New Latin - Extent

Extent

Classicists use the term "Neo-Latin" to describe the use of the Latin language for any purpose, scientific or literary, after the Renaissance. The beginning of the period is imprecise; however, the spread of secular education, the acceptance of humanistic literary norms, and the wide availability of Latin texts following the invention of printing mark the transition to a new era at the end of the 15th century. The end of the New Latin period is likewise indeterminate, but Latin as a regular vehicle of communicating ideas became rare after the first few decades of the 19th century, and by 1900 it survived primarily in international scientific vocabulary, cladistics, and systematics. The term "New Latin" came into widespread use towards the end of the 1890s among linguists and scientists.

New Latin was, at least in its early days, an international language used throughout Catholic and Protestant Europe, as well as in the colonies of the major European powers. This area included all of Western Europe, including Scandinavia; its southern border was the Mediterranean Sea, while in Eastern Europe it had little use in regions with majority Orthodox or Muslim populations, with the division more or less corresponding to the modern eastern borders of Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia. Russia's acquisition of Kiev in the later 17th century introduced the study of New Latin to Russia.