Book description
The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the West for centuries after Rome's fall, Latin survives today primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this "dead language" is unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and continents. Jurgen Leonhardt has written a full history…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
1 author picked Latin as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I never considered myself a nerd, so why do I love Latin? (which I hated in school) It’s because I Iove seeing, and love teaching, what languages can do – culturally, socially, politically.
Leonhardt’s Latin: Story of a World Language gives us sweeping new perspectives. For 1000 years after the Romans, Latin was the intellectual glue of Europe, and a key to the sciences and humanities down through the 19th century. The new prestige of French, Italian, English, and the other European vernaculars in some ways threw up huge barriers.
If only Latin grammar and syntax weren’t, aargh, so challenging…
From Lewis' list on The best books that tell the story of a language.
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