Alternate scripts

Occasionally Latin has been written in other scripts:

The disputed Praeneste fibula is a 7th-century BC pin with an Old Latin insc
ription written using the Etruscan script.
The rear panel of the early eighth-century Franks Casket has an inscription
that switches from Old English in Anglo-Saxon runes to Latin in Latin script and
to Latin in runes.
Grammar
Main article: Latin grammar
Latin is a synthetic, fusional language, in the terminology of linguistic typolo
gy. In more traditional terminology, it is an inflected language, although the t
ypologists are apt to say "inflecting". Thus words include an objective semantic
element, and also markers specifying the grammatical use of the word. This fusi
on of root meaning and markers produces very compact sentence elements. For exam
ple, amo, "I love," is produced from a semantic element, ama-, "love," to which
-o, a first person singular marker, is suffixed.
The grammatical function can be changed by changing the markers: the word is "in
flected" to express different grammatical functions. The semantic element does n
ot change. Inflection uses affixing and infixing. Affixing is prefixing and suff
ixing. Latin inflections are never prefixed. For example, amabit, "he or she wil
l love", is formed from the same stem, ama-, to which a future tense marker, -bi
-, is suffixed, and a third person singular marker, -t, is suffixed. There is an
inherent ambiguity: -t may denote more than one grammatical category, in this c
ase either masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. A major task in understanding
Latin phrases and clauses is to clarify such ambiguities by an analysis of conte
xt. All natural languages contain ambiguities of one sort or another.
The inflections express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and prono
uns a process called declension. Markers are also attached to fixed stems of verbs
, to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect a process called conjug
ation. Some words are uninflected, not undergoing either process, such as adverb
s, prepositions, and interjections.