Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome.
Latin gained wide currency, especially in Europe, as the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, and, after Rome's conversion to Christianity, of the Roman Catholic Church (although by the time of widespread Christian conversion in Europe, Latin had already become more a language of the Church and of scholars, rather than of the common people). Principally through the influence of the Church, it also became the primary language of later medieval European scholars and philosophers. As an inflectional and synthetic language, compared to mostly analytic languages such as English, Latin word order is variable, conveying syntax through a systemic structure of affixes attached to word stems. The Latin alphabet, derived from those of the Etruscans and Greeks (each of those themselves derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet), remains the most widely used alphabet in the world.
Although now widely considered a dead language, with few fluent speakers and no native ones, Latin has had a significant influence on many other languages still thriving today, including English, and continues to be an important source of vocabulary for science, academia, and law; it is also used by the Catholic Church, and still evolving, making it technically still alive. Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, and other regional languages or dialects from the same area) are descended from Vulgar Latin, and many words adapted from Latin are found in other modern languages—including English, where roughly half of its vocabulary is derived, directly or indirectly, from Latin. This is part of its legacy as the lingua franca of the Western world for over a thousand years.
The Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church has Latin as its official language, and had it as its primary liturgical language until just after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, when the various vernacular languages of its members were allowed in the liturgy. Latin remains the official language of Vatican City. Classical Latin, the literary language of the late Republic and early Empire, is taught in many primary, grammar, and secondary schools throughout the world, often combined with Greek as the study of Classics, although its role in the syllabus has diminished considerably since the early 20th century.