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Exploring Latin: A Quiz on Language and Influence

Test your knowledge on the Latin language, its history, influence, and usage in modern contexts with this engaging quiz!

#Latin #Language #History #Classics #Education

1 To write Latin, the Romans used the Latin alphabet, derived from the Old Italic alphabet, which itself was derived from the ________.

2 ________ is taught in many schools often combined with Greek in the study of Classics, though its role has diminished since the early 20th century.

3 Many ________ have been heavily influenced by Latin.

4 What family does Latin belong to?

5 Many organizations today have Latin mottos, such as "Semper Paratus" (always ready), the motto of the United States Coast Guard, and "________" (always faithful), the motto of the United States Marine Corps.

6 The earliest known is ________, a phase of the early and middle Roman republic attested in inscriptions and the earliest surviving Latin works of literature.

7 ________, popular in the early 20th century, is a language created from Latin with its inflections dropped.

8 ________: used when the noun is used in a direct address.

9 ________

10 Latin is the official language of the ________ and the Vatican City-State.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the Latin familia must be translated as "household" rather than as "family", since neither classical Greek or Latin had a word corresponding to modern-day family.
  • the species name of South Africa's Eastern Cape Blue Cycad (pictured), horridus, is Latin for 'sticking out' or 'prickly', after the plant's stiff, spiny leaflets.
  • it took a musicologist 12 years to reconstruct the missing portions of the only copy of English Renaissance composer Martin Peerson's Latin motets so they could be published and recorded.
  • the Latin poem Carmen Priami features an artificially archaic language as a reaction to the Hellenizing trend in Latin poetry led by Ennius.
  • the Classical Academy Charter School of Clifton, a chartered middle school that requires students to learn three years of Latin and to study Literary classics, has been recognized as a Blue Ribbon School.
  • the name of the Azeri settlement Ramana, with natural gas vents where Zoroastrians still hold fire rites, might, according to conjecture, be derived from Roma, the Latin word for Rome.
  • the main languages of Renaissance in Poland were Polish and Latin, and that the leading Polish poet of that period, Jan Kochanowski, is regarded as a great Slavic poet.
  • the book Commentarii de Bello Civili, written by Julius Caesar, is staple reading among students of Latin.
  • in the Latin poem De vetula, its supposed author Ovid renounces adultery.
  • despite plagiarizing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary ordered by Napoleon, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes went on to become a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
  • Matthias Bernegger in 1635 translated Galileo Galilei's Dialogo from Italian into Latin.
  • Joseph Breitenbeck was sued by a parish church for implementing the Vatican II reform of changing the language of the Mass from Latin to English.
  • Jordan's Municipality of Salt derives its name from the Latin saltus meaning valley of trees as there is much greenery in the area.
  • Lithuania's name was recorded in chronicles by its Latinized Slavic name form Litua, for the first time in 1009.
  • Araneagryllus is named from a combination of the Latin aranea meaning "spider" and gryllus meaning "cricket".
  • Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese alphabet in general use today, was established by the 1651 trilingual Latin-Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionary Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum.
  • ignorantia juris non excusat is Latin for the legal doctrine, "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
  • Johann Sebastian Bach wrote around 200 cantatas in German but only one, Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, in Latin.
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