Expert: Maria - 5/14/2006

Question
I you could please, translate these words into latin for me: Faith in self, open, honor, and wish.  

The second part of my question is about the disappearance of the latin language, the only thing i really know about the language is that it was spoken throughout the Roman empire. Was it the fall of the empire or the conversion to christianity that led to the disappearance.  Or maybe i'm totally wrong and neither of those have anything to do with it, I'm just curious as a friend of my took latin in high school and told me that it was a "dead" language.  Thank you so much,
                 Kevin

Answer
Hello Kevin,

First of all you should explain the real meaning of 'open', the second word of your phrase, as it is not clear and then I cannot translate it into Latin.

As for  “Faith in self, honor, and wish”, here's the translation:

”Sui fides, honor(honos), et voluntas”.

In fact “Faith” is FIDES; “in self” is SUI; “honor” is HONOR or HONOS; “and” is ET; “wish” is VOLUNTAS.

With regard to Latin language,  which originally was merely the language spoken in Latium, the region of Central Italy where Rome was founded in 753 BC, and later in Italy,  as well as in all Europe, in Northern Africa and in the Middle East, when Rome grew from a small town on the Tiber River into a vast empire.
This empire ultimately embraced England, all of continental Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, most of Asia west of the Euphrates, northern Africa, Greece, Turkey, Mesopotamia and the islands of the Mediterranean sea.
In fact Latin  began to be widely used throughout England, France, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece,  Turkey, Mesopotamia (today Iraq), Palestine, Syria, Lebanon , northern Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean sea.


As for the disappearance of Latin, which became a “dead” language, though it is still today  the official language of the Vatican, it's not true that it disappeared  when the Western Roman Empire  ultimately fell in AD 476, but continued to be used as a literary language throughout western and central Europe even after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
For example, an enormous quantity of medieval Latin literature was produced in a variety of different styles ranging from the scholarly works of Irish and Anglo-Saxon writers to simple tales and sermons for a wider audience.

In short Latin became the standard language of the West and by far the greater bulk of medieval literature as well as records, documents, and letters was written in Latin until the 17th. century(see e.g. Isaac Newton‘s major works).

To conclude neither the fall of the Roman Empire nor Christianity  have anything to do with the disappearance of the Latin language that began to lose its dominant position as the main language of scholarship and religion throughout Europe  much later, when it was largely replaced by written versions of the vernacular languages of Europe, many of which are descendants of Latin or have been heavily influenced by it. (See English, for example).

Over the centuries in fact  the spoken varieties of Latin continued to move away from the literary standard and eventually evolved into the modern Italic/Romance languages (Italian, which is the closest to Latin than other Romance languages, i.e. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian).

Hope this helps.
Best,
Maria