Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets and from the Phoenician alphabet. Latin was spoken in the area around Rome, known as Latium. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in Italy, subsequently throughout the western Roman Empire. Latin has contributed many words to the English language. In particular, Latin roots are used in English descriptions of theology, the sciences and law. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence and author Petronius. Late Latin is the written language from the 3rd century. Medieval Latin was used as a literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance which used Renaissance Latin. Early Modern Latin and New Latin evolved.

Latin was used as the language of international communication and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Latin is a inflected language, with three distinct genders, up to seven noun cases, five declensions, four verb conjugations, six tenses, three persons, three moods, two voices, two or three aspects and two numbers. A number of historical phases of the language have been recognized, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, spelling and syntax. There are no fast rules of classification; as a result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from Late Antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars. After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses.

The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, spoken from the Roman Kingdom to the part of the Roman Republic period. It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of Plautus and Terence; the Latin alphabet was devised from the Etruscan alphabet. The writing changed from what was either a right-to-left or a boustrophedon script to what became a left-to-right script. During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets and other literate men, who wrote the great works of classical literature, which were taught in grammar and rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such schools, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech. Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus, which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, Vulgar Latin, existed concurrently with literate Classical Latin.

The informal language was written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors and those found as graffiti. As it was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which led to the differentiation of Romance languages; the decline of the Roman Empire meant a deterioration in educational standards that brought about Late Latin, a postclassical stage of the language seen in Christian writings of the time. It was more in line with everyday speech, not only because of a decline in education but because of a desire to spread the word to the masses. Despite dialectal variation, found in any widespread language, the languages of Spain, France and Italy retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christian culture.

It was not until the Moorish conquest of Spain in 711 cut off communications between the major Romance regions that the languages began to diverge seriously. The Vulgar Latin dialect that would become Romanian diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was cut off from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. One key marker of whether a given Romance feature was found in Vulgar Latin is to compare it with its parallel in Classical Latin. If it was not preferred in Classical Latin it most came from the undocumented contemporaneous Vulgar Latin. For example, the Romance for "horse" came from Latin caballus. However, Classical Latin used equus. Therefore, caballus was most the spoken form. Vulgar Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear, they were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing. Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the

Urarina is an isolated language spoken in Peru in the Loreto Region of Northwest Peru, by the Urarina people. There are around 3,000 speakers in Urarinas District, it uses a Latin script. It is known as Itucali, Simacu or Shimacu, it has a canonical word order of object–verb–subject. The question of which language family Urarina belongs to is a controversial one among linguists as the language has been placed in a multitude of phyla by academics including Panoan, Macro-Tucanoan, Amerind; as of present, none of the proposals have any convincing linguistic arguments, given the lack of resemblance Urarina has to any languages in the same area lexically or grammatically it is assumed that it is a language isolate. Urarina is presently spoken by around 3,000-2,000 members of the Urarina tribe. Although the majority of individuals still have the ability to speak the language, there is growing bilingualism and usage of Spanish in everyday life, as more and more Spanish-speaking mestizos have immigrated to the valley where the Urarina live.

In addition the Urarina spoken by the younger generations has lost a large amount of the grammatical complexity and vocabulary the language once had, correlated to the loss of traditional cultural practices and beliefs. As such the language is considered vulnerable to endangered; the following is the phonology of Urarina. Urarina has several interesting grammatical characteristics that are rather rare in other languages throughout the world; the language follows the OVS word order, of all the languages that do follow it Urarina has been noted as the language that most adheres to this word order in speech. Another feature of Urarina is its complex person marking on all verbs; every verb is marked according to three different paradigms which rely on a complicated set of pragmatic and syntactic conditions that must be adhered to. Urarina follows an unique and complicated word class system. For example and adjectives that are borrowed from Quechua and Spanish are placed in a separate class from indigenous words.

Urarina follows syntactic rules where the pitch-accent system changes the tone of a word, based on the preceding word class. All these features make Urarina unique and distinct from other neighboring languages and has developed a special interest from linguists. Aside from its more distinctive features, Urirana follows a polysynthetic agglutinate word morphology in relating to verbs similar to other Amazonian languages. Many of Urarina's unique grammatical features are disappearing as younger generations speak a Urarina, being influenced by a growing bilingualism in Spanish. Loukotka lists the following basic vocabulary items for Itucale. Wise, Mary Ruth.. "Small Language Isolates in Peru" in The Amazonian Languages. Dixon, R. M. W. and Aikhenvald, Alexandra

An underhook is a clinch hold, used in grappling to control the opponent. It is performed from any direction by putting an arm under the opponent's arm, holding the opponent's midsection or upper body. Having an underhook with one arm is called a single underhook, while having underhooks with both arms is known as double underhooks; the typical response to an underhook is to try to establish an overhook. A single underhook can be used as a takedown maneuver; the protagonist underhooks one arm of the opponent and extends his underhooking arm or across the opponent's back, while using his other hand to pull the opponent's other elbow across the opponent's body, drives forward into the underhooked side of the opponent. The double underhooks are considered one of the most dominant positions in the clinch because they allow for great control of the opponent, can be used for doing a takedown or throwing the opponent; the double underhooks can be used to advance into a bear hug by locking the hands behind the back, holding the opponent close to the chest.

The opponent responds to double underhooks with double overhooks, to prevent the opponent from advancing into the bear hug. Bear hug Collar-and-elbow position Double collar tie Pinch grip tie Overhook Over-under position