# Is Italian the modern edition of Latin?



## portumania

I wonder, is Italian the modern edition of Latin? Can we say Modern Latin = Italian? (In the way that we say Modern Greek for the language spoken in Greece). Or Modern Latin are all the Romantic languages (Spanish, French etc)? Or Latin is just dead? Sorry for making this question here but the forum about cultural issues is restricted to specific members.


----------



## Ihsiin

Perhaps this should be in the Etymology and History of Languages section?

Regarding the subject, I believe that Latin is generally considered to be a dead language, the Romance languages, Italian included, being its descendants.


----------



## Blackman

Latin is dead. Italian is very different from latin.


----------



## Alxmrphi

Hi portu,

In the Hellenic branch of languages there wasn't a split where Classical Greek split into further languages, there was an evolution into Modern Greek where the link seems to show one branch developing, as you can see here (approx 4pm).

So there's a direct 1:1 correspondence here between an old language and its subsequent development. With Latin, it developed into Proto-Romance and branched out like this (9pm, green line).

Saying "modern Latin" implies one language, and this is very far from the truth, "modern Latin" (the languages which developed out of Latin) are numerous and Italian / French / Romanian are just naming a few of them, so all these languages could be called "modern Latin".

There's no reason why Italian is more '_modern Latin_' than the others, though it did retain the most similarities with Latin compared to other languages in that family, due to the location where it was spoken it hasn't been affected that much by surrounding languages (like French by German, or Romanian with Macedonian or other languages in the Balkan Sprachbund).

So it's very much....
_
Modern Latin = Italian_
_
Modern Latin = Italian
.................... French
.................... Spanish
.................... Portuguese
.................... Romanian 
.................... Catalan
.................... Sardinian
.................... Gallician_ (etc etc..)


As there was very much a big gap between the Latin spoken around (Vulgar Latin) and the language used earlier on (Classical Latin) there was a distinction that sort of 'froze' the Classical Latin in time while the spoken form carried on developing, this allowed people to always refer back to a 'standard' language so that in the Middle Ages, people were still writing classical Latin (educational / scientific documents) and Latin was one of the main languages used for communication across Europe up until only a few hundred years ago. 

This Latin wasn't spoken natively by anyone, it was a language learned by people lucky enough to have a good education in those times.
If the Romans hadn't had an Empire and spread around, and there was a constant development within one language then I guess you'd be right.


----------



## portumania

Alxmrphi said:


> Hi portu,
> 
> In the Hellenic branch of languages there wasn't a split where Classical Greek split into further languages, there was an evolution into Modern Greek where the link seems to show one branch developing, as you can see here (approx 4pm).
> 
> So there's a direct 1:1 correspondence here between an old language and its subsequent development. With Latin, it developed into Proto-Romance and branched out like this (9pm, green line).
> 
> Saying "modern Latin" implies one language, and this is very far from the truth, "modern Latin" (the languages which developed out of Latin) are numerous and Italian / French / Romanian are just naming a few of them, so all these languages could be called "modern Latin".
> 
> There's no reason why Italian is more '_modern Latin_' than the others, though it did retain the most similarities with Latin compared to other languages in that family, due to the location where it was spoken it hasn't been affected that much by surrounding languages (like French by German, or Romanian with Macedonian or other languages in the Balkan Sprachbund).
> 
> So it's very much....
> _
> Modern Latin = Italian_
> _
> Modern Latin = Italian
> .................... French
> .................... Spanish
> .................... Portuguese
> .................... Romanian
> .................... Catalan
> .................... Sardinian
> .................... Gallician_ (etc etc..)
> 
> 
> As there was very much a big gap between the Latin spoken around (Vulgar Latin) and the language used earlier on (Classical Latin) there was a distinction that sort of 'froze' the Classical Latin in time while the spoken form carried on developing, this allowed people to always refer back to a 'standard' language so that in the Middle Ages, people were still writing classical Latin (educational / scientific documents) and Latin was one of the main languages used for communication across Europe up until only a few hundred years ago.
> 
> This Latin wasn't spoken natively by anyone, it was a language learned by people lucky enough to have a good education in those times.
> If the Romans hadn't had an Empire and spread around, and there was a constant development within one language then I guess you'd be right.



When you say Romanian is affected by Macedonian, you mean the Bulgarian dialect spoken in the modern Republic of Macedonia? or you mean the Greek dialect spoken in Greek Macedonia? I disagree in both case with you. It is highly influenced by French and Italian.

By the wonder I wonder why Modern English is classified as a Germanic Language. It contains only 26% words of Germanic origin. The vast majority comes from Latin, Greek and French, 64%. English does not even have the same syntax with German. I guess linguists should be taught some maths and some common sense..


----------



## Frank06

portumania said:


> By the wonder I wonder why Modern English is classified as a Germanic Language. It contains only 26% words of Germanic origin. The vast majority comes from Latin, Greek and French, 64%. English does not even have the same syntax with German. I guess linguists should be taught some maths and some common sense..


We have a long thread about English as a Germanic language. I am quite sure that the moderators are willing to re-open that thread if you can come up with arguments against a Germanic classification of English  that haven't been debunked yet in that thread. The classification of (the Germanic) languages is something from _historical linguistics_. And yes, as said before, the number of loans and hence mathematics don't really matter. That would be a very naive, limited and limiting point of view. 

You're ignoring the historical aspects in a discussion about the history of the Germanic languages and the classification of languages based upon their history. It has nothing to do with mathematics, but a lot with basic insight in the topic.

Modern Persian didn't turn into a Semitic language because of the great number of Arabic words, my local Antwerp dialect didn't turn into a Romance language because of the number of French loans. Japanese nor Korean are to be considered Chinese. That's historical comparative linguistics 101.

*<Reactions to deleted posts deleted>
*


portumania said:


> I wonder, is Italian the modern edition of Latin? Can we say Modern Latin = Italian? (In the way that we say Modern Greek for the language spoken in Greece). Or Modern Latin are all the Romantic languages (Spanish, French etc)? Or Latin is just dead? Sorry for making this question here but the forum about cultural issues is restricted to specific members.


I have the impression that you're playing around with labels here. 
Is English the modern edition of Proto-Germanic, the modern edition of Proto-Indo-European?  Or Modern Common Germanic are all the Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, ...)?
If you want to call Italian the 712th revised and augmented edition of Latin, go ahead. Give and take a few very odd ideas about language(s), the same could be said about, Spanish and Portuguese etc., the difference being other successive editors for all these languages, to stick to your simile.  

But what would be the point of this "factoid/fictoid"?

Frank


----------



## infinite sadness

Io penso che bisognerebbe distinguere l'italiano volgare parlato dall'italiano scritto.

Il volgare italiano parlato nel medioevo forse può considerarsi come una sorta di edizione moderna dell'antico latino parlato, ma è difficile conoscere con esattezza il latino parlato, perché nei documenti noi abbiamo solo il latino scritto.


----------



## DenisBiH

infinite sadness said:


> Io penso che bisognerebbe distinguere l'italiano volgare parlato dall'italiano scritto.
> 
> *Il volgare italiano parlato nel medioevo forse può considerarsi come una sorta di edizione moderna dell'antico latino parlato*, ma è difficile conoscere con esattezza il latino parlato, perché nei documenti noi abbiamo solo il latino scritto.




So could the spoken medieval Spanish, Portuguese, French...


----------



## Orlin

DenisBiH said:


> So could the spoken medieval Spanish, Portuguese, French...


 
Da, po meni svaki jezik jedne jezičke familije u jednakoj je meri naslednik jezika od kojeg familija dolazi, i mislim da je osobina romanske jezičke familije u tome da je jezik od kojeg dolazi (latinski) pisano evidentiran dok nije tako u velikoj većini slučaja (npr. šta se tiče slovenskih jezika) i taj jezik je obično rekonstruiran.


----------



## infinite sadness

Non saprei, però ricordo che a un certo punto gli abitanti della penisola italica in latino erano chiamati Latini, mentre quelli extra-Italia, anche se appartenenti all'Impero, venivano chiamati peregrini.


----------



## DenisBiH

infinite sadness said:


> Non saprei, però ricordo che a un certo punto gli abitanti della penisola italica in latino erano chiamati Latini, mentre quelli extra-Italia, anche se appartenenti all'Impero, venivano chiamati peregrini.




Yes, and the Americans are not called English yet their language is considered as much English as that of England. Besides, if we were to go down that road, one might also say that only the modern dialect spoken in the area of the original Latium is the direct descendant of Latin, and all the others in Italy are simply Latinized Italics, Etruscans, Veneti, Greeks, Celts...I think you'd agree that would be absurd.


----------



## infinite sadness

Certo, capisco quello che vuoi dire, però io volevo dire che mentre la lingua italiana è una lingua "inventata" (per scopi letterari e scientifici) e non proviene da un procedimento evolutivo naturale, i dialetti invece costituiscono una evoluzione del latino parlato mescolato ai linguaggi indigeni.


----------



## DenisBiH

infinite sadness said:


> Certo, capisco quello che vuoi dire, però io volevo dire che mentre la lingua italiana è una lingua "inventata" (per scopi letterari e scientifici) e non proviene da un procedimento evolutivo naturale, i dialetti invece costituiscono una evoluzione del latino parlato mescolato ai linguaggi indigeni.




Well, that could probably be said of many, if not all, standard literary languages. With some Romance languages it's probably even more confusing, take for example Spanish _palabras cultas y semicultas.

_But I see no reason for distinguishing between the evolution of the dialects of Italian on one hand and Spanish, Portuguese and French etc. on the other (in terms of some being 'more Latin' than the others)


----------



## Hulalessar

infinite sadness said:


> Certo, capisco quello che vuoi dire, però io volevo dire che mentre la lingua italiana è una lingua "inventata" (per scopi letterari e scientifici) e non proviene da un procedimento evolutivo naturale, i dialetti invece costituiscono una evoluzione del latino parlato mescolato ai linguaggi indigeni.



All standard languages are invented or artificial to a greater or less extent, even if it is just a case of preserving an older form of the language. In the case of Italian the _Tre Corone_ still exert great influence and there has been some deliberate archaising. The result is that Italian looks rather more Latin-like than it would have done if it had been left alone.

As to other Romance languages, if they are all like French and Spanish, the lexicon has been extended by _cultismos_. Note for example that the Latin for "fire" was _ignis_, but that the French and Spanish words for "fire" are _feu _and _fuego _respectively, both derived from Latin _focus _which meant "hearth". The adjectives _igné _and _ígneo_ are later introductions. Indeed, the word _focus _has reappeared in French as _focal_ (same meaning as in English but restricted to optics) and in Spanish as _foco_ (same meaning as English "focus"). Spanish has many doublets of the "fuego/foco" type.

I have seen it suggested that the language with the best claim to be regarded as Modern Latin (or at least Modern Vulgar Latin) is Occitan.


----------



## portumania

Quote:
Originally Posted by infinite sadness  
Io penso che bisognerebbe distinguere l'italiano volgare parlato dall'italiano scritto.

Il volgare italiano parlato nel medioevo forse può considerarsi come una sorta di edizione moderna dell'antico latino parlato, ma è difficile conoscere con esattezza il latino parlato, perché nei documenti noi abbiamo solo il latino scritto.



DenisBiH said:


> So could the spoken medieval Spanish, Portuguese, French...



Yeah, but Italy is... in the Italian peninsula. So the influences of the Latin language are much bigger than in any other Romance language. 
It is like saying, where people speak more "traditional" Portuguese, in Portugal or in Brazil or in Angola? Obviously in Portugal because it is where the language was born



DenisBiH said:


> Yes, and the Americans are not called English yet their language is considered as much English as that of England. Besides, if we were to go down that road, one might also say that only the modern dialect spoken in the area of the original Latium is the direct descendant of Latin, and all the others in Italy are simply Latinized Italics, Etruscans, Veneti, Greeks, Celts...I think you'd agree that would be absurd.



They are direct descendants (as also all the Romance languages), but the Italian language is "more Latin" than the rest of the Romance languages (if you speak only latin you have a huge italian passive vocabulary, but less spanish, french etc)

America was a British colony. Do not involve colonial era into linguistic criteria.

By the way you in Yugoslavia split your language into 3 languages (serbian, bosnian, croatian) based on political and religious criteria not into linguistic one. As Max Weinreich said, _a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot_ . A language is a dialect with an army and navy


----------



## portumania

infinite sadness said:


> Certo, capisco quello che vuoi dire, però io volevo dire che mentre la lingua italiana è una lingua "inventata" (per scopi letterari e scientifici) e non proviene da un procedimento evolutivo naturale, i dialetti invece costituiscono una evoluzione del latino parlato mescolato ai linguaggi indigeni.



Italian is not invented either in inverted commas or not...It is not esperanto. if you are refering to Dante Alighieri he did not invent Italian, he standardised it. Dante's Inferno helped bring the vulgar Italian dialect into larger use -as it was the first major recognised work ever written in the dialect


----------



## berndf

Frank06 said:


> We have a long thread about English as a Germanic language. I am quite sure that the moderators are willing to re-open that thread if you can come up with arguments against a Germanic classification of English  that haven't been debunked yet in that thread. The classification of (the Germanic) languages is something from _historical linguistics_. And yes, as said before, the number of loans and hence mathematics don't really matter. That would be a very naive, limited and limiting point of view.



*Moderator Note:
As Frank pointed out, the question of the classification of English is topic of another thread and is off-topic here --- at least when it turned from a side remark into a separate discussion. If anybody thinks he/she has anything to contribute, please let us (Sokol or me) know and we will consider reopening that thread. But it would require new aspects and/or arguments (linguistic classification is not based on loan word frequencies and simple re-iteration of the same argument would be pointless) and it would have to be more objective and less emotional than what the deleted discussion here turned into.

The same is actually true for this thread. I have deleted very "generously" to give everybody a chance for a fresh start. I am looking forward to an intense yet respectful discussion.
*


----------



## Forero

I suspect an ancient Roman familiar with various dialects of, say, the ninth century might have an easier time making out what was being said were someone to speak slowly and try to explain things in Italian than in French, Portuguese, Romanian, or probably even Spanish, and would probably find some modern Italian dialects easier to understand than standard Italian.

(I am basing this wild conjecture on the type and degree of phonetic changes characteristic of these languages.)

Of course it would definitely all sound weird indeed to a ninth-century Roman, and there would be a lot of 'spainin' to do.


----------



## DenisBiH

portumania,

You have already been told several times on this thread that the percentage of inherited lexicon is not viewed as an especially relevant fact in the discussion on genetic classification of languages. Even if it were true that Italian has inherited significantly more Latin lexicon than other Romance languages (which I don't know to be the case) it still doesn't get you anywhere in this discussion.

To my knowledge, which of course may be lacking, there is no scientific discipline that measures the 'percentage' to which one language is descended from its parent language. If you wish to create one such theory, you would have to explain to us here just how you're going to measure this percentage, and explain the weights given to various things.

- How much does the lexicon weigh in total? How much does each particular word weigh? Are there different weights for core vocabulary and other words? Are there different weights to more ancient words/forms/meanings? What are these differences and why do they weigh as much as you say they do?
- How much does the grammar weigh? How many points for case endings? Is genitive worth more than accusative or are they the same weight? How much for various tenses and their forms? For pronouns? For participles? For plural markers? 
- How many negative points for each sound change that makes a descendant different from its parent language? Is palatalization worth more negative points than vowel shifts?


If we were talking about the case of comparing a direct descendant of X with a pidgin/creole of X, then I presume it would be appropriate to talk in terms of the former being 'more X-y' than the latter. But in the case of Italian vs Spanish vs Portuguese vs French we are not talking about pidgins/creoles etc.

However, if you would still like to discuss this, instead of offhand remarks of the type "Italy is in the Apennine peninsula therefore Italian is 'more Latin' than other Romance languages", you might try to research and discuss the state and development of spoken/Vulgar Latin in various parts of the Roman Empire from the classical times to its breakup and the emergence of different Romance languages.

Here are a few examples of Spanish and Portuguese being 'more Latin' than Italian and French. Namely, due to early Roman colonization of Iberia, some older Latin words now considered archaic Latin had entered into use in Iberian Latin. They later fell out of use in the Latin of Italy and Gaul and were replaced by other words, but remained in use in Iberia due to its location, and survived into modern Spanish and Portuguese. Archaic/older words are in bold.

Examples:



> *DEMAGIS* adv. Sp. demás, Port. demais
> *CAMPSARE* verb Sp. cansar, Port. cansar
> *MENSA* noun Sp. mesa vs. TABULA It. tavola, Fr. table
> *PERCONTARE* Sp.  preguntar vs. DEMANDARE It.domandare, Fr. demander
> *FERVERE* Sp. hervir vs. BULLIRE It. bollire, Fr. bouillir, also Sp. bullir but did not displace FERVERE


_Ivan Klajn, "Istorijska gramatika španskog jezika" (Historical grammar of the Spanish language), 1977, p. 16_

Well, look at that, now Spanish and Portuguese are more ancient Latin than the others! 

Here's some more, it's in Catalan but you seem to do well with different languages. Sorry for no accents in the quote.



> Podem dir que «el lexic Hispanic es caracteritza per la pervivencia d'una serie de mots que des del principi de l'eроса imperial eren considerats com a pertanyents al llati mes elevat i a Roma eren substituits, per les capes mes populars de la poblacio, per altres» (Bastardas.  1995: 52).


----------



## robbie_SWE

DenisBiH said:


> portumania,





DenisBiH said:


> You have already been told several times on this thread that the percentage of inherited lexicon is not viewed as an especially relevant fact in the discussion on genetic classification of languages. Even if it were true that Italian has inherited significantly more Latin lexicon than other Romance languages (which I don't know to be the case) it still doesn't get you anywhere in this discussion.
> 
> To my knowledge, which of course may be lacking, there is no scientific discipline that measures the 'percentage' to which one language is descended from its parent language. If you wish to create one such theory, you would have to explain to us here just how you're going to measure this percentage, and explain the weights given to various things.
> 
> - How much does the lexicon weigh in total? How much does each particular word weigh? Are there different weights for core vocabulary and other words? Are there different weights to more ancient words/forms/meanings? What are these differences and why do they weigh as much as you say they do?
> - How much does the grammar weigh? How many points for case endings? Is genitive worth more than accusative or are they the same weight? How much for various tenses and their forms? For pronouns? For participles? For plural markers?
> - How many negative points for each sound change that makes a descendant different from its parent language? Is palatalization worth more negative points than vowel shifts?
> 
> 
> If we were talking about the case of comparing a direct descendant of X with a pidgin/creole of X, then I presume it would be appropriate to talk in terms of the former being 'more X-y' than the latter. But in the case of Italian vs Spanish vs Portuguese vs French we are not talking about pidgins/creoles etc.
> 
> However, if you would still like to discuss this, instead of offhand remarks of the type "Italy is in the Apennine peninsula therefore Italian is 'more Latin' than other Romance languages", you might try to research and discuss the state and development of spoken/Vulgar Latin in various parts of the Roman Empire from the classical times to its breakup and the emergence of different Romance languages.
> 
> Here are a few examples of Spanish and Portuguese being 'more Latin' than Italian and French. Namely, due to early Roman colonization of Iberia, some older Latin words now considered archaic Latin had entered into use in Iberian Latin. They later fell out of use in the Latin of Italy and Gaul and were replaced by other words, but remained in use in Iberia due to its location, and survived into modern Spanish and Portuguese. Archaic/older words are in bold.
> 
> Examples:
> 
> _Ivan Klajn, "Istorijska gramatika španskog jezika" (Historical grammar of the Spanish language), 1977, p. 16_
> 
> Well, look at that, now Spanish and Portuguese are more ancient Latin than the others!
> 
> Here's some more, it's in Catalan but you seem to do well with different languages. Sorry for no accents in the quote.



 
Sorry to say it DenisBiH, but some of the words you provided for Spanish and Portuguese aren't completely unique. 
 
Romanian retained a couple of them as well (+ a whole list of words from Latin not present in any other Romance language; off topic in this thread though ): 
 
*Masă *("table") < lat. _mensa_. 
*Fierbe* ("to boil") < lat. _fervere_. 
 
I believe that the most isolated Romance languages demonstrate a closer affinity to "Vulgar/Classical Latin" (N.B. not insinuating that French or any other more "innovative" Romance language doesn't have this kind of relationship). Sardinian is according to me the closest to Vulgar Latin, more so than Italian. 
 
 robbie


----------



## DenisBiH

Thanks for the corrections robbie_SWE. Mister Klajn does however later say this:



> Za hispanistu je rumunski zanimljiv pre svega zbog onih oblika koji su zajednički rumunskom i španskom, a nema ih u većini drugih romanskih jezika, npr. u francuskom i italijanskom. Ta podudarnost između dva geografski tako udaljena područja tumači se arhaizmom (up. 2.1.1): periferne provincije, Dakija i Hispanija  najpre su izgubile vezu s Rimom i zadržale su neke starije latinske oblike, dok su se u Italiji i Galiji umesto tih oblika javili novi koji više nisu doprli na periferiju carstva.


Klajn, p. 21

Roughly:



> For a hispanist Romanian is interesting mainly because of those forms which Romanian and Spanish have in common, but which are not present in most other Romance languages, e.g. French and Italian. This congruence between two such distant areas geographically is explained by archaism: peripheral provinces, Dacia and Hispania were the first to lose contact with Rome and kept some older Latin forms, while in Italy and Gaul new forms appeared instead of them, but they didn't reach the periphery of the Empire.


He cites the following:



> AFFLARE Rom. afla, Sp. hallar, Port. achar vs Central *TROPARE It. trovare, Fr. trouver.
> FORMOSUS Rom. frumos, Sp. hermoso, Port. formoso vs. Central BELLUS It. bello, Fr. beau
> For making comparatives, MAGIS (Rom. mai dulce, Sp. más dulce, Port. mais doce ) vs. Central PLUS (It. più dolce, Fr. plus doux)


Here's another quote:



> A widely favoured distinction between central innovating areas and the conservative rim is based largely on lexical criteria. For instance, Spanish/Portuguese and Rumanian seem to share certain more archaic items that are lost elsewhere, like FORMOSUS rather than BELLUS 'beautiful', MAGIS not PLUS 'more', or FERVERE not BULLIRE 'to boil'


----------



## Silas M.

I actually joined this forum because this question popped into my head this evening, and in a sense I'm glad it did as I am about to embark on learning some languages so it sounds like this forum could be extremely useful.

But onto the topic at hand, Old English had its origins perhaps 1500 yrs ago, however the modern language of English would be completely foreign to speakers back then, yet both are labeled as being "English", the modern being the latest version of the Old.

Italian is present in the same geographical location as the birthplace of Latin, yet instead of terming Latin from c. 400 'Old Latin', and Italian 'Modern Latin', we consider them to be different.

Is the whole "Old English" vs Modern simply a poor choice of naming, they being so different that really they should not have been considered the same language, or is there something present when one compares Old English to Modern, that isn't present when comparing Latin to Italian.  Is it because Latin is more the classical language whereas Italian is descended from the Vulgar, so in essence not directly descended from what we consider Latin at all?


----------



## miguel89

The different naming comes due to the need to distinguish between many descendant languages. At a time it was common to refer to all Latin's descendants as "romanice", but when one needed to tell them apart one would label them as sardo, lombardo, lemosin, etc. Moreover, it was an important factor that romance languages were frequently separated by frontiers, whereas English was kept inside England for a long time. But, even in the UK you have the example of Scots, which also comes from Old English, but has a different name. To sum up, naming depends mostly on historical reasons.


----------



## infinite sadness

Silas M. said:


> Is the whole "Old English" vs Modern simply a poor choice of naming, they being so different that really they should not have been considered the same language, or is there something present when one compares Old English to Modern, that isn't present when comparing Latin to Italian.  Is it because Latin is more the classical language whereas Italian is descended from the Vulgar, so in essence not directly descended from what we consider Latin at all?


I agree. In fact the comparison would have to be made between Latin Vulgar and Italian Vulgar, but unfortunately the Latin Vulgar was never written, so we can't know how it was.


----------



## Silas M.

infinite sadness said:


> I agree. In fact the comparison would have to be made between Latin Vulgar and Italian Vulgar, but unfortunately the Latin Vulgar was never written, so we can't know how it was.



To me this makes the most sense.  Italian can't be called "modern Latin" because the Latin we know is a classical learned Latin, whereas the Romance Languages, including Italian, descended from a completely different, let's say 'dialect', a dialect which is lost.

It would be an interesting exercise to take each Romance language, remove what is clearly identified as non-latin influences, and then compare whatever is left of each of them to see if what is distilled out might be an approximation of  the original Vulgar.  Perhaps a useless exercise, but interesting to think about.


----------



## Frank06

Silas M. said:


> To me this makes the most sense.  Italian can't be called "modern Latin" because the Latin we know is a classical learned Latin, whereas the Romance Languages, including Italian, descended from a completely different, let's say 'dialect', a dialect which is lost.


I am starting to wonder about the alleged importance of labels (names for languages) in this thread, as if they denote "clear and distinct ideas".

Words as "Latin" and "English" get their meaning from the context. In this context, everybody would understand Latin as a *blanket term*, almost as the collection of Latin dialects (and dialect includes the codified language). I don't see any need to restrict Latin to the codified, classical Latin in this context.



> It would be an interesting exercise to take each Romance language, remove what is clearly identified as non-latin influences, and then compare whatever is left of each of them to see if what is distilled out might be an approximation of  the original Vulgar.  Perhaps a useless exercise, but interesting to think about.


In Dutch we'd call this "reinventing hot water".
Wouldn't it be easier to look at the many grammars and dictionaries for Vulgar Latin which already exist?


----------



## locutus

Silas M. said:


> To me this makes the most sense. Italian can't be called "modern Latin" because the Latin we know is a classical learned Latin, whereas the Romance Languages, including Italian, descended from a completely different, let's say 'dialect', a dialect which is lost.
> 
> .......


 
Well...maybe.... I think another way to look at it might be that the Latin in use during the Roman Empire was gradually changing over the centuries....the common language more so than the classical language. With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, education levels gradually dropped, perhaps over a period of a hundred to two hundred years. The common spoken language remained; the "learned" language largely, though not totally, disappeared. The common language...Vulgar Latin, which apparently was just that...a common language and not "standardized"....and this common language was different to varying degrees in different areas even before the collapse of the Empire. 

Over the next few centuries the languages diverged even more....through processes that the linguists tell us are characteristic of population groups affected by varying degrees of isolation. As prosperity and education levels gradually improved in the former parts of the Empire, the spoken language, then in use, was gradually developed into a, more or less, standardized written language. 

Interestingly, Classical Latin did survive, pretty much in the monastaries, and, thus, was "saved" and continued to be used. But by the time of Charlemagne...or maybe a bit later, this Latin was clearly so different from the day to day languages that it was not really intelligible without a special education.

And, I think to say Vulgar Latin was "lost" is a bit of an oversimplification. It is difficult to know what it was in the way we know what Classical Latin was, but there are inscriptions and various other archeological finds that give hints....there are at least some literary works that give ideas ...at least for Vulgar Latin in the Italian peninsula...I'm thinking of Trimalchio's Dinner by Petronius who lived during the first century AD. And linguists have methodologies for "inferring" what it may have been like.... But, of course, all of this is not direct evidence and so will be endlessly debatable.


----------



## portumania

locutus said:


> Well...maybe.... I think another way to look at it might be that the Latin in use during the Roman Empire was gradually changing over the centuries....the common language more so than the classical language. With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, education levels gradually dropped, perhaps over a period of a hundred to two hundred years. The common spoken language remained; the "learned" language largely, though not totally, disappeared. The common language...Vulgar Latin, which apparently was just that...a common language and not "standardized"....and this common language was different to varying degrees in different areas even before the collapse of the Empire.
> 
> Over the next few centuries the languages diverged even more....through processes that the linguists tell us are characteristic of population groups affected by varying degrees of isolation. As prosperity and education levels gradually improved in the former parts of the Empire, the spoken language, then in use, was gradually developed into a, more or less, standardized written language.
> 
> Interestingly, Classical Latin did survive, pretty much in the monastaries, and, thus, was "saved" and continued to be used. But by the time of Charlemagne...or maybe a bit later, this Latin was clearly so different from the day to day languages that it was not really intelligible without a special education.
> 
> And, I think to say Vulgar Latin was "lost" is a bit of an oversimplification. It is difficult to know what it was in the way we know what Classical Latin was, but there are inscriptions and various other archeological finds that give hints....there are at least some literary works that give ideas ...at least for Vulgar Latin in the Italian peninsula...I'm thinking of Trimalchio's Dinner by Petronius who lived during the first century AD. And linguists have methodologies for "inferring" what it may have been like.... But, of course, all of this is not direct evidence and so will be endlessly debatable.



Comparing Italian to Latin and Modern Greek to Ancient Greek, I see in both cases many words changed and many grammatical and syntactic rules changed/simplified. 
An educated Modern Greek reading an Ancient  Greek text cannot understand more words than an educated Italian reading an Latin text.
I wonder if the language of Greece is called offspring of ancient Greek just for political reasons of  the 19th century..


----------



## Malti

portumania said:


> An educated Modern Greek reading an Ancient  Greek text cannot understand more words than an educated Italian reading an Latin text.



Modern Greek descends from Ancient Greek, as Modern Italian descends from "Ancient Italian". This "Ancient Italian" just coincidentally happens to be the same as "Ancient French" and "Ancient Spanish" and "Ancient Portuguese" and "Ancient Etcetera", and we usually refer to these homogeneous languages collectively as Latin.

So calling Latin "Ancient Italian" would be a bit non-conformist, but more or less fine if you really want to. Calling Italian "Modern Latin", with the implication that French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc, _aren't_ also "Modern Latin" would be incorrect.


----------



## Ottilie

For me Italian seems the closest Romance language to Latin


----------



## berndf

From a linguist point of view, _Classical Greek_ and _Modern Greek_ are certainly distinct languages, as much as _Latin_ and _Italian_. That _Classical Greek_ and _Modern Greek_ contain a common part, namely _Greek_, should be seen as incidental. Labels are conventions and as such neither right nor wrong, only more or less practical.
 
In the case of Latin and Italian it is probably more practical to keep the labels as they are because of the reason Malti gave: Many independent languages have evolved from Latin and it would be pointless arguing that one of them should be seen as a direct successor and others only as "collateral relatives". And calling Italian "Modern Latin" or Latin "Ancient Italian" would be highly suggestive in this direction and should better be avoided.


----------



## Nonstar

What's the outcome of saying Italian is Modern Latin? Big deal eh? Ok, Italian "is" the closest to Latin, so? What do you get from this? Any advance in linguistics terms?


----------



## ilocas2

For me the closest Romance language to Latin is Outrageously-bigoted Rock'n'Roll-styled & idiolectal 1970's vintage patronising smalltown Portuguese


----------



## Nonstar

LOL, ilocas!!


----------



## sokol

ilocas2 said:


> For me the closest Romance language to Latin is Outrageously-bigoted Rock'n'Roll-styled & idiolectal 1970's vintage patronising smalltown Portuguese



Good point, but can you show _*any*_ proof for that? 

Anyway, Nonstar, I think ilocas2 has a point: which modern Romance language is the closest to Latin then? I'm not so sure about Italian. Probably Sicilian or Corsican? Or even yet another one?

Whatever, the topic of the thread, whether Italian were a "modern edition of Latin", in my opinion is a "non-topic": of course Italian is _*a*_ "modern edition Latin", but surely not _*the*_ one, as there are more than one - and precedence in "closeness" of one variety over the other is difficult to decide (and for my money pointless too, but that's just my personal opinion).

In Greek that's of course different, there could be no confusion as all modern Greek varieties which survived the times are considered being part of "one" language (one might possibly argue that they aren't really but that'd be a topic for another thread ); no such misunderstandings as may occur with Romance may happen with Greek.

Linguistically Italian is of course a separate language different from Latin, as well as Modern Greek of course is a language separate from Ancient Greek.


----------



## locutus

berndf said:


> From a linguist point of view, _Classical Greek_ and _Modern Greek_ are certainly distinct languages, as much as _Latin_ and _Italian_. That _Classical Greek_ and _Modern Greek_ contain a common part, namely _Greek_, should be seen as incidental. Labels are conventions and as such neither right nor wrong, only more or less practical.
> 
> In the case of Latin and Italian it is probably more practical to keep the labels as they are because of the reason Malti gave: Many independent languages have evolved from Latin and it would be pointless arguing that one of them should be seen as a direct successor and others only as "collateral relatives". And calling Italian "Modern Latin" or Latin "Ancient Italian" would be highly suggestive in this direction and should better be avoided.


 
I suppose one way to explain the relationship between Latin to Italian would be to turn things into a little story:

"Once upon a time, perhaps nearly 3,000 years ago, there lived upon the banks of the Tiber River in what is now central Italy....."

....a small group of people who were speaking an Italic language somewhat similar to some, though not to all, of their neighbours. These people presumably brought this language with them from wherever they may have originally come....Asia Minor???...the Illyrian Peninsula???... 

At some unknowable point in time, this language, then probably only a spoken language, had differentiated itself sufficiently from its neighbouring languages to take on the characteristics of what linguists would call a discrete language. As time went on, this group of people, by now known as the Romans, grew to dominate their area and were also gradually becoming an increasingly hierarchical society with different social classes or, if you like, "castes".... 

It seems that this social differentation lead to the development of an increasingly formal, and educated, version of this language, to become known as Classical Latin. The common people would have tended to keep using their day to day version of the language, to become known as Vulgar Latin. As the centuries slowly drifted by, this differentiation increased.... This society, being dynamic, gradually came to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin and beyond, to Britain and Germany in the north ,and to the far reaches of the Black Sea in the east.....certainly they would have taken both versions of their language with them. The formal version, due, no doubt, to the fact that it was significantly a written version, tended to change more slowly than the informal version. As time continued to pass this "vulgar" version, itself, became more and more geographically differentiated..... 

One fateful day the Empire these people had created....faltered and collapsed...at least in the West. But, of course, the habitants still continued to communicate, though the ever-increasing geographic isolation of the various parts of this former Empire lead to more and more lingusitic differentiation... 

At some point, at differing times, in this former Empire it became recognized that the languages had become sufficiently differentiated that communication in the "vulgar" languages of the geographically separated areas, was almost impossible....perhaps, and quite likely, it was already well under way before the Empire's collapse In any event, separate languages became recognized. For Italian, this seems to have occurred about a millenium ago; for French, a little earlier. For the others...Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese....I'm not certain....and, of course, there were many other "languages" in this area that have since been subsumed to varying degrees and generally are only graced with the designation "dialect"...

That, essentially, is the history of establishment of the language now carrying the label, "Italian"...."la bellissima lingua del mondo"...

The above, of course, is the "thumbnail" version of events leading to the beginning of Italian....If anyone wants me to fill in more details or better support what I am saying, feel free to ask...I shall try to accommodate.....


----------



## 0m1

locutus said:


> If anyone wants me to fill in more details or better support what I am saying, feel free to ask...I shall try to accommodate.....



If you insist 



locutus said:


> there were many other "languages" in this area that have since been subsumed to varying degrees and generally are only graced with the designation "dialect"...



Do you mean like substrates? Because I'm not entirely sure if all dialects can be put down (solely) to various pre-Roman substrata, so much as more of a dialect continuum, no? Although in all fairness I don't even know if that's what you're saying!

Otherwise, that story seems rather succintly put, I may one day tell my future children it at bedtime


----------



## locutus

0m1 said:


> If you insist
> 
> 
> 
> Do you mean like substrates? Because I'm not entirely sure if all dialects can be put down (solely) to various pre-Roman substrata, so much as more of a dialect continuum, no? Although in all fairness I don't even know if that's what you're saying!....



I wasn't thinking so much of the native languages that Latin might have displaced, but languages that had arisen from Latin in parts of the Roman Empire, then later lost significance in their area to another Romance language, maybe even disappearing..  The ones I was thinking about were languages like Friulian, Romansch, Provençal, Catalan... Of course, these languages are all still with us...

But your point is a good one...I wasn't clear.  A big part of the reason Vulgar Latin changed in many areas was due to the presence of indigenous languages.... French being influenced by its Celtic predecessors, etc., which eventually disappeared...  This is, of course, different from the borrowing involving Greek words, and Germanic words....but similar to the borrowing involving Etruscan words....


----------

