Latin(lingua Latīna, [ˈlɪŋɡʷa laˈtiːna] or Latīnum, [laˈtiːnʊ̃]) is a classical language belonging
to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area
(then known as Latium) around present-day Rome,[2] but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the
dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire.
Even after the fall of
Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia
in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the
Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in
the modern linguistic definition.
Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjugations, six tenses (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three persons, three moods, two voices (passive and active), two or three aspects, and two numbers (singular and plural). The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets.