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Latin Translators: Words
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Latin was the original language spoken in the region around Rome known as Latium and achieved great importance as the language of the Roman Empire. All modern Romance languages are descendents of the Latin language. Many words with Latin roots are found in other modern languages including English. One common misnomer is that modern Romance languages were derived from Classical Latin. In reality, they were derived from the spoken, Vulgar Latin. In the Western world, Latin was the linguistic standard for affairs of science and government for over a thousand years before it was replaced by French in the 18th century and then by English in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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More Latin has been written in the past 50 years than in all previous history. Two main reasons may be put forward: the (Latin-speaking) bureaucracy known as ‘The Vatican’ and Internet chat rooms. This created a demand for new words for such inventions as the motor car and the aeroplane. Dictionaries of such modern Latin words have been compiled, and one such dictionary is the ‘Calepinus Novus’, compiled by the Belgian ‘Melissa Foundation’. An electronic version of the Calepinus Novus dictionary, adapted by the authors, is now incorporated into Blitz Latin, by generous permission of Guy Licoppe of Melissa (guy.licoppe@pophost.eunet.be).
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After living and developing over the course of at least 2,200 years, Latin began its slow death around the 1600s. By the 1500s, it was hardly modified; by the 1700s, it was hardly spoken; and in the 2000s, it is hardly remembered except by scholars. But Vulgar Latin never died: rather, after the fall of the Roman Empire it split into several regional dialects, which by the 800s had become the ancestors of today's Romance languages. In addition, English derives 60% of its words from Latin: largely indirectly through French, but partly through direct borrowings made especially during the 1600s in England.
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Any book about Latin translation tells the reader to identify the nominative (subject) noun in the sentence, then pick out the verb which matches the noun. You do not find this instruction in books about the translation of modern European languages! In fact, modern European languages may generally be translated word-for-word into English, while retaining their original sense. This is certainly not the case with Latin, where the word order is used for emphasis. Examples:
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Latin translation online comes in two main types. There is first off the Latin dictionary online. This gives you the definitions one word at a time. Second, there is the Latin online translator. Online Latin translators will give you definitions of multiple words at a time and allow you to more speedily learn Latin meanings. The basic online Latin dictionary is the electronic version of a book that has been around for centuries.
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This program from Syddansk University seems an extremely useful program for people teaching themselves Latin, but it only deals with pre-selected sentences. It doesn't translate the Latin into English at all, but shows the relationships among words by means of tree diagrams. If you have ever tried diagramming a convoluted Latin sentence, you will understand what an imposing task this is. By means of a tree you can see how the words relate to each other; that is, you can tell that one word is part of a phrase begun by another word -- like a preposition leading a prepositional phrase. The pre-selected sentences are from standard Latin authors, so you may find the help you need.
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