Latin lends itself to pithy forms of expression because it is highly inflected ("turned in"), as opposed to analytical (or "loosened") languages like English. The subject is normally built into the verb form rather than being separately expressed ("amo" = "I love"; "amamus" = we love) and contingent forms of expression are expressed in a slightly altered form (subjunctive mood) of the same verb as well, all with economy of expression ("amemus" = "let us love," "that we may love"). With nouns, prepositional phrases signifying special uses in a sentence are also built into the noun form itself ("filius" = boy; "filiorum" = "of the boys"). Combine this with with a high degree of freedom in word order ("amo te" or "te amo" each means "I love you," though with slightly different emphasis), and you have a strong medium for expressing powerful thoughts easily and creatively.
A couple of illustrations of how this plays out, using a common legal expression:
"Res ipsa loquitur" - "the thing speaks for itself" (literally, "thing itself speaks")
"Res ipsa loquatur" - "may the thing speak for itself" or "let the thing speak for itself"
"Res ipsae loquunt" (or "Loquunt res ipsae" - or "Ipsae loquunt res") - "things speak for themselves"
It is a devil of a language to learn (e.g., every verb has about 120 different forms) but lots of fun once you get there.
Then you get into the various constructions of verbs + other or nouns + other, and it gets even more complicated
For anyone interested, there is a great online resource for inputting any Latin word form and getting an instant output telling you its noun, verb, or other form, along with its base form and its English definition: http://archives.nd.edu/words.html (William Whittaker's Words program). You can also input an English word and instantly get its Latin equivalents.
Here are a few to wet your taste buds:
- a thought-provoking one: Deorum iniuriae Diis curae. ("Offences to the gods are the concern of the gods." - Perhaps very apt in these times of religious tension.)
- a kind of meta-proverb: Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. ("Anything said in Latin sounds profound." )
- a weird one: Temeas simium meum. ("Hold my monkey!" - Eh?)
There are plenty of others, go and discover.
Not to be the local pedant, but just a quick note on the "monkey" quote. Don't know where this came from but "temeas," to my knowledge, is not a Latin word - "teneas" is and signifies "may you hold," which in the quote would roughly translate as "may you hold my monkey" (I don't believe this has any notable usage in historic Latin).
"Teneo" (Latin: hold) comes into English with words such as "tenor" (one who holds (a note)), "tenacity" (the quality of holding on doggedly), "tenant" (one who holds possession), many others.
Well, I guess I am the local pedant (see, e.g., http://grellas.com/article_word_origins_fero.html).
Translation: "Anything said in Latin sounds profound."
I had another peruse of the list and this one jumped out at me: Bellum se ipsum alet ("War will nourish on itself")
Recent world events have certainly shown this to be true.
