R Posted January 1, 2006 Report Share Posted January 1, 2006 (edited) Romanian unlike some people in these forums say might not be the closest to latin. It has gotten many slovic elements mixed in with its latin roots. French too has drifted away especially in pronunciation from the other romance languages, but not so much in writing. Spanish retained basque and arabic elements (from the Arabic takeover in the 1400s) so it is not the closest. So what is left? Italian, Portuguese and Sardinian/Sicilian dialects. The first of these (Italian) is widley believed to be closest to latin, but what about the last two? If you have any examples proving or disproving my theory i would be curious to see them, becuase i have been researching this topic and this is the conclusion i have come to. Edited January 1, 2006 by R Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLavius Valerius Constantinus Posted January 1, 2006 Report Share Posted January 1, 2006 (edited) I'm not a linguistic expert, but saying Slavic elements mixed with Romanian doesn't stop it from still being closely related to Latin. Sure a good number of Romanian words may drift away from the Latin spelling and meaning, but its structure of grammar and way of speaking can still make it close to Latin. Plus, its amazing for any culture(id est the Dacians) to retain the majority of its Roman roots after being isolated from the Roman Empire 300 years later after being conquerd by Trajan, not to mention countless Barbarian tribes invading it. Being along and making up the majority of the Danubian border sucks since its where many barbarians pass through. Edited January 1, 2006 by FLavius Valerius Constantinus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R Posted January 1, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2006 I'm not a linguistic expert, but saying Slavic elements mixed with Romanian doesn't stop it from still being closely related to Latin. Sure a good number of Romanian words may drift away from the Latin spelling and meaning, but its structure of grammar and way of speaking can still make it close to Latin. Plus, its amazing for any culture(id est the Dacians) to retain the majority of its Roman roots after being isolated from the Roman Empire 300 years later after being conquerd by Trajan, not to mention countless Barbarian tribes invading it. Being along and making up the majority of the Danubian border sucks since its where many barbarians pass through. im am not so familiar with romanian, but from what i have heard the grammar also has slovic elements...but if slovic and latin were influencing eavh other it is hard to tell if it is really that different... while the structure might remain the same, the words do not, which means different conjugations, which is different grammar...i am not positive on this fact and my ideas are still developing...thank you for your input...happy new year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Dalby Posted January 1, 2006 Report Share Posted January 1, 2006 [quote name='R Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virgil61 Posted January 1, 2006 Report Share Posted January 1, 2006 I speak passable Italian and Russian. I've heard Romanian on a few occassions and because of my knowledge of those two languages it throws me to no end. I'm not convinced it sounds more similar to Latin than other romance languages but I've also heard that it has a stronger grammatical connection. Sardinian and Sicilian are two very distinct dialects from each other. Sardinian is thought to have surprisingly similar aspects to latin primarily because it has changed at a slower rate than other romance languages due to it's isolation. The Sicilian dialect seems much closer to standard Italian, but it's tough for an Italian from another province to understand sometimes. This highlights another issue with Italian. Most comparisions between latin and Italian are studied using the Tuscan dialect of Italy and generally ignore the several dozen rather distinct dialects that exist. I think each of the romance language kept some aspectsof the original language while discarding others. Although the argument has often been made that Italian is closest to latin, even it contains a respectable amount of loan words from other languages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentium Posted January 2, 2006 Report Share Posted January 2, 2006 Spanish retained basque and arabic elements (from the Arabic takeover in the 1400s) so it is not the closest. So what is left? Italian, Portuguese and Sardinian/Sicilian dialects. What makes you think that the languages spoken in Spain (yes, languageS) - Castellano,Catal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viggen Posted January 2, 2006 Report Share Posted January 2, 2006 Grammatically speaking, Romanian differs from the other romance languages for the postposition of the determinative article, for example, structure common to other languages from the Balcan area, I don Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentium Posted January 3, 2006 Report Share Posted January 3, 2006 Indeed, the Romance languages surely influenced each other during the centuries. Anyway, I took the stats from a Romance Philology book, it says the words coming directly from Latin are approx.60%. Not that it has to be the auctoritas, but I quite trust it =). Starting from the XVI century the Slavonic replaced Romanian as the official language of State and Church, with obvious consequences. Many latin terms you see today in modern Romanian were added later, (in the XVIII-XIX centuries) and they are mainly loanwords from Latin, Italian and French introduced by the Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viggen Posted January 3, 2006 Report Share Posted January 3, 2006 what amazes me is that people hammer on those 10 or 20 or whatever percentage it is, of slavonic words, i mean heck german has (without having any accurate numbers, but beeing a german native speaker) at least as many non germanic words. We have many loan words from latin, greek, later french and recently english and no one would come to the idea german is not damm close to the german of the early times, so i am not that sure why or how that would be different to any other language... Languages do evolve, sometimes extremely quick, look how short the split between USA and Britsh english was and how many different words spelling phrases are already appearing... It took only 50 years for eastern germany to develop some unique words the west germans didnt understand... but i guess i am wandering off topic now... cheers viggen btw. if i am not mistaken then a uniform italian language (standard italian) was first shaped by Dante Alighieri`s Commedia which was written in a tuscan dialect mixed with some southern dialects? Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were up until recently city-states, which is a very similar situation in the german language (first standard german attempt was by Guthenbergs bible) also, people always speak about the classic latin, but thats (as far as i know) was not the language the people spoke it was Vulgar Latin, wasnt it? ok i am completely off topic now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentium Posted January 3, 2006 Report Share Posted January 3, 2006 what amazes me is that people hammer on those 10 or 20 or whatever percentage it is, of slavonic words, i mean heck german has (without having any accurate numbers, but beeing a german native speaker) at least as many non germanic words. We have many loan words from latin, greek, later french and recently english and no one would come to the idea german is not damm close to the german of the early times, so i am not that sure why or how that would be different to any other language... Yes, I know what you mean and I didn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virgil61 Posted January 4, 2006 Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 what amazes me is that people hammer on those 10 or 20 or whatever percentage it is, of slavonic words, i mean heck german has (without having any accurate numbers, but beeing a german native speaker) at least as many non germanic words. We have many loan words from latin, greek, later french and recently english and no one would come to the idea german is not damm close to the german of the early times, so i am not that sure why or how that would be different to any other language... When I listen to it, knowing Russian, I certainly hear a strong slavic influence on the language. Perhaps the slavic roots stand out in my mind, but they're seem strong to me at least. Languages do evolve, sometimes extremely quick, look how short the split between USA and Britsh english was and how many different words spelling phrases are already appearing... Yes, it's sad how the Brits are losing their ability to speak proper English. btw. if i am not mistaken then a uniform italian language (standard italian) was first shaped by Dante Alighieri`s Commedia which was written in a tuscan dialect mixed with some southern dialects? Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were up until recently city-states, which is a very similar situation in the german language (first standard german attempt was by Guthenbergs bible) ... Today you'll find a disproportionate number of Italian language schools in the Tuscan region. I believe, and if anyone knows different please correct me, that Tuscan is the dialect closest to standard Italian. I'm a bit lucky in that while from Abruzzo I developed my Italian during part of my childhood spent in Tuscany (Livorno/Pisa). I no longer speak it very well, but Italians I've spoken with think my pronounciation is excellent, probably due to where I learned most of the language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viggen Posted January 4, 2006 Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 The real question would be then; If we could travel back in time and present translations of Virgils own works to him (spanish, portuguese,italian, romanian), which one could he understood most? My guess is he probably wouldnt understand any of them, either because of the wording change or because of the complete different grammar, so is it fair to say the closest today used language to latin language is church latin? and would he understand that? (and yes church latin is the official language in Vatican) but as i said i am not a linguist... ...another point no one seems to ever mention is the evolution of the latin language during roman times, again i am not a linguist, but i would be very surprised if the Latin of Tarquin the Proud was the same as the latin that was used by M. Porcius Cato or the latin that was used during Constatine`s reign, because 1000 years are a long long time and no living language is not evolving at some point, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silentium Posted January 4, 2006 Report Share Posted January 4, 2006 If we could travel back in time and present translations of Virgils own works to him (spanish, portuguese,italian, romanian), which one could he understood most? My guess is he probably wouldnt understand any of them, either because of the wording change or because of the complete different grammar, so is it fair to say the closest today used language to latin language is church latin? and would he understand that? (and yes church latin is the official language in Vatican) but as i said i am not a linguist... Probably none of them, except Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diegis Posted January 5, 2006 Report Share Posted January 5, 2006 Hello to all, and, because i am Romanian, i will say something about my language too.First, romanian language have 4 dialects( 3 -aroman,istro-roman and megleno-romana, spoked in south of Danube,in Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia and Greece,and the main one ,daco-romana,spoked in Romania,north of Danube).Much of scientists consider that romanian( like all the others romanic languages) came from so called vulgar latin, combined with language of people who live the land before romans come.The romanian is most closed language to this latin,and in our language the proportion of considered latin words is arround 66%-70%.There is a large number of considered dacian words ( for example,almost all rivers have the ancient dacians names,villages or cities names have dacians origins, and the name of our mounts-Carpathians,is dacian too).There is some15%-20% words considered of slavic origins, and a little number from other languages( especially germans,greeks, hungarian or turks).There is a debate now who say that is a number of words considered slavic or latin, who, infact, is dacian. Ex. word in english-water: in romanian -apa: in latin- aqua: in ancient sanskrit- apa,apam.It is much probable that this word (is many in this situation) to not have latin roots,like is considered (and ofcourse,not be taken from old indians), but have dacians origins.About dacian language,who is considered belong to satem group,as sanskrit,but oldest than slavic,there is some who considered that have centum caractheristics too,like latin,and this is the reason that was a short time for so named latinization of conquered population and of large number of dacians who live in non conquered teritories,and romanian language,who is spoked betwen population with non roman languages (south Danube and Balkans-slavic,west fino-ugric,north east-slavic)have such similarities with ancient latin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest eugen Posted April 16, 2006 Report Share Posted April 16, 2006 Hello to all, and, because i am Romanian, i will say something about my language too.First, romanian language have 4 dialects( 3 -aroman,istro-roman and megleno-romana, spoked in south of Danube,in Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia and Greece,and the main one ,daco-romana,spoked in Romania,north of Danube).Much of scientists consider that romanian( like all the others romanic languages) came from so called vulgar latin, combined with language of people who live the land before romans come.The romanian is most closed language to this latin,and in our language the proportion of considered latin words is arround 66%-70%.There is a large number of considered dacian words ( for example,almost all rivers have the ancient dacians names,villages or cities names have dacians origins, and the name of our mounts-Carpathians,is dacian too).There is some15%-20% words considered of slavic origins, and a little number from other languages( especially germans,greeks, hungarian or turks).There is a debate now who say that is a number of words considered slavic or latin, who, infact, is dacian. Ex. word in english-water: in romanian -apa: in latin- aqua: in ancient sanskrit- apa,apam.It is much probable that this word (is many in this situation) to not have latin roots,like is considered (and ofcourse,not be taken from old indians), but have dacians origins.About dacian language,who is considered belong to satem group,as sanskrit,but oldest than slavic,there is some who considered that have centum caractheristics too,like latin,and this is the reason that was a short time for so named latinization of conquered population and of large number of dacians who live in non conquered teritories,and romanian language,who is spoked betwen population with non roman languages (south Danube and Balkans-slavic,west fino-ugric,north east-slavic)have such similarities with ancient latin.Tartaria clay written round tablet reading.This tablet is supposed to be from 4.000-5.000 B.C.,wich I doubed. The tablet can be seen at www.prehistory.it and is named tab.2 Upper half reading(quadrant 2 on right; S(u,e) D D o,u S folowed by No3. on left): HD A. Su/Sa Dius Deos(lat.): Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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