Why Latin Died Out?

[Q Valerius Scerio]

where is Latin's army now?

This is absurd: you're fighting a straw man. The claim is that the only thing distinguishing a 'dialect' from a 'language' is the power of the speakers. Obviously, having an army isn't part of the definition of a given language. The point is that there is no real linguistic basis for distinguishing between dialects and languages.

There is a linguistic basis for distinguishing between dialects and languages. Are Latin and Chinese dialects of each other? If so, how? If you can make your case that Latin and Chinese are dialects, and not separate languages, then I take back everything I said.

 

This is exactly the point. There is no good linguistic reason to say that Cantonese is only a dialect of Mandarin. The sole reason people say this is that Mandarin speakers have an army behind them (the PLA), whereas there is no indepedent army in (say) Hong Kong.

Que? No one here is arguing that Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin. But to reinforce the notion of the dominant dialect as means through force through that generalization is absurd. Mandarin and Cantonese are totally different languages altogether - as different as French and Spanish. They were dialects of an earlier Chinese language, just as Spanish and French were dialects of an earlier Latin language.

 

I see what you're saying now, but you were very unclear. It is clearly wrong to classify a language by use of its force of speakers, and I guess I recede on your professors - it was most likely your understanding that butchered their view.

[M. Porcius Cato]

There is a linguistic basis for distinguishing between dialects and languages. Are Latin and Chinese dialects of each other? If so, how? If you can make your case that Latin and Chinese are dialects, and not separate languages, then I take back everything I said.

OK--Latin and Chinese are both just dialects of the Proto-World language, the language spoken before Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Sino-Tibetan dialects evolved under geographical isolation.

 

 

I see what you're saying now, but you were very unclear. It is clearly wrong to classify a language by use of its force of speakers, and I guess I recede on your professors - it was most likely your understanding that butchered their view.

Actually, my claim didn't butcher their view--you deliberately turned the claim into a straw man so you could knock it down.

[Q Valerius Scerio]

OK--Latin and Chinese are both just dialects of the Proto-World language, the language spoken before Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Sino-Tibetan dialects evolved under geographical isolation.

Go and ask your linguistic professors about evidence for the "Proto-World language." They will tell you - zilch. Nadda. None. There's no evidence at all for it. It doesn't exist. It's imagined by people who'd like to think that humans all developed language once and kept it then. Furthermore, you merely asserted that its a dialect, but haven't shown it to be such.

 

 

Actually, my claim didn't butcher their view--you deliberately turned the claim into a straw man so you could knock it down.

Perhaps you'd like to clarify exactly what you meant then?

[Andrew Dalby]

If you ask a linguist, the linguist will tell you that there is no /single/ way to distinguish a dialect from a language. The linguist will go on to say that there are (at least) two totally incompatible ways to make the distinction.

 

1. If two forms of speech are sufficiently different to be mutually incomprehensible, they represent two languages, not two dialects of the same language.

 

2. If a dialect is adopted (officially or in everyday practice) by a state, it is a language.

 

If you go by the first definition, then the generalisation that aroused hackles ('a language is a dialect with an army') is meaningless. If you go by the second definition, then the same generalisation is true and very much to the point. You can't really appeal to a linguist to solve the dispute, because a linguist will recognise both definitions.

 

How does this apply to Latin?

 

By the second definition, Latin became a language, and spread as a language, at least partly because it was the vehicle of a state and of an army. That's it, then. It was and is a language.

[tflex]

How did this get so complicated. Latin is a different language than Italian though there are similarities. Inside Italy there are many different dialects for example Sicilian, Venetian, Pugliese etc.

 

Italian is a language that has it's own dialects though it originally evolved from Latin, the same way as other languages evolved to become a language on their own, such as English or Arabic.

[docoflove1974]

Oh boy, so much to respond to! Sorry if I get to the comments out-of-order....

 

If you ask a linguist, the linguist will tell you that there is no /single/ way to distinguish a dialect from a language. The linguist will go on to say that there are (at least) two totally incompatible ways to make the distinction.

 

1. If two forms of speech are sufficiently different to be mutually incomprehensible, they represent two languages, not two dialects of the same language.

 

2. If a dialect is adopted (officially or in everyday practice) by a state, it is a language.

 

If you go by the first definition, then the generalisation that aroused hackles ('a language is a dialect with an army') is meaningless. If you go by the second definition, then the same generalisation is true and very much to the point. You can't really appeal to a linguist to solve the dispute, because a linguist will recognise both definitions.

 

Actually, #1 is really the only way that linguists look at the dialect/language debate--except for Italian linguists, funnily enough, because of the Italian language's distinction of dialetto and lingua. At any rate, let's just stick with #1, and #2 is politically and socially charged, which is something that (in particular) historical linguists stay away from.

 

PS--Proto-World *shudddddddddddddddddddddddder* Bull-pucky, if you ask me...but that's just my .02.

 

If that is true, does Texan count as a language, quite a lot of people like to say they speak Texan.

 

As a "fur-nur" who lived in Texas for 6 years...yes, they have their own f'ing language. *eek*

 

Whats the closest modern language to Latin? Is it Spanish, French, Italian etc.

 

Depends on what you mean. Sardinian is the most archaic, particularly in the phonology, followed by standard (Florentine) Italian. Morpho-syntactically, it's Rumanian--and, yes, there's a reason for all of the archaisms in the lexicon. They were cut off from the empire in the early 3rd century, and with the constant influx of Hellenic-, Slavic-, and Turkic-speaking peoples, the people conserved as much of their culture and language as possible.

 

The differences in the Rumanian lexicon from the other Romance languages is due to a) borrowing from the previously mentioned linguistic factions; and the fact that they were on the periphery of the Roman Empire, and therefore were using older terms. It's called Wave Effect Theory: the closer you are to the (linguistic) center, the newer the term. It takes longer for the first wave to hit the periphery than the subsequent waves. Portuguese/Spanish and Rumanian have the 'oldest' lexicon, while Italian has the 'newest'.

 

I believe that St. Francis of Assissi's "Canticle of the Sun" is widely considered to be the first work published in Italian (by that I believe it is meant, published in an Italian that is more Italian than Latin). While no doubt many dialects were spoken, it is difficult to officially recognize a language until something has been published in that language. I am by no means saying that the language did not exist before than, but by being published, a language is given an authenticity that it would be difficult to ascribe to it otherwise.

 

Language is such a dynamic, organic thing that it is difficult to chart its evolution in any specific way. Finding the missing link, if you will, between Latin and Italian is practically impossible what with the nature of creoles and pidgins and such. It is for that reason that above discussed "army" statement was originally coined.

 

Agreed with point #2...and point #1...sort of. There is a whole host of 12th century poetry from monastic orders in the Umbrian and Marchese areas...San Francesco d'Assisi is just the most known. And perhaps the most studied, too...both lyrically and linguistically. But do not forget Dante Alleghieri...La divina commedia is the first example of Florentine dialect, and is what the 'standard' is based on...even in Medieval times!

 

As for the original question:

Latin was widely used in europe for many centuries even after the fall of the Roman empire. Why did it eventually die out and give way to the romance languages? By which period was latin all but forgotten? and what are the specific reasons for it's replacement by the other languages, was it not practical enough?

 

As has been pointed out on here by a couple of people...it depends on what you mean. 'Classical Latin' was in use in the Empire days as a written standard, but even in Cicero and Caesar times there is plenty of evidence that they, themselves, did not actually speak CLat unless necessary. Vulgar Latin is documented as early as 200BCE. Late Latin is what we historial Romance linguists consider to be pretty much the fall of the empire > 8th century, which is when the first 'true' vestiges of early Romance pop up. And it's called 'Early Romance', too...it's not quite Late Latin, but not quite Old French/Castillian/etc. For the most part, it comes from 2 sources: 1) glosses by monks who were transcribing texts in CLat, but put down 'translations' of what they spoke in order to understand what it is they were copying; and 2) the Andalusian jarchas (which has various spellings), which were the last 4 lines of Moorish poetry in the Andalusian Romance spoken in that area of Iberia. Both are constantly being analyzed and revised...and there is much discrepancy as to the accurate translations into modern-speak.

 

Bottom line...language, like everything else in the natural world, evolves...it's alive and full of energy!

[M. Porcius Cato]

PS--Proto-World *shudddddddddddddddddddddddder* Bull-pucky, if you ask me...but that's just my .02.

 

First, welcome to the forums.

 

Second, how many times do you think the language faculty evolved? If only once, what alternative would you suggest to the hypothesis that all languages also descended from a common ancestor?

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

If all humans have descended or evolved or whatever from one small group of humans (as mitochondrial DNA evidence would have us believe) then it only follows that at one time, all humans spoke the same language.

 

Stephen Pinker's book "The Language Instict" addresses this issue and others like it quite well. It is probably my favorite book on linguistics, though it might be too heavy on the Chomsky for some.

[docoflove1974]

If all humans have descended or evolved or whatever from one small group of humans (as mitochondrial DNA evidence would have us believe) then it only follows that at one time, all humans spoke the same language.

 

Stephen Pinker's book "The Language Instict" addresses this issue and others like it quite well. It is probably my favorite book on linguistics, though it might be too heavy on the Chomsky for some.

 

That particular Pinker book is very good for beginners in linguistics...particularly the first, like, 2/3 of it. The rest of it is general rehashing of the same topics, and extremely pro-Chomsky. It tends to rub people the wrong way, but it's all good. A great starting point.

 

To address both Capitolinus and Cato...it's not that I don't believe that we humans all spoke one language at one time. I think anyone who's had a smattering of evolution, archeology and the like knows that somehow there were 'the first humans' and they spoke a common form of communication--we'll call it language for the sake of argument.

 

The problem comes in here: humans first 'existed', what, 75-100K years ago? Historical linguists struggle with reconstructing languages accurately past the 10K mark...we cannot realistically reconstruct language and still have it pass 'scientific' mustard. It's very ad hoc, which is why Proto-World (and the like) really don't work for me. It's a nice thought...but it's not possible.

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

Agreed, Doco. There seem to be so few possible options where oral communication is concerned that all languages are going to have similarities.

 

I have no problems with PIE. PW, however, seems like quite a stretch.

[Q Valerius Scerio]

If all humans have descended or evolved or whatever from one small group of humans (as mitochondrial DNA evidence would have us believe) then it only follows that at one time, all humans spoke the same language.

 

Stephen Pinker's book "The Language Instict" addresses this issue and others like it quite well. It is probably my favorite book on linguistics, though it might be too heavy on the Chomsky for some.

Are "Proto-Elephant" and "Proto-Human" dialects of each other then, since ultimately all animals began as one? I think we've gone way too far in stretching things.

[M. Porcius Cato]

If all humans have descended or evolved or whatever from one small group of humans (as mitochondrial DNA evidence would have us believe) then it only follows that at one time, all humans spoke the same language.

 

Stephen Pinker's book "The Language Instict" addresses this issue and others like it quite well. It is probably my favorite book on linguistics, though it might be too heavy on the Chomsky for some.

Are "Proto-Elephant" and "Proto-Human" dialects of each other then, since ultimately all animals began as one?

 

Given that only humans speak, what exactly is your point?

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

Scerio makes a good point though. Tracing the evolution of language back too far has almost no point. As I tried to say in my last post, any similarities would have as much to do with limited options as with actual connections.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Scerio makes a good point though. Tracing the evolution of language back too far has almost no point. As I tried to say in my last post, any similarities would have as much to do with limited options as with actual connections.

 

Limited options??? Are you crazy? The first language could have taken so many forms the problem is exactly the reverse!

 

And the point of reconstructing PW is exactly the same as reconstructing a dinosaur or any other fossil--to find out about things evolve and what underlying mechanisms constrain the changes.

 

Don't get me wrong--getting at PW is like trying to do a genome for the first living thing: it's such a difficult problem that it's nearly quixotic. But so what? All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

Limited in terms of grammatical constructions not vocabulary. But even as far as vocabulary is concerned, it is logical that writing is going to be pictographic (or evolved from pictographs) and that sounds are going to be onomatopoetic (or evolved from onomatopoeias).

 

Language is not random. Words look and sound the way they do for reasons. That said, I am probably crazy.