Conspiracy of Catiline and the War Against Jugurtha, his only works that have been preserved complete. Livy, also, was a historian; his Ab Urbe Condita, a history of Rome "from the Founding of the City," was originally in 145 books, of which only 35 have been preserved. Category:Ancient Rome Category:Latin language

Silver Age of Latin literature

In reference to Roman literature, the Silver age covers the first two centuries A.D. directly after the Golden age (which was the first century B.C., and the start of the first century A.D.) Literature from the Silver age has traditionally, perhaps unfairly, been considered inferior to that of the Gold age. Silver Latin itself may be subdivided further into two periods: a period of radical experimentation in the latter half of the first century AD, and a renewed Neoclassicism in the second century AD. Under the reigns of Nero and Domitian, poets like Seneca the Younger, Lucan and Statius pioneered a unique style that has alternately delighted, disgusted and puzzled later critics. Stylistically, Neronian and Flavian literature shows the ascendence of rhetorical training in late Roman education. The style of these authors is unfailingly declamatory - at times eloquent, at times bombastic. Exotic vocabulary and sharply-polished aphorisms glimmer everywhere, though at times to the detriment of thematic coherence. Thematically, late 1st century literature is marked by an interest in terrible violence, witchcraft, and extreme passions. Under the influence of Stoicism, the gods recede in importance, while the physiology of emotions looms large. Passions like anger, pride and envy are painted in almost anatomical terms of inflammation, swelling, upsurges of blood or bile. For Statius, even the inspiration of the Muses is described as a calor "fever". While their extremity in both theme and diction has earned these poets the disapproval of Neoclassicists both ancient and modern, they were favorites during the European Renaissance, and underwent a revival of interest among the English Modernist poets. By the end of the first century, however, a reaction had set in, and Tacitus, Quintilian and Juvenal all testify to the resurgence of a more restrained, classicizing style under Trajan and the Antonine emperors. The Silver age also furnishes our only two extant Latin novels: Apuleius's Golden Ass and Petronius's Satyricon. Some writers of the silver age include Petronius, Seneca, Phaedrus, Persius, Quintilian, Lucan, Statius, Tacitus, Martial, Juvenal, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius. Category:Ancient Rome Category:Latin language

1st century

The 1st century was that century which lasted from 1 AD to 100 AD, or from 0 to 99 in a more scientific notation (using a year zero), as in astronomical year numbering.

Events

- Beginning of Christianity
- Spread of the Roman Empire
- Masoretes adds vowel pointings to the text of the Tanakh
- 70: destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans under Vespasian
- Pompeii and Herculaneum destroyed by eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August 79
- Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka first write down Buddha's teachings, creating the Pali canon
- Buddhism reaches China
- Tacitus mentions the Suiones, who will one day be called the Swedes.
- Kaundinya, a Indian Brahmin marries Soma and establishes the Pre-Angkor Cambodian Kingdom of Funan.
- Arena (colosseum) is constructed, origin of the name Arena
- The Goths settle in northern Poland, which they called Gothiscandza, and shape the Wielbark culture.

Significant persons

- Apollonius of Tyana.
- Arminius.
- Boudica.
- Caesar Augustus.
- Caligula.
- Claudius.
- Domitian.
- Galba.
- Hero of Alexandria.
- Jesus Christ.
- Josephus.
- Livy.
- Nero.
- Nerva.
- Otho.
- Saint Paul of Tarsus.
- Pliny the Elder.
- Seneca the Younger.
- Tacitus.
- Tiberius.
- Titus.
- Trajan.
- Vespasian.
- Vitellius.

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

- Codex, the first form of the modern book, appears in the Roman empire
- Year 78 - the beginning of the Saka Era South Asian calendar system.
- Bookbinding
- Various inventions by Hero of Alexandria, including the steam turbine (aeolipile), vending machine, machine gun, water organ, and various other water-powered machines.

Decades and years

Category:1st century 01st century ko:1세기 ja:1世紀

Writing

Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that represent language or record information, and the creation of material to be conveyed through written language. (There are some exceptions; for example, the use of a typewriter to record language is generally called typing, rather than writing.) Writing refers to both activities equally, and both activities may often occur simultaneously.

Methods for recording information

Logographies

A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme. The vast array of logograms needed to write a language, and the many years required to learn them, are the major disadvantage of the logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, the efficiency of reading logographic writing once it is learned is a major advantage. No writing system is wholly logographic. All have phonetic components as well as logograms ("logosyllabic" components in the case of Chinese, cuneiform, and Mayan, where a glyph may stand for a morpheme, a syllable, or both; "logoconsonantal" in the case of hieroglyphs), and many have an ideographic component (Chinese "radicals", hieroglyphic "determiners".) For example, in Mayan, the glyph for "fin", pronounced ka, was used to represent the syllable ka whenever clarification was needed. However, such phonetic elements complement the logographic elements, rather than vice versa. The main logographic system in use today is Chinese, used with some modification for various languages of China, Japanese, and, to a lesser extent, Korean in South Korea. Another is the classical Yi script.
Syllabaries
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables. A glyph in a syllabary typically represents a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, though in some scripts more complex syllables (such as consonant-vowel-consonant, or consonant-consonant-vowel) may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically related syllables are not so indicated in the script. For instance, the syllable ka may look nothing like the syllable ki, nor will syllables with the same vowels be similar. Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee; Ndjuka, an English-based creole of Surinam; and the Vai script of Liberia. Most logographic systems have a strong syllabic component.
Alphabets
An alphabet is a small set of symbols, each of which roughly represents or historically represented a phoneme of the language. In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language. In most of the alphabets of the Mid-East, only consonants are indicated, or vowels may be indicated with optional diacritics. Such systems are called abjads. In other, vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are called abugidas. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree, are learned by children as syllabaries, and are often called "syllabics". However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable. Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet.
Featural scripts
A featural script notates the building blocks of the phonemes that make up a language. For instance, all sounds pronounced with the lips ("labial" sounds) may have some element in common. In the Latin alphabet, this is accidentally the case with the letters b and p; however, labial m is completely dissimilar, and the similar-looking q is not labial. In Korean Hangul, however, all four labial consonants are based on the same basic element. However, in practice, Korean is learned by children as an ordinary alphabet, and the featural elements tend to pass unnoticed. Another featural script is SignWriting, the most popular writing system for many sign languages, where the shapes and movements of the hands and face are represented iconically. Featural scripts are also common in fictional or invented systems, such as Tolkien's Tengwar.
Historical significance of writing systems
Historians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent language directly. Writing systems always develop and change based on the needs of the people who use them. Sometimes the shape, orientation and meaning of individual signs also changes over time. By tracing the development of a script it is possible to learn about the needs of the people who used the script as well as how it changed over time.
Tools
(see methods of representing text)
Writing in Historical Cultures

Mesopotamia
The original Mesopotamian writing system was initially derived from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using imprints of a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), atfirst only for numbers, and finally a general purpose writing system, initially used to represent Sumerian. This writing system was originally a logographic writing system, but had begun to evolve phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. By the 26th century BC, this script had been adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, and from there to others such as Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
Egypt
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette, dating to c.3200 BC, and several recent discoveries that may be slightly older, though the glyphs were based on a much older artistic tradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic adjuncts that included an effective alphabet. Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to become scribes, in the service of temple, pharaonic, and military authorities. The hieroglyph system was always difficult to learn, but in later centuries was purposefully made even more so, as this preserved the scribes' status. The world's oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around 2000 BC from a hieroglyphic prototype, and over the next 500 years spread to Palestine and eventually to the rest of the world.
Phoenician writing system and descendents
The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite script in around the 11th century BC, which in turn borrowed ideas from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This writing system was an abjad - that is, a writing system in which only consonants are represented. This script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs to represent their vowels. This alphabet in turn was adapted by various peoples to write their own language, resulting in the Etruscan alphabet, and its own descendents, such as the Latin alphabet and Runes. Other descendents from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic alphabet, used to write Russian, among others. The Phoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew script and also that of Arabic are descended.
China
In China historians have found out a lot about the early Chinese dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements. Markings on turtle shells have been carbon-dated to around 1,500 BC. Historians have found that the type of media used had an effect on what the writing was documenting and how it was used.
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley script is one of the most fascinating and mysterious aspects of ancient Indian culture as it has not yet been deciphered. Although we have many example of the Indus script, without true understanding of how the script works and what the inscriptions say, it is impossible to understand the importance of writing in the pre-Indo-European Harappan Civilization.
Elsewhere
Many other systems have been developed independently, e.g. the complex Mayan writing; Etruscan is still not deciphered despite a fairly large corpus of material (mainly Latin and Greek).
Creation of text or information

Creativity
In order to write a creative essay or short story, there are several tools that you can employ: dialogue (conversation and your thoughts) sensory imagery (the five senses and your feelings) dialect concrete details (as opposed to abstract ideas) literary devices (such as similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, and understatement)
Author

Critiques
Writers will often search out others to evaluate or critique their work. This can give the writer a better product in the end. To this end, many writers join writing circles, often found at local libraries or bookstores. With the evolution of the internet, writing circles have started to go [http://www.dragonfly-publishing.com/members/index.php online].
See also

- author
- boustrophedon text
- calligraphy
- communication
- creative writing
- decipherment
- interactive fiction
- linguistics
- literacy
- manuscript
- orthography
- pencil
- printing
- publishing
- speech
- graphonomics
- word processing
- writer
- writing slate
- writing systems
- List of writers' conferences
Further reading

- A History of Writing: From Hieroglyph to Multimedia, edited by Anne-Marie Christin, [http://www.flammarion.com/groupe/ Flammarion] (in French, hardcover: 408 pages, 2002, ISBN 2080108875)
- [http://www.lichtensteiger.de/methoden.html Das "Anrennen gegen die Grenzen der Sprache" Diskussion mit Roland Barthes, André Breton, Gilles Deleuze & Raymond Federman] by Ralph Lichtensteiger
- [http://www.authorssociety.org/ By writers for writers Authors Society.org]
- [http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws.html Origins of writing on AncientScripts.com]
- [http://www.delmar.edu/engl/instruct/stomlin/1301int/lessons/language/history.htm History of Writing]
- [http://www.writing.com/ Writing.Com: Online Writing]: A site for writers to exchange feedback ;ERIC Digests
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/writing.htm Writing Instruction: Current Practices in the Classroom]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/development.htm Writing Development]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/views.htm Writing Instruction: Changing Views over the Years]
- ja:筆記 simple:Writing

Attic Greek

Attic Greek is the ancient dialect of the Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek. It differs from most Greek dialects, including Doric, by frequently changing long ā to ē; from Ionic in not changing all of them. The Homeric dialect was an artificial compound, which resembled Ionic; but it also differed from Attic in losing the augment on the past tenses, and much more frequent use of the dual and other archaic forms. The later Koiné was largely Attic; but Attic differed from it, and most other dialects in saying "tt" for "ss" (e.g. tettares tattomenoi for tessares tassomenoi).

Grammar

Nouns

Attic Greek nouns have three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative). The two major noun declensions are the vowel declension and the consonant declension. The vowel declension is split into the alpha-declension and the omicron-declension. There is also the minor consonant declension.

Alpha Declension

The alpha declension is predominantly, but not exclusively, feminine. Nouns belonging to the alpha declension have stems ending in alpha, short or long. In certain circumstances the alpha may change its length or become eta. In the table below of feminine nouns there are three examples: long-alpha stem (ᾱ-stems), short-alpha stems (α-stems), and a stems which can end in eta (η-stems). The short alpha stem is not present in masculine nouns, thus only ᾱ-stems and η-stems are declined.

Omicron Declension

Nouns in the omicron declension can be masculine, feminine, or neuter, though they are predominantly masculine and neuter. Masculine and feminine nouns are declined alike.

The Article

Attic Greek has only a definite article, which declines with its noun. It does not have an indefinite article which can be translated as "a(n)," "some," or "a certain." Frequently proper names take the definite article. A common construction is a definite article followed by a definite article in the genitive, the noun in the genitive, and finally the noun of the first article. For example: . Translated literally as "the (of the man) deed", or more clearly rendered in English: "The deed of the man." The definite article is declined thus:

Verbs

Verbs have three numbers (singular, dual, plural), three persons (first person, second person, third person), seven tenses (present, imperfect, aorist, future, present perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), two aspects (simple (or aorist) and continuous), three voices (active voice, middle voice, passive voice), and four moods (indicative mood, imperative mood, subjunctive mood, optative mood). Note that the aorist construction is more than a tense: with the augment it is a tense and an aspect: past simple; without the augment (as is the case for participles, infinitives, and imperatives) it signifies simple aspect only.

References

-
-

External links

- [http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/~u0013314/greekg.htm Greek Grammar on the Web]
- [http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ancient_greek_start.html Ancient Greek Tutorials]
- [http://www.textkit.com/index.php Textkit - Greek and Latin Learning Tools] Category:Hellenic languages and dialects Category:Classical languages

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC - 184 BC, born at Sassina, Umbria) was a comic playwright in the time of the Roman Republic. The years of his life are uncertain, but his plays were first produced between about 205 BC and 184 BC. Twenty-one plays survive. Plautus' comedies, which are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature, are mostly adaptations of Greek models for a Roman audience. His most typical character is the clever slave who manipulates his master, reversing the master-slave dynamic expected of such relationships in the Roman world. Most characters in Plautus' play are stock characters such as Senex (the old man). Plautus' work gave ideas to many playwrights afterwards, such as William Shakespeare, Molière, Lessing and others. His comedies Miles Gloriosus and Pseudolus were also the basis for the 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He wrote the plays Poenulus, Amphitryon, Captivi, Persa, Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus, Aulularia, Trinummus, Rudens, Mercator, Curculio, Stichus, Menaechmi and Asinaria.

External links

- Project Gutenberg has some English translations of [http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=2406 plays by Plautus]
- A good introductory [http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc21.html biography of Plautus] Category:Roman era writers Category:Ancient Romans Plautus

Lucretius

Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC-55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His major work is De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things, which is considered by some to be the greatest masterpiece of Latin verse - deeper than any other poet; more moving, imaginative than any other philosopher. Stylistically however, most scholars attribute the full blossoming of Latin hexameter to Virgil. The De Rerum Natura however, is of indisputable importance for its influence on Virgil and other later poetry. The main purpose of the work was to free men's minds of superstition and fear of death. Creationist David Menton wrote: :Like the other Greek philosophers of his day, Lucretius attempted to satisfy a deep philosophical need for a self-assembling cosmos without a sovereign Creator. For him, evolutionary materialism was an attempt to emancipate men from two great fears -- the fear of the arbitrary interference of the gods in the affairs of men, and the fear of accountability after death.[http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro21.html] It achieves this through the principles of the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius immortalizes. The work has several allusions to the tumultuous state of political affairs in Rome and its civil strife. Lucretius treads the steps of his teaching carefully so as not to offend traditional Romans, slowly unfolding the more controversial and revolutionary aspects of his inculcation. De Rerum Natura places more emphasis on ethical goals than did earlier Epicureans, but faithfully transmits their physics and psychology. Lucretius was the first Epicurean to write in Latin. We know very little about Lucretius' life; one source of information (generally considered unreliable) is St. Jerome, who mentions Lucretius in the Chronica Eusebia. According to Jerome, Lucretius was born in 94 BC, and died at the age of 44. He claims that Lucretius was driven mad by a love-philtre and that the work was written during the intervals of his insanity, later killing himself. These claims about Lucretius' life have been discredited for two main reasons: firstly, the Epicurean philosophy expounded by Lucretius sets great store on reason and discourages romantic attachments; and secondly, it seems likely that Jerome, as one of the early church fathers, would have wanted to discredit Lucretius's philosophy, which includes disbelief in any kind of life after death and in any divinity concerned with man's welfare. Cicero implies in one of his letters to his brother that they had once read Lucretius' poem. This is the last mention of Lucretius until Aelius Donatus, in his Life of Virgil, while stating that Virgil assumed the toga virilis on October 15, 55 BC, adds "it happened on that very day Lucretius the poet died." If Jerome is accurate about Lucretius' age (44) when he died, then based on other evidence that confirms 55 BC as Lucretius' year of death we can then conclude he was born in 99 BC. However, the only certain fact of Lucretius' life is that he was either a friend or a client of Gaius Memmius, to whom he dedicated his poem On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura). This poem is also unfinished, although Jerome says that Cicero "amended" it -- which may mean he edited it for its eventual publication. Lucretius attempts in this poem to present a total Epicurean worldview. Ranging from the nature of matter to sex, politics, and death, the poem is encyclopedic, and is considered one of the masterpieces of Latin verse. His use of the hexameter is very individualistic and ruggedly distinct from the smooth urbanity of Virgil or Ovid. His use of heterodynes, assonance, and oddly syncopated Latin forms create a harsh acoustic. The sustained energy of Lucretius' writing is unparallelled in Latin literature, with the possible exception of parts of Tacitus's Annals, or perhaps Books II and IV of the Aeneid.

External links

-
- Project Gutenberg e-text of [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=785 On The Nature Of Things]
-
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm On the Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature -- Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation, 1841]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry]

References

- On the Nature of Things, (1951 verse translation by R. E. Latham), introduction and notes by John Godwin, Penguin revised edition 1994, ISBN 0140446109
- Lucretius (1971). De Rerum Natura Book III. (Latin version of Book III only– 37 pp., with extensive commentary by E. J. Kenney– 171 pp.), Cambridge University Press corrected reprint 1984. ISBN 0521291771 Category:Hellenistic philosophers Category:Roman era poets Category:99 BC births Category:55 BC deaths Category:Suicides ja:ルクレティウス

2nd century

Events

- Roman Empire governed by the "Five Good Emperors" (96–180) – Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius.
- The kingdom of Aksum emerges.

Significant persons

- Cai Lun, Chinese inventor
- Galen, medical writer
- Saint Irenaeus
- Pliny the Younger
- Plutarch
- Ptolemy
- Trajan
- Hadrian
- Antoninus Pius
- Marcus Aurelius
- Commodus
- Septimius Severus

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

- Cai Lun invents paper (c. 105)
- Ptolemy compiles a catalogue of all stars visible to the naked eye.

Decades and years

Category:2nd century 02nd century ko:2세기 ja:2世紀 th:คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 2

Category:Latin language

Category:Italic languages Category:Classical languages Category:Ancient languages ko:분류:라틴어

Close-mid central rounded vowel

The close-mid central rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 8. The symbol is a lowercase barred letter o, and should not be confused with the Greek letter theta (θ), which in IPA corresponds to a consonant sound, the voiceless dental fricative.

Features

Features of this vowel:
- Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
- Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in

- : , 'name'

Mid central rounded vowel

Languages may have a mid central rounded vowel (a rounded ), distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic can be used: .

Occurs in

- Swedish: , 'full' Category:Vowels ko:중설 원순 중고모음

tapety na pulpit hmb w�adys�awowo pokoje zujer diety

:: RELATED NEWS ::

Twist serve
A twist serve (or American twist) is a type of serve in tennis. It is also called a kick serve. A twist serve is thrown somewhat behind the server's head, then hit with top spin that makes the ball go in an angled arc over the net. Upon bouncing, it jumps high to the side in the direction of the server's racquet arm. If a right hander hits a twist serve to the ad (backhand) court, it will jump out away from the center of the court. The twist serve, when mastered, is generally safer than the f