THELATINLANGUAGEILLUMINATEDBYITSELF

PART I: ROMAN FAMILY

INTRODUCTION

LATIN LANGUAGE, the Latin language.

The Latin language, lingua Latīna, was the language of the Latins (Latīnī), Latin, the language of
Latium
the inhabitants of Latium (Latium), a region of central Italy that
it included the city of Rome (Rōma), which according to tradition was founded
by Romulus in the year 753 BC. In the centuries
Next, Rome extended its dominion, imperium Rōmānum, to all the language of the Empire
Italy, and from there to the western and eastern Mediterranean. In the century Roman
in the second after Christ, the emperor of Rome ruled the largest
part of Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and the East
Mediocre. In the provinces of Western Europe, Hispānia, Gaul,
Britain, Germania (on Germany) and in the Balkans, by
example in Dacia (Romania), the Latin language spread
quickly. In Greece and in the provinces of the East, the Greek
he maintained his dominant position, so that the men of the
Classical antiquity had two universal languages, Greek and the
Latin.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Latin
disappeared as a spoken language in some of the provinces
peripherals, for example Brittany and Africa; in the other provinces the
Spoken Latin gave rise to the Romance languages: Spanish the Romance languages
the Castilian, Catalan, Galician, and Portuguese in the Iberian Peninsula and,
the rest of Europe, French, Provençal, Italian, Sardinian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Romanian.

These days, Latin is not the native language of anyone. That is why it is called
dead language. However, the term is inappropriate. During
For centuries, Latin was a living language in the vast Roman Empire.
the same way that Spanish is today in the Spanish-speaking world.
And this "dead" language experienced such vitality there that during the Middle Ages
Latin remained unrivaled as the language of the educated classes of Europe. the cultural language of
Until the 18th century, Latin maintained its supremacy as a means of Europe
university communication. Even in our days, Latin survives.
as the language of the Roman Catholic Church and the majority of the
scientific terms are still in Latin.
As a consequence of that role of Latin as a language of culture
internationally, the national languages of Europe have been enriched with
a huge amount of Latin words. Apart from the languages
romances, in which non-Latin words are an exception, the
English is, by far, the language that has assimilated the largest number. Latin words in the
modern languages
of Latin words. In fact, more than half of the English vocabulary
comes, directly or indirectly, from Latin.

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 Spelling and Pronunciation
the Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet consists of 23 letters: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O
P Q R S T V X Y Z (almost never used the K; the Y and the Z are
they were used only in Greek words). The lowercase letters are a
J, One is used (up to further development of those uppercase letters. The characters J, U, and W do not
the 16th century
there existed: I and V represented both the vowels and the
consonantsjyv (initially pronounced as layde 'I' and the
From the 16th century, the distinction was established between
I am between you and v. In our Latin books, we do not use j, but
we distinguish V from U, except in titles written with
JULIUS Capital: CHAPTER, JULIUS.
It is possible to establish with great accuracy the ancient pronunciation of
Latin, thanks to the following main testimonies:
Latin orthography, especially in its variations of the norm.
(2) The pronunciation of the Romance languages that bear witness to
latest development of spoken Latin.
(3) The data on pronunciation transmitted by the grammarians and
other Latin authors.
The transcription of the Latin words that were introduced into others
languages.
the pronunciation By relying on these sources, we can establish the main ones.
classic
rules of Latin pronunciation in the classical period (1st century BC):

Vowels
vowels The distinction was clearly established in the spoken language but not in
briefs: a e i o u y the writing, between long vowels and short vowels. In the course LINGVA
long: a e i o u In Latin, all long vowels carry a small overline:
a,e,i,o,u,y, so that the absence of that dash shows that the
The vowel is brief: a, e, i, o, u, y. Spanish no longer distinguishes between the two.
types of vowels.
Short vowels Long vowels
as it was, loved As it is, so be it
how are you, good how to me, itself
How to say, very much how to enhance, good
how to post, mode as for endō, which
as we are, we are how you are, us
and like in Syria (=French in how in Lydia (=French in
‘moon’, German in ‘dune’ ‘pur’, German in ‘grūn’
Diphthongs
diphthongs A diphthong is the combination of two vowels in a single syllable.
ae oe au (eu) In the classical era there were three diphthongs: ae, oe, au, and occasionally, eu:
for example, as in Greece, almost;

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oecomo enfoedus, penalty;
as it is in the ship, sailor;
I eat in Europe, oh, hey, nor, or (but the endings -us, -um,
-they constitute separate syllables after the: de|us, me|us,
e|um, e|unt, aure|us).
Consonants
bitt, ab. (Perobsybtcomopsypt:absent, consonants
he/she offered) bcdfghklmnpqr
stxz
it always had the velar sound [k] that Spanish has in 'carta', I v (u)
even before the vowels: canis, centum, circum, nec.
ch, ph, th followed by an aspiration: pulcher,
amphitheater.
as in Spanish: dē, dedit, to.
as in Spanish: forum, river.
it always had the velar sound [g] that Spanish has in 'pagar',
even in front of the law: the ego, the rooster, the gem, acts.
slightly aspirated sound (tending to disappear): hīc, homō,
nothing.
moon, sword, bad, or.
like in Spanish: me, house, so. (In the endings -am, -em,
Um, I was beginning to disappear.
like in Spanish: nōn, ūnus; before dec, g, q like in 'bank':
inhabitant, long, five. (Before the, tends to disappear: table,
island.)
foot, people, near.
ph: like the Spanish followed by an aspiration: verch.
qucomocuen 'which', 'question', 'quota': quis, water, horse.
rcomo en español:rēs,ōra, arbor, cūr.
yes, pink, is.
you, he, and.
as the Spanish 'th' followed by aspiration: verch.
you see the graph that represents the value when it has value
consonantal before a vowel; it was pronounced like in English: vōs,
alive, forest.
like in Spanish (=cs): ex, rock.
as in English and French in 'zone': zōna.
the consonant how in Spanish and in 'I', before the vowel at the beginning
of a word (or preceded by a prefix) and between vowels: iam, iānua,
to love, adjective, to join, unjust, of this.
it consonantal like in Spanish in 'language', 'soft', in the
combination gloves of vowel and sometimes in the combinationsu
before: language, blood, to persuade, sweet, custom.
The geminated consonants had a more pronounced and more double consonants
prolonged that the simple ones (lallse pronounced as l-l): girl,
year, coin, town, letter, behold.
vowels were pronounced as double: eius como eius, maior como
greater, written greater in the LATIN LANGUAGE.

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 The post-classical Latin pronunciation
the pronunciation The classical pronunciation of Latin described above was that of the media.
post-classical
cults of Rome in the first century B.C. However, the pronunciation
underwent significant changes throughout the imperial period (1st to 5th centuries)
A.D.). We see here the most notable changes:
(1) The diphthongs were simplified into a long one.
He took the sound of the French as in 'vivant' (the
experienced a phenomenon of assimilation with lab, called
'betacismo', example: berus = verus;
(3) phase pronunciation; like [k] without aspiration;
Immediately after a vowel, it had the hissing sound (except after
s,x,t);
The distinction between long and short syllables faded away.
given that any short vowel at the end of an accented syllable is
lengthened, while the long vowels of the unaccented syllables are
they abbreviated.
(6) Finally, in the 5th century A.D., the pronunciation became degse.
modified in front of the palatal vowels e, i, y, ae, oe: this pronounced
how much Spanish (outside of Italiats), and, as much as there
consonant, pronounced like in Italian 'giro' or in English 'gin'.
the pronunciation The main details of this post-classical Latin pronunciation
Ecclesiastical Italian They survive in the pronunciation of Latin still used in Italy. The
The 'Italian' pronunciation of Latin is still widely used by
the Roman Catholic Church and in liturgical singing.
Syllable division
syllable division The division into syllables is done almost like in Spanish:
(1) A single consonant forms a syllable with the following vowel:
lord, eye, cubicle, rock.
(2) If a vowel is followed by two or more consonants, the last one
The consonant belongs to the next syllable: Sep-tem-ber, tem-pes-tās,
pis-cis, con-iūnc-tus. Exception: b, d, g, p, t, only separate from
a following roll (except sometimes in poetry): li-brī, pa-tri-a, cas-tra,
integrate, temple.
Note: the digraph groups, ph, th, and y count as
simple consonants and are not separated: pul-cher, am-phi-the-ā-trum
a-li-quis; yx, which represents two consonants (cs), is not separated from the
previous vocal: sax-um, he said. The compounds must be separated.
according to the components: ad-est, ab-est, trāns-it.

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Accentuation
In two-syllable words, the tonic accent is always on the accentuation
first syllable: ubi, multi, vale, erant, leo.
In words of more than two syllables, there are two possibilities: the accent two possibilities:
it falls on the penultimate syllable or on the antepenultimate. accent on
the penultimate, or
the antepenultimate
The basic rule is as follows:
The penultimate syllable is accented unless it ends in a short vowel: in
this case is the antepenultimate one that is accented.
Therefore, to determine the accent of a Latin word, there are Look at the penultimate one!
what to observe the penultimate syllable:

The penultimate is accented if it ends

(a) in a long vowel or a diphthong (ā ē ī ō ūy ae oe au eu): Latin,
to see, friend, speaker, Roman, charming person;
(b) en unaconsonante:secunda, vīgintī, lībertās, columna, magister.
If the penultimate ends
In a short vowel (a e i o u y), the accent falls on the syllable
precedente, laantepenúltima:īnsula, fēmina, oppidum, patria,
wicked

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 LATIN LANGUAGE, the Latin course
LATINLANGUAGE The Latin course LINGVA LATINA PER SE ILLVSTRATA ('The
‘Latin language illustrated by itself’ consists of two parts, PARTS
BY ITSELF ILLUMINATED
[Link] FAMILY
IyII, with a common index, INDICES. The first part, FAMILY
ROMANA, it is the beginner course. The 35 chapters constitute a
series of scenes and episodes from the life of a Roman family of the century
second after Christ. The book is written entirely in Latin,
but from the beginning to the end the text is graded in a way
that each sentence is intelligible by itself, per se, because the signi-
identification of all new words and the function of the forms
grammatical rules can be deduced without doubt from the context, or, if necessary,
from the illustrations or the marginal notes using the vocabulary
I have learned. This way, there is no need to consult a lexicon, analyze or
translate to understand the meaning. Both the vocabulary and the
Grammar is learned through the observation of a large number of examples.
illustrative elements that are part of the coherence of the text.
the illustrations Illustrations serve not only to explain the words that
they design concrete things, but also to illustrate some
incidents and situations. The drawings follow scrupulously
old models: clothing, houses, furniture, etc.
they have been reproduced according to the data provided to us by the
archaeological testimonies.
marginal notes In the marginal notes, the following signs are used:
signs: the equality sign [=], between synonyms, words that have more
the same as or less the same meaning: -that = and;
[↔the opposite of
[:] ‘es decir’, ‘aquí’ (2) the sign of opposition↔antonyms, words that have
derived from
opposite meanings: sine↔ with
(3) the colon [:], to denote the meaning of a word in
a given context: team: Iūlia;
the derivation sign [<], to show from which word already
A new word is derived from the known: love < amāre.
The text of each chapter is divided into two or three lessons.
lessons: I, II, III (lessons), marked by the Roman numerals I, II, III in the margin, and
LATIN GRAMMAR followed by a grammatical section, LATIN GRAMMAR. In this
grammatical section
section, new grammatical topics introduced in
the main text and illustrated through ordered examples
systematically with Latin grammatical terms. A table of the
flexions, TABLE OF DECLINATION, is found on page 307−311.
A more detailed LATIN MORPHOLOGY has been published separately.
exercises (THINK) The three exercises, PENSVM A, ByC, at the end of each chapter have
to ensure the assimilation of grammar and vocabulary and the
PENSVM A: endings text comprehension. The PENSVM A is a grammatical exercise in the
PENSVM B: words
PENSVM C: phrases
what you must add to the different words are the appropriate endings.
In the PENSVM it is about filling the gaps with the new words

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that have been introduced in the chapter (on the margin, next to the
exercise, you will find a list of such words). The PENSVM C
consists of a series of questions about the content of the text to the
what you have to answer with brief Latin phrases.
In the progression of your reading, you will occasionally come across some
words whose meaning you may have forgotten. Such words can
check the alphabetical list in the INDEX VOCABVLORVM at the end of the INDEX OF VOCABULARY
volume. You will find there the word accompanied by a reference
needs to the chapter (bold figures) and to the line of the chapter where the
word appears for the first time. The reference to more than one place
it means that the same word appears with several meanings. The
most of the time it will be enough for you to reread the passage in which
that word is found to refresh your memory.
Similarly, the GRAMMATICVS INDEX (pages 326−refers to the GRAMMATICAL INDEX
presentation of grammatical forms. The list of FORMAE MVTATAE
('Changed forms', p. 328) refers to the primitive form of the
word when a change of the radical is required.
Students who have doubts about their ability to determine
the precise meaning of each new word can be consulted at the
Latin-Spanish vocabulary. But this vocabulary is nothing more than a Latin vocabulary
control medium. The attentive student will not need it. Spanish

There are four supplements to the elementary Latin course: supplements:

(1)LATINEDISCOIthe current Student Manual. I LEARN LATIN

(2)EXERCITALATINAIa detailed set of exercises LATIN EXERCISES

additional for each of the 133 lessons of FAMILIAROMANA.
(3)CTHEY ARE ABOUT TO MEET THE PEOPLEa collection of complementary texts COLLOQVIA
OF THE PERSONS
stories, in the form of dialogues.
(4)MLATIN ORPHOLOGY & LATIN-SPANISH VOCABULARY , a LATIN MORPHOLOGY
&VOCABULARY
summary in Spanish of all the morphological aspects addressed in
FAMILIAROMANA, along with a Vocabulary that includes
all the terms that appear in FAMILIAROMANA and in
CONVERSATION OF PEOPLE.

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