Name used by its speakers (Endonym): Latinum, lingua Latina
Native speakers (estimated): None
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): Unknown
Where it’s spoken: Latin is the only language on this list that has no modern native speakers, but despite this it continues to be influential. As the language of the ancient Roman Empire, it was spoken at its height over a large portion of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Even after the fall of Rome, Latin persisted for more than a millennium as a European common language of literature, government, religion, philosophy, and science. It was an official language for several centuries prior to the modern era in Hungary, Poland and Croatia—all nations whose native tongue did not derive from Latin. Many influential figures, including Dutch philosopher Erasmus and English physicist Isaac Newton, wrote extensively in Latin. The Roman Catholic Church has for centuries maintained Latin as its liturgical language, shifting to modern languages only in the latter 20th century.
In the present day, Latin remains an official language of Vatican City (alongside Italian), and continues to be taught widely in both Catholic and secular universities as well as many high schools in Europe, North America, and South America, though emphasis on Latin as a cornerstone of a liberal education has declined over time, and even among those who study Latin, it is primarily as a language of scholarship and not of conversation.
Language family: Indo-European, Italic branch.
Related languages: All Romance tongues are directly descended from Latin. While written classical Latin was standardized, the spoken versions of the language spread far and wide across regions of the Roman Empire where they eventually diverged (starting by the 9th century AD) into the modern Romance languages: Italian (which retains the most similarity to Latin), French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and many other regional languages spoken within or adjacent to those countries. Pig Latin, despite its name, is neither a language nor at all related to Latin, or for that matter, pigs.
