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Language code: la

Technical information about ISO 639 language code la

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Latin language, designated by the la code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

la

Name

Official

Latin

Native

Latine

Family
Italic
Scripts
Latin
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Old (Archaic) LatinClassical LatinVulgar LatinLate LatinEcclesiastical (Church) Latin
Related languages
ItalianSpanishFrenchPortugueseRomanian
Key facts
Latin is the direct ancestor of all modern Romance languagesIt supplied more than half of modern medical and botanical terminologyThe standard 26-letter English alphabet descends from the Latin scriptFor centuries it served as the scholarly lingua franca of EuropeIts inflectional system uses six grammatical cases and three genders.
Sample phrase

Salve, quid agis?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Latin belongs to the Indo-European language family, specifically to the Italic subgroup. It is the primary official language of the Vatican and is written using the Latin alphabet. In the Vatican, Latin serves as the official working language, used particularly in education, liturgical services, and the drafting of official documents.

Language presence globally

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Latin speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

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