# Why Latin spread so much and Greek didn't?



## Erick404

I believe my questions are more about history than etymology itself, but here it goes.

By far, most of romance languages' vocabulary comes from Latin. This seems reasonable for Italian, which has emerged where Latin (or maybe some variants of it, in places more distant from Rome) was the native language.

However, I find it quite strange that there isn't almost any influence from Celtic languages in French, Spanish or Portuguese. As far as I know, in Portuguese we have more vocabulary of Greek origin than of Celtic (Sorry if I'm wrong, but I generalise the languages spoken in Gaul and Iberia as Celtic). I know it doesn't happen with Romanian - it has a lot of Slavic vocabulary. 

On the other hand, Greek was a _lingua franca_ on much of Eastern Europe and Middle East for centuries. I've read that in the Byzantine Empire, Greek was much more usual than Latin, and eventually became the official language of the empire. And yet, today Greek is only spoken in Greece, having had no major influence on the languages of this area (I may be terribly wrong here, as I know nothing of these languages, but I've never read that Greek was influential to them).

PS: I couldn't think of a proper thread title. Moderators, feel free to change it.


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## miguel89

As far as I know, Rome didn't use to enforce the usage of Latin on the territories it (she?) conquered. Romans just let their language's weight do its work. It had prestige, it was used by the higher classes and it was the language of administration, justice, education, religion and trade. In any case, by the first centuries of our era Latin hadn't spread all over the Empire yet (and it never did north of Spain / south of France). Christianity, through predication, was a major factor for further propagation of Latin as well. Also, when Germanic / Barbarian tribes invaded the Empire and made it cease to exist, they were already romanized, so they didn't have a different language to impose.

In the case of Greek, the regions where it was spoken as a lingua franca were invaded / conquered by Arabic tribes and by the Turks and their respective languages became the language of prestige. I don't know, however, if they forbade the usage of Greek in the territories they conquered.

Finally, you say that it seems strange to you that languages spoken in places that were previously inhabited by Celtic tribes have a higher percentage of vocabulary of Greek origin that of Celtic origin. You've to keep in mind that most of this vocabulary are cultisms, that is, words introduced in the language by clergymen, philosophers, scientists and writers. There are as well some popular words brought in by the Ancient Greeks themselves through their factories or, more importantly, through the Romans, but their number isn't high.


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## berndf

The history of the downfall of the Eastern and the Western Empiries are different. As Miguel said, the invading, mainly Germanic, tribes where ready to assimilate to the Roman culture. The Western Empire didn't fall to a rivaling civilization it just disintegrated.

By contrast, the Arab-Islamic and later Turkish-Islamic invasion represented a much more radical break with the Christian culture of the Byzantine empire.

And also, in a large part of the Byzantine empire, Greek never managed to become the language of the people.  Aramaic, the language of the Babylonian and later of the Western Persian Empire remained lingua franca in most of the Middle East until the Islamic conquest. Greek was used in Church, in Government and in the military but not my the common people.


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## Frank78

Another aspect is that the Romans colonized the conquered territories to a much greater extend than the Greeks (or the city states) did. The Greek concentrated on establishing colonies just on the coastline, e.g. in Minor Asia. While the Romans colonized also the backcountry. 
The second aspect is that there were already higher civilized people in Minor Asia/the Middle East. While the Romans dealt with mainly "babarian" tribes, not really civilisations/state-like entities. 
By the way up until the 7th century Latin was the "official" language of East Rome and not Greek.


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## origumi

Frank78 said:


> The Greek concentrated on establishing colonies just on the coastline, e.g. in Minor Asia. While the Romans colonized also the backcountry.


Greek (Hellenistic / Koine) was the government language in huge areas since the days of Alexander: today's Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Afganistan, and more. It lasted hundreds of years.


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## sokol

There are two points to this question; one already has been answered: in the southern and south-eastern sphere of Greek influence Turkish and Arabic swept away Greek influence; note that before the downfall of the Ottoman Empire a huge number of Greeks lived in what is today Turkey and what once was called the Levant; many of them migrated or fled to Greece after World War I. But also Greek population in the Levant never was as dense as it was in the provinces of Gallia and Hispania.

Then there's another aspect - the Slavic world. You shouldn't forget that Greek culture has left a huge legacy with the Orthodox Church.
However, differently to the Latin West Rome, in Greek East Rome individual nations very early developped more or less independent Orthodox churches where Old Church Slavonic was used as the language of rite.
So Greek influence there is mostly cultural (even though there are also plenty of loans).

Anyway, if you take a closer look at it you'll realise that there's not such a fundamental difference between Eastern and Western Rome and the influence of their cultures respectively; it only developped differently in both East and West.


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## Emilín

The Romans conquered a territory very much bigger than Greeks. So Roman's language (Latin) avanced more than the language of Helade.
Is very important to know and study History to understand the phenomena of our Humanity.


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## sokol

Emilín said:


> The Romans conquered a territory verty much bigger than greeks. So Roman's language (latin) avanced more than the language of Helade.


Well, not quite; only that Greek expansion never was as centralised and never based as much (and as thoroughly) on colonisation as Roman expansion.

The Greek (or well, Macedonians if you like) conquered the whole of Asia Minor, Persia, Syria/Palaestina and Egypt. Before that, Greek colonisation spread over the coasts of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, with big and powerful colonies in Sicily and even on Italia proper, then of course Cyprus, Massilia (Marseille), Cyrenaika, and many Black Sea towns.

But this whole region only has become hellenised on the surface while Roman soldiers received land as reward upon retirement: with this system (plus cultural colonisation and influence) huge regions of the Roman Empire were latinised.


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## berndf

Emilín said:


> The Romans conquered a territory very much bigger than Greeks. So Roman's language (Latin) avanced more than the language of Helade.
> Is very important to know and study History to understand the phenomena of our Humanity.


This is not quite correct. The population density in the West was very low. The Eastern Empire was in terms of population much bigger and also wealthier than the Western one.


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## Erick404

Thank you for the replies. It's now clearer to me about Greek and Middle East/Eastern Europe, but the question about the lack of Celtic influence on Romance languages remains.



miguel89 said:


> As far as I know, Rome didn't use to enforce the usage of Latin on the territories it (she?) conquered. Romans just let their language's weight do its work. It had prestige, it was used by the higher classes and it was the language of administration, justice, education, religion and trade. In any case, by the first centuries of our era Latin hadn't spread all over the Empire yet (and it never did north of Spain / south of France).
> 
> _(...)_
> 
> Finally, you say that it seems strange to you that languages spoken in places that were previously inhabited by Celtic tribes have a higher percentage of vocabulary of Greek origin that of Celtic origin. You've to keep in mind that most of this vocabulary are cultisms, that is, words introduced in the language by clergymen, philosophers, scientists and writers. There are as well some popular words brought in by the Ancient Greeks themselves through their factories or, more importantly, through the Romans, but their number isn't high.



In fact, I said that Romance languages have more words from Greek origin than of Celtic just as an example, and I agree with what you say about they being mostly cultisms. My point is that almost nothing from the Celtic languages survived on Romance languages, as if all Celts abandoned their original languages and started speaking only Latin, or vulgar Latin, even when the Empire was on decline.


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## Mauricet

It seems the original question has drifted to _Why did Celtic languages leave almost no trace in Romance languages ?_ I guess it might be another thread. But more widely, are there other examples of such a _language shift_ where almost nothing from the original language survived in the newly adopted one ?


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## robbie_SWE

Erick404 said:


> I believe my questions are more about history than etymology itself, but here it goes.
> 
> By far, most of romance languages' vocabulary comes from Latin. This seems reasonable for Italian, which has emerged where Latin (or maybe some variants of it, in places more distant from Rome) was the native language.
> 
> However, I find it quite strange that there isn't almost any influence from Celtic languages in French, Spanish or Portuguese. As far as I know, in Portuguese we have more vocabulary of Greek origin than of Celtic (Sorry if I'm wrong, but I generalise the languages spoken in Gaul and Iberia as Celtic). I know it doesn't happen with Romanian - it has a lot of Slavic vocabulary.
> 
> On the other hand, Greek was a _lingua franca_ on much of Eastern Europe and Middle East for centuries. I've read that in the Byzantine Empire, Greek was much more usual than Latin, and eventually became the official language of the empire. And yet, today Greek is only spoken in Greece, having had no major influence on the languages of this area (I may be terribly wrong here, as I know nothing of these languages, but I've never read that Greek was influential to them).
> 
> PS: I couldn't think of a proper thread title. Moderators, feel free to change it.


 
Just a little note: 
 
Remember that the Slavic tribes came to Romania after the Roman conquest and the Slavic influence started much later. 
 
The Dacian language (spoken by the Dacian tribes who inhabited the area at the time of the Roman conquest) was subdued to a similar fate as the Celtic language. The Dacians accepted the Latin language instead of their own and today very few Dacian words remain in the Romanian language. 
 
I think this is the case in many languages where the people conquered, abandoned their own language for a more dominant one. I personally believe that it has a lot to do with writing. The Dacian language for instance lacked an alphabet and no written documents have been found from that time. If I'm not mistaken, the Celtic language didn't have an alphabet either. 

 robbie


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## wtrmute

The usual reason cited as to why Celtic has disappeared is that, apparently, Continental Celtic dialects (Gaulish, Narbonnic, Celtiberian) were already pretty close to Latin -- so much that Caesar had to send his orders to his legates in Greek, otherwise the Gaulish chiefs could understand them if the messages were intercepted...


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## berndf

wtrmute said:


> The usual reason cited as to why Celtic has disappeared is that, apparently, Continental Celtic dialects (Gaulish, Narbonnic, Celtiberian) were already pretty close to Latin -- so much that Caesar had to send his orders to his legates in Greek, otherwise the Gaulish chiefs could understand them if the messages were intercepted...


Are you sure? As far as I am aware this story is based on a single sentence in Caesar's “Commentarii de bello Gallico” reading "Hanc Graecis conscriptam litteris mittit, ne intercepta epistola nostra ab hostibus consilia cognoscantur" (Book V, chapter 48). This only says that he transcribed the letter in Greek characters and it doesn't say why the Celts should be able to understand the letter should it have been written with normal Latin characters. It could also be (and this seems more plausible to me) that there were too many Celts knowing Latin through direct contact with Romans rather than because Celtic and Latin were mutually intelligible. Caesar also writes that the messenger who carried the letter was a Celtic horseman ("ex equitibus Gallis", "from the Gallic horsemen", loc. cit.). This messenger would certainly be able to convey the letter's contents to the Enemy should he be captured and would he be able to read the letter.
 
Do you know any other sources which might support your understanding?


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## robbie_SWE

wtrmute said:


> The usual reason cited as to why Celtic has disappeared is that, apparently, Continental Celtic dialects (Gaulish, Narbonnic, Celtiberian) were already pretty close to Latin -- so much that Caesar had to send his orders to his legates in Greek, otherwise the Gaulish chiefs could understand them if the messages were intercepted...


 
The same arguments were used about the Dacian language, stating that it was very close to Latin. But I haven't seen any substantial sources and it seems to me that this theory is "an easy way out". 

 robbie


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## wtrmute

berndf said:


> Are you sure? As far as I am aware this story is based on a single sentence in Caesar's “Commentarii de bello Gallico” reading "Hanc Graecis conscriptam litteris mittit, ne intercepta epistola nostra ab hostibus consilia cognoscantur" (Book V, chapter 48). This only says that he transcribed the letter in Greek characters and it doesn't say why the Celts should be able to understand the letter should it have been written with normal Latin characters. It could also be (and this seems more plausible to me) that there were too many Celts knowing Latin through direct contact with Romans rather than because Celtic and Latin were mutually intelligible. Caesar also writes that the messenger who carried the letter was a Celtic horseman ("ex equitibus Gallis", "from the Gallic horsemen", loc. cit.). This messenger would certainly be able to convey the letter's contents to the Enemy should he be captured and would he be able to read the letter.
> 
> Do you know any other sources which might support your understanding?



Truthfully, no; I was just repeating the "party line", as it were.  Although, the little I've been able to find out about Gaulish language _does_ sound a lot like Latin; but maybe I'm just coloured by my own expectations.

On the other hand, the Portuguese language is very much unlike the Old Tupi language which was spoken in Brazil, yet it managed to supplant it almost completely throughout Portuguese America in 250 years or so (the extreme Northwest of the Portuguese Amazon still retains the language, curiously among peoples who didn't originally speak Tupian languages), so it's perfectly possible that Latin's weight as a common language of civilisation and commerce simply pushed the "barbarian" tongues into extinction.  Particularly if the Continental Celtic languages were very fragmented, which might have well been the case...


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## Erick404

wtrmute said:


> On the other hand, the Portuguese language is very much unlike the Old Tupi language which was spoken in Brazil, yet it managed to supplant it almost completely throughout Portuguese America in 250 years or so (the extreme Northwest of the Portuguese Amazon still retains the language, curiously among peoples who didn't originally speak Tupian languages), so it's perfectly possible that Latin's weight as a common language of civilisation and commerce simply pushed the "barbarian" tongues into extinction.  Particularly if the Continental Celtic languages were very fragmented, which might have well been the case...



I don't think this is a good analogy. Most of the early (civilized) Brazilian people were of Portuguese origin. Cities were inhabited mainly by Europeans and their African slaves, not by many indians. 

The Celts didn't live really away from the Romans who came to Gaul and Iberia.


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## Frank06

*Hi,*

*It's an interesting thread and we do think that, with a bit of stretching, the posts about Celtic and Dacian still fall within the range of this thread (after all, Latin spread at the expense of these and other languages).*
*But I hope we can agree that Portuguese and Tupi in Brazil is a bit too off topic, even when used as an analogy. *

*However, in the context of EHL, "off topic" rarely means "not interesting". Otherwise said, 'Portuguese/Tupi/Brazil' would be an interesting thread on its own!*

*Back to Latin and Greek.*

*Groetjes,*

*Frank*
*Moderator*


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## Emilín

Everyday we learn sometihing new about History.I Have read the biogtraphy of Caesar an this biography does not say anithing about the fact that Caesar had to use Greek to comunicate with his legates.
I thanks to my scholar friend for teach me that.


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## Sepia

berndf said:


> Are you sure? As far as I am aware this story is based on a single sentence in Caesar's “Commentarii de bello Gallico” reading "Hanc Graecis conscriptam litteris mittit, ne intercepta epistola nostra ab hostibus consilia cognoscantur" (Book V, chapter 48). This only says that he transcribed the letter in Greek characters and it doesn't say why the Celts should be able to understand the letter should it have been written with normal Latin characters. It could also be (and this seems more plausible to me) that there were too many Celts knowing Latin through direct contact with Romans rather than because Celtic and Latin were mutually intelligible. Caesar also writes that the messenger who carried the letter was a Celtic horseman ("ex equitibus Gallis", "from the Gallic horsemen", loc. cit.). This messenger would certainly be able to convey the letter's contents to the Enemy should he be captured and would he be able to read the letter.
> 
> Do you know any other sources which might support your understanding?


 

Could also be that a lot of Celts were killed or captured as slaves - wasn't it somewhere around 3 Millions in total. Whoever was left would primarily have been people who didn't resist the Romans, or even cooperated with them, made business with them adopted their life style etc.?

Just like we have seen it in a lot of other cases that some language spreads mainly among the people in the cities who do business. Like High German, English ... 

I mean, it is obvious that in vast areas that were mainly populated by Celts to Caecar's days, are not mainly populated by people that mainly have Celtic ancestors. 

And who did the Greek go and kill to steal their land? I can't say they did not do any such thing at all, but I don't think we are talking about Millions. At least I haven't noticed anything in the Ethnic landscape of Europe that makes me think they did.

And later, as Latin was spread together with Christianity ... the Russians also noticed they could use religion as a political tool, but they stuck to their own language when doing so. Otherwise that could been a way for Greek to gain more influence.


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## federicoft

Erick404 said:


> By far, most of romance languages' vocabulary comes from Latin. This seems reasonable for Italian, which has emerged where Latin (or maybe some variants of it, in places more distant from Rome) was the native language.



Just a brief comment: Latin was the native language just of Latium, a small area of Central Italy centered around Rome. It was imposed over the rest of the Peninsula in a way which isn't different at all from the way it was imposed over other parts of the Empire, replacing the pre-existing languages (including Celtic languages), many of whom were just remotely related to it, or even not related at all (as in the case of Etruscan).


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## Miguel Antonio

Erick404 said:


> However, I find it quite strange that there isn't almost any influence from Celtic languages in French, Spanish or Portuguese. As far as I know, in Portuguese we have more vocabulary of Greek origin than of Celtic (Sorry if I'm wrong, but I generalise the languages spoken in Gaul and Iberia as Celtic).


Well, please bear in mind that Basque is not a Celtic language, it survived the Celts and the Romans, and has spread its influence into Spanish and other Iberian languages of today.

Besides, the Celtic component has always been somewhat overstated in the history of Iberia, to the detriment of other cultures and languages that were probably thriving there, one such being the Jewish community expelled from the land between 1492 and 1497. According to this author: http://www.google.pt/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&ved=0CBEQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpt.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMois%25C3%25A9s_Esp%25C3%25ADrito_Santo&rct=j&q=moises+espirito+santo&ei=_YXqSsqiBoKUjAfTuL2qDQ&usg=AFQjCNEzOqUKsQyUrCkGbj6YKdFSHDRiNA , many place-names across Galicia and Portugal have their roots in ancient Hebrew, from Levantine settlers who arrived more than a thousand years before the Celts.

And why did Latin spread so much? I think the Church had a lot to do with it.


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## shawnee

On the question of the influences of Greek and Latin I submit the following:

Kahane, H & R. “ The Western Impact on Byzantium.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Vol 36, 1982 pp 127 – 153 passim; Latin was introduced into the Greek world on the establishment of New Rome 330AD. As the city became increasingly populated by people from the Greek speaking east, Latin began to recede from the 5th c. By AD 450 Latin ceased to be a language of daily use in the emperor’s entourage. By the time of Heraclitus (610 – 41) it was a dead language in the Εast.
In addition:
The linguistic consequences of Mehmet the conqueror's entry into Constantinople 1453 were that Greek having no influence in the west ceased also to influence the East. However, its status as a cultural language already established in ancient Rome, was elevated so that it became one of the influences of the Renaissance. But that is probably another story.


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## Arabus

Erick404 said:


> On the other hand, Greek was a _lingua franca_ on much of Eastern Europe and Middle East for centuries. I've read that in the Byzantine Empire, Greek was much more usual than Latin, and eventually became the official language of the empire. And yet, today Greek is only spoken in Greece, having had no major influence on the languages of this area (I may be terribly wrong here, as I know nothing of these languages, but I've never read that Greek was influential to them).



There are so many words of Greek origin in Middle Eastern languages that survive from the Hellenistic era, and many of them are basic everyday words. Just to mention an example, the names of the two primary Arabic and Islamic coins, the dinar and the dirham, come straight from Greek denarion and drachme.

The Greek influence on Arabic in Middle Ages was still big, with all the Byzantine books being translated into Arabic.


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## shawnee

I'm sorry, I did not mean to overlook the importance of the survival of Greek thought in Arabic learning and its spread from there to the west, but I regard this influence as a scholastic influence as opposed to say the Latin origins of living languages like French or Spanish.


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## berndf

Arabus said:


> There are so many words of Greek origin... *dinar*.


This is a Latin word: _Denarius_, was coin of ten _Asses_. But it entered Arabic probably via Greek.


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## robbie_SWE

shawnee said:


> On the question of the influences of Greek and Latin I submit the following:
> 
> Kahane, H & R. “ The Western Impact on Byzantium.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Vol 36, 1982 pp 127 – 153 passim; Latin was introduced into the Greek world on the establishment of New Rome 330AD. As the city became increasingly populated by people from the Greek speaking east, Latin began to recede from the 5th c. By AD 450 Latin ceased to be a language of daily use in the emperor’s entourage. By the time of Heraclitus (610 – 41) it was a dead language in the Εast.
> In addition:
> The linguistic consequences of Mehmet the conqueror's entry into Constantinople 1453 were that Greek having no influence in the west ceased also to influence the East. However, its status as a cultural language already established in ancient Rome, was elevated so that it became one of the influences of the Renaissance. But that is probably another story.


 
I'm not questioning you source, but I personally have a hard time believing that Latin died in the East considering the presence of Eastern Romance languages. Surely a dead language could not give birth to new ones? 
 robbie


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## berndf

robbie_SWE said:


> I'm not questioning you source, but I personally have a hard time believing that Latin died in the East considering the presence of Eastern Romance languages.


Which Eastern Romance languages? I know only Rumanian. But Dacia was never part of the Eastern Empire. Latin was introduced as the language of the Imperial Court for a relatively short period of time but it was never the language of general communication in the East. Not even before the Empire split.


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## Emilín

berndf said:


> Which Eastern Romance languages? I know only Rumanian. But Dacia was never part of the Eastern Empire. Latin was introduced as the language of the Imperial Court for a relatively short period of time but it was never the language of general communication in the East. Not even before the Empire split.


 
I think that the Latin language died in the Est of Europe when it was transformed into the languages of this place, like Romanian, for instance.
Romanian was not yet Latin, "Capicci"?


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## robbie_SWE

berndf said:


> Which Eastern Romance languages? I know only Rumanian. But Dacia was never part of the Eastern Empire. Latin was introduced as the language of the Imperial Court for a relatively short period of time but it was never the language of general communication in the East. Not even before the Empire split.


 
Besides Romanian (Daco-Romanian) there is Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian. 

Dacia was under Roman rule for approximately 2-3 centurys and after that the most eastern part of Dacia became a part of the Byzantine Empire. 

The Roman colonisation was very extensive and the Dacians accepted the new language. The language of administration in Dacia at the time was Latin and the people spoke a variant of Vulgar Latin imposed by the Romans which developed into Proto-Romanian. 

 robbie


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## berndf

robbie_SWE said:


> Besides Romanian (Daco-Romanian) there is Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian.


The Byzantine possession in the Western Balkans were certainly economically important to the empire but the cultural centre was the Aegean region and Asia Minor. And there Latin didn't die, it never was there. Latin as a court language was an artificial one for the region and died with the ambitions of Justinian to resurrect the whole Empire. 



robbie_SWE said:


> ...and after that the most eastern part of Dacia became a part of the Byzantine Empire.


Only the tiny province of Scytia Minor. The rest of Dacia stayed with the Western Empire until the Romans lost it altogether.


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## Emilín

berndf said:


> The Byzantine possession in the Western Balkans were certainly economically important to the empire but the cultural centre was the Aegean region and Asia Minor. And there Latin didn't die, it never was there. Latin as a court language was an artificial one for the region and died with the ambitions of Justinian to resurrect the whole Empire.
> Only the tiny province of Scytia Minor. The rest of Dacia stayed with the Western Empire until the Romans lost it altogether.


 
That's right. We learn not only Linguistic, but History too


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## Montesacro

Miguel Antonio said:


> Besides, the Celtic component has always been somewhat overstated in the history of Iberia, to the detriment of other cultures and languages that were probably thriving there, one such being the Jewish community expelled from the land between 1492 and 1497. According to this author: http://www.google.pt/url?sa=t&sourc...uL2qDQ&usg=AFQjCNEzOqUKsQyUrCkGbj6YKdFSHDRiNA , many place-names across Galicia and Portugal have their roots in ancient Hebrew, from Levantine settlers who arrived more than a thousand years before the Celts.


 
I wouldn’t give much credit to that author.
Here’s a brief excerpt from the wiki page you linked to:

_(...) deve-se a Moisés Espírito Santo, o enquadramento étnico das populações do território português nas Culturas do Mediterrâneo, em conjunturas e processos socio-culturais milenares, na sequência da advertência geográfica feita, por exemplo, por Orlando Ribeiro, *e a demonstração científica de que grande parte da **Língua Portuguesa** deriva do **Hebraico** e das várias cambiantes do Fenício/Púnico* (...), facto que começou a ser sistematizado a partir dos estudos de terreno dos fenómenos religiosos e de toponímia, influenciado pela primeira investigação que se fez sobre o assunto: a do Cardeal Saraiva que se tinha apercebido no século XIX, (...), *que grande parte da Língua Portuguesa deriva do Púnico e do* *Hebraico**.*_



And of course the trading colonies along the coasts of Iberia (Lisbon, Cadiz, Malaga, Cartagena, etc.) were founded by Phoenicians, and not by Hebrews. 




Miguel Antonio said:


> And why did Latin spread so much? I think the Church had a lot to do with it.


 
Latin spread over Europe well before the Church became a most powerful influential entity.


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## sokol

Montesacro said:


> Latin spread over Europe well before the Church became a most powerful influential entity.


Very much true.
The Roman Catholic Church did not have a part in romanising Gaul and Hispania; the Church was important (very important indeed) for maintaining a Latin culture throughout the Middle Ages even in regions which never were romanised or which were Germanised/Slavicised during the early Middle Ages, but it didn't help building the Romance cultures of our modern times, those already existed when the Church rose.


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## shawnee

robbie_SWE said:


> I'm not questioning you source, but I personally have a hard time believing that Latin died in the East considering the presence of Eastern Romance languages. Surely a dead language could not give birth to new ones?
> robbie



Good point. I'm not sure what exactly the Kahane's meant by 'Εast,' its a while since I used that citation in another context. Also the notion of the 'east' was/is such a shifting concept. Edward Said's 'Orientalism' being seminal on the subject. I accept that in Romanian, Latin was not a dead language in the 'east.'

My understanding of the the influence of Latin on Aroumanian was a result of the use of Balkan border guards along the Ignatian way. I'm not sure if this is correct. There is also the subject of the Latin influence on Greek during Byzantine era and subsequent influences in the late middle ages from Aroumanian or Vlach (Wallachian) and during the Early Modern period, Venetian.


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## berndf

Montesacro said:


> And of course the trading colonies along the coasts of Iberia (Lisbon, Cadiz, Malaga, Cartagena, etc.) were founded by Phoenicians, and not by Hebrews.


Linguistically, this by and large the same thing. No greater difference than, say, Doric and Ionic Greek. Some people use _Hebrews _and _Canaanites _interchangeably.


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## ireney

I am desperately trying to find a way to phrase that in the East, there were "established" languages and cultures and populations and alphabets and all that, unlike their western counterparts, did not go through any major shifts (not while Greek was still the lingua franca anyway) but I can't seem to find a way to do it without seeming to be looking down my nose in the very old, "established" languages and cultures of the West. I really don't mean that i.e. the Celtic culture and languages are in any way inferior to let's say Egyptian or Persian or Arabic but the situation was different wouldn't you say? Apart from all the other reasons obviously.

I sincerely hope that makes some sense.


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## berndf

ireney said:


> I am desperately trying to find a way to phrase that in the East, there were "established" languages and cultures and populations and alphabets and all that, unlike their western counterparts, did not go into any major shifts (not while Greek was still the lingua franca anyway) but I can't seem to find a way to do it without seeming to be looking down my nose in the very old, "established" languages and cultures of the West. I really don't mean that i.e. the Celtic culture and languages are in any way inferior to let's say Egyptian or Persian or Arabic but the situation was different wouldn't you say? Apart from all the other reasons obviously.
> 
> I sincerely hope that makes some sense.


I think it does very much so. And don't worry to might sound highbrowed. The East certainly had the richer cultural heritage, was richer and more densely populated. In the civilizations of the time the Romans were the "nouveaux riches" and also the Romans themselves felt that way. And all well educated Romans of rank spoke fluently Greek as a matter of course. But also the Greek culture was relatively young. When the Greek civilization reemerged from its dark ages the pyramids were already close to 2000 years old and the Greek had to relearn reading and writing from the Phoenicians.


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## Sepia

ireney said:


> I am desperately trying to find a way to phrase that in the East, there were "established" languages and cultures and populations and alphabets and all that, unlike their western counterparts, did not go through any major shifts (not while Greek was still the lingua franca anyway) but I can't seem to find a way to do it without seeming to be looking down my nose in the very old, "established" languages and cultures of the West. I really don't mean that i.e. the Celtic culture and languages are in any way inferior to let's say Egyptian or Persian or Arabic but the situation was different wouldn't you say? Apart from all the other reasons obviously.
> 
> I sincerely hope that makes some sense.


 
You are right, Celtic culture was very highly developed, but the problem is that they did not write much - is said to be against their religion, although I cannot believe they did not use writing for certain practical purposes like book-keeping. However, when basics of the culture like religion, history, "magic" (which also includes very un-magical stuff like herbal medicine) is based on oral information a conqueror only has to kill the right people and there goes the culture down the drain. Much easier than burning books.


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## mataripis

origumi said:


> Greek (Hellenistic / Koine) was the government language in huge areas since the days of Alexander: today's Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Afganistan, and more. It lasted hundreds of years.


i read in some books that the greek communities in Egypt were invaded by islam and forced the greek speaking people to use arab and converted to islam beliefs.


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## Angelo di fuoco

robbie_SWE said:


> Besides Romanian (Daco-Romanian) there is Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian.


There was also Dalmatian, which is extinct since 1898.


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## erased

A latin poet wrote  





> Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio (Horace, Epist.. Il, 1, 156)


  The Greece, conquered by the Romans, conquered (culturally) the ferocious winner,and brought the arts in raw Lazio.  So, are we so sure that Latin spread so much and Greek didn't?


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## terredepomme

Don't forget that Latin owes a lot of its developpment to classical Greek, namely its grammar. So in a sense one may say that Greek did spread.


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## Hulalessar

The question is being considered from a 21st century point of view. I strongly suspect that 2000 years ago people did not associate language with their collective identity (whatever form that might have taken back then) quite as strongly as some people do today, but regarded language as no more than a means of communication - which is of course what it essentially is. Indeed, we may note with an ironic smile that the liberal and conservative positions have been reversed over the last century or so.

Following independence from Spain, the leaders in South America, influenced by the ideals and practices of the French Revolution, set about encouraging the use of Spanish which at the time was spoken only by a minority, albeit a significant one. It was felt that the inability of the "native" population to communicate with the centres of government put them at a disadvantage. This contrasted with the stance of the Church who were interested in controlling their flocks by keeping outside influence to a minimum. It is on record that the Church in South America petitioned the King of Spain for funds to study the indigenous languages.

The idea that language and "nationality" are intimately connected is only of quite recent origin. As recently as the early part of the 20th century Miguel de Unamuno, who was born in Bilbao and took a keen interest in the Basque language, was of the opinion that Basque ought not be employed in public administration. If we look at Spain today we can assert with at least some justification that where the call for independence is strongest it is predicated on nothing more than language. In contrast, in Andalucía, which is surely more different in its culture from the other regions of Spain than they are from each other, the call for independence is almost negligible. The Partido Andalucista has no seats in the Andalusian Parliament, the Congress of Deputies, the Senate or the European Parliament.

It seems that the people of Gaul and elsewhere, once they had accepted Roman rule, were as willing to take up Latin as they were to take up everything everything else that Roman civilisation offered. One ancient commentator, I forget who, observed that the people of Gaul spoke better Latin than the majority of the population of Rome.


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## apmoy70

^^^
No, I'm afraid that is not entirely true. The Greek historian Herodotus, already in the 5th c BCE (that's roughly 25 hundred centuries ago) attests that a nation is defined by the four principles of «ὅμαιμον» ('hŏmǣmŏn; same blood), *«ὁμόγλωσσον»* (hŏ'mŏglōssŏn; same language), «ὁμόθρησκον» (hŏ'mŏtʰrēskŏn; same religion) and «ὁμότροπον» (hŏ'mŏtrŏpŏn; same customs). So, in the western mindset (at least), language played an enormous role in defining a collective identity (nation)


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## Hulalessar

apmoy70 said:


> ^^^
> No, I'm afraid that is not entirely true. The Greek historian Herodotus, already in the 5th c BCE (that's roughly 25 hundred centuries ago) attests that a nation is defined by the four principles of «ὅμαιμον» ('hŏmǣmŏn; same blood), *«ὁμόγλωσσον»* (hŏ'mŏglōssŏn; same language), «ὁμόθρησκον» (hŏ'mŏtʰrēskŏn; same religion) and «ὁμότροπον» (hŏ'mŏtrŏpŏn; same customs). So, in the western mindset (at least), language played an enormous role in defining a collective identity (nation)



That may have been what Herodotus thought, but is it what the Gauls thought? I suspect Herodotus thought a lot of things the Gauls did not think.


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## apmoy70

Hulalessar said:


> That may have been what Herodotus thought, but is it what the Gauls thought? I suspect Herodotus thought a lot of things the Gauls did not think.


I commented on your phrase _"I strongly suspect that 2000 years ago people did not associate language with their collective identity"
_Well, 2,500 years ago, Herodotus (and the Greeks) did.


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## Frank06

Sepia said:


> Could also be that a lot of Celts were killed or captured as slaves - wasn't it somewhere around 3 Millions in total.


Quite interesting figure (but in which period and where). Do you have a reference for this? 3 million possible tax payers strikes me as a lot.

F


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## WyomingSue

Two points that I used to bring up in my high school history classes:
1)  The cyrillic alphabet of Eastern Europe was based on the Greek alphabet--so in that sense one can say that Greek had an influence on writing (not the languages themselves) from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean.
2)  The Orthodox churches, spreading out of Constantinople/Byzantium, deliberately used the vernacular languages in the church services, so there would have been less daily impact of Greek.  The Roman Catholic Church used Latin in the church services, so Latin would have had more impact on the local language.


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## XiaoRoel

Hulalessar said:


> The question is being considered from a 21st century point of view. I strongly suspect that 2000 years ago people did not associate language with their collective identity (whatever form that might have taken back then) quite as strongly as some people do today, but regarded language as no more than a means of communication - which is of course what it essentially is. Indeed, we may note with an ironic smile that the liberal and conservative positions have been reversed over the last century or so.
> 
> Following independence from Spain, the leaders in South America, influenced by the ideals and practices of the French Revolution, set about encouraging the use of Spanish which at the time was spoken only by a minority, albeit a significant one. It was felt that the inability of the "native" population to communicate with the centres of government put them at a disadvantage. This contrasted with the stance of the Church who were interested in controlling their flocks by keeping outside influence to a minimum. It is on record that the Church in South America petitioned the King of Spain for funds to study the indigenous languages.
> 
> The idea that language and "nationality" are intimately connected is only of quite recent origin. As recently as the early part of the 20th century Miguel de Unamuno, who was born in Bilbao and took a keen interest in the Basque language, was of the opinion that Basque ought not be employed in public administration. If we look at Spain today we can assert with at least some justification that where the call for independence is strongest it is predicated on nothing more than language. In contrast, in Andalucía, which is surely more different in its culture from the other regions of Spain than they are from each other, the call for independence is almost negligible. The Partido Andalucista has no seats in the Andalusian Parliament, the Congress of Deputies, the Senate or the European Parliament.
> 
> It seems that the people of Gaul and elsewhere, once they had accepted Roman rule, were as willing to take up Latin as they were to take up everything everything else that Roman civilisation offered. One ancient commentator, I forget who, observed that the people of Gaul spoke better Latin than the majority of the population of Rome.


Todo esto demuestra un desconocimiento real de las implicaciones sociológicas de las lenguas hispanas como vehículos de la nacionalidad ya desde la Edad Media. No es algo moderno surgido como de la nada en la mente de algunos separatistas. En cuanto a la mayor o menor diferencia de los andaluces con respecto a lo español, he de decir que desde Galicia, nación distinta desde el s. V y con una larga tradición cultural céltica en proceso de fusión con lo latino todavía en s. IV, lo andaluz es algo *español*, como lo extremeño, lo murciano, lo riojano, lo aragonés, lo leonés, lo asturiano, lo castellano o lo santanderino. Pero las naciones vasca, gallega o catalana, tienen otra tradición cultural no española, influencias culturales diferentes a la española y muy relacionads con la situación marítima de estas tres naciones. Y el eje de lo nacional es la lengua, mantenida contra viento y marea, frente a la expansión del español. 
Por cierto, la opinión de Unamuno es una "unamunada", sin ninguna base. En la península ibérica se cumple el postulado romántico, un pueblo, una lengua, un territorio. Guste o no es la realidad de las cosas en la península. Estas características nacionales en Galicia y Euscadi se hunde en la prehistoria más profunda, allá por el paleolítico inferior. En eñ caso de Cataluña es fundamental el entorno altomedieval carolingio para entender sus raíces, tan diferentes de lo español.
Escribo en español para no insultaros con una traducción automática.


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## rayloom

WyomingSue said:


> Two points that I used to bring up in my high school history classes:
> 1)  The cyrillic alphabet of Eastern Europe was based on the Greek alphabet--so in that sense one can say that Greek had an influence on writing (not the languages themselves) from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean.



The Greek alphabet also gave rise to the Latin alphabet (right?). So when it comes to "influence on writing", you can say it spans the globe.


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## Hulalessar

XiaoRoel said:


> Todo esto demuestra  etc



I offer no opinion as to whether maintaining the integrity of the Spanish state is good or bad.


The history of the Iberian Peninsular since the fall of the Roman Empire is complex. It reflects shifting alliances and hegemonies that, at least for the moment, have crystallised into three sovereign states and Gibraltar.To suggest that any one part has in some significant way a history different from any other part that justifies wholly or partly that part breaking away from any existing sovereign state is to view the past from the perspective of the present and make the history fit the separatist agenda. I am not saying there is any falsification of history, just that the history is selective. Aragón has just as much claim to be a separate “nation” as does Galicia. To suggest that Aragón has some sort of  “Spanish essence” it shares with, say, Extremadura, but not with Galicia is to apply the centrist argument, surely something a separatist ought not be doing. All that has happened is that Aragonese has failed to make it into the 21st century in the same way that Galician has.


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## Scholiast

Greetings all.

This is indeed a fascinating thread, which I have been following with keen interest and a little bemusement.

If I may, I'd like to fling in a couple of points.

First,  the celts' (of northern and western Europe) was only in the most  limited sense a _literate_ culture. Druids, according to Caesar and  Tacitus, kept notes and spells (in Greek characters, interestingly) in  writing, but discouraged "commoners" from learning to read and write.  Any western subject of the Roman empire who learned literacy at all  would therefore do so in Latin. On the other hand in the "Greek" East there was  already a multiplicity of scripts, as well as languages, before the 4th-century BC conquests of  Alexander.

Secondly, Greek _koiné_ did indeed become everyone's second language in the middle east, when dealing with officialdom. Numerous Greek loan-words therefore passed insensibly into the argot of other tongues, stamping themselves conspicuously on (for example) Syriac, Coptic and even Arabic - just as in modern English "pyjamas" or "jodhpurs" have come in from Hindi.

Thirdly, how can we know that lexical items, phonological patterns or indeed grammatical  structures, of celtic origin, have not passed into modern Romance? (A  simple example is the characteristic Spanish θ- sound, wholly alien to  Latin.) _raeda_ is after all originally a celtic word [related to Germ. _Rad_?).

I have gone on long enough. What think ye?


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## koniecswiata

I read in a book (History of the Word by Ostler) some examples showing that the Celtic languages of Gaul were sufficiently similar to Latin (similar declensions and some vocabulary) that it was not a terribly big hurdle going from one to the other.  Of course, Latin's prestige factor was probably much bigger as people are quite able to switch languages within a few generations--these things don't usually happen from one day to the next.  This process is happening as we speak--small indigenous communities switching to bigger regional or national languages (English, Spanish, Indonesian, Russian, various African ones, etc...).  It also happened over a 300-year process (late 1200s to late 1500s) with the speaker of Old Prussian who became German speakers in the northern parts of East Prussia and Polish speakers in the southern parts (Mazuria).


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## إسكندراني

mataripis said:


> i read in some books that the greek communities in Egypt were invaded by islam and forced the greek speaking people to use arab and converted to islam beliefs.


Egypt remained majority christian several hundred years into Arab rule and 10% are still coptic.


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## mataripis

Latin influenced so much but became extinct language, Greek (Katharevusa) became the terminologies in Scientific words and names but did not become the official language in Greece, but it's Koine form plus addition of katharevusa words become the known language in present day Greece.The general rule for every language is not to set aside other language, other wise its existence as an original language will not persist.


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## Perseas

mataripis said:


> Latin influenced so much but became extinct language, Greek (Katharevusa) became the terminologies in Scientific words and names but did not become the official language in Greece, but it's Koine form plus addition of katharevusa words become the known language in present day Greece.The general rule for every language is not to set aside other language, other wise its existence as an original language will not persist.



Modern Greek descended from Ancient Greek and the Romance languages descended from Latin. This thing is called evolution and I don't find something strange here, if I have got your point. Evolution applies to other languages as well, for instance the Modern English and Modern German. Both languages descended from older forms of the Germanic group.  
Something else: Modern Greek is closer to Hellenistic or Alexandrian Koine (which descended from Attic Greek mainly)  than to older forms of Greek (Attic for instance), but Modern Greek is even closer to the language spoken in 1100 AD or 1600 AD by Greek speakers.


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## mataripis

Then the Greek language is prevailing and the Latin evolved as the languages in Many European countries.


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## berndf

mataripis said:


> Then the Greek language is prevailing and the Latin evolved as the languages in Many European countries.


Greek evolved and Latin evolved. Same thing. That Ancient and Modern Greek are both called "Greek" while the successors to Latin are called something different (Italian, French, Spanish, ...) doesn't matter. It is purely a matter of labels.


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## mugibil

berndf said:


> Originally Posted by Montesacro
> And of course the trading colonies along the coasts of Iberia (Lisbon, Cadiz, Malaga, Cartagena, etc.) were founded by Phoenicians, and not by Hebrews.
> 
> Linguistically, this by and large the same thing. No greater difference than, say, Doric and Ionic Greek. Some people use _Hebrews _and _Canaanites _interchangeably.



Err, no. It's true that Hebrew as a language can be called, linguistically, a variety of Canaanite, but that doesn't mean that, conversely, every Canaanite dialect is also Hebraic, and it is definitely not normal to call the Canaanites that settled the Western Mediterranean "Hebrews", or to say, as the cited source did, that "grande parte da Língua Portuguesa deriva do Hebraico".


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## berndf

mungu said:


> ...but that doesn't mean that, conversely, every Canaanite dialect is also Hebraic...


Accepted.


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## ampurdan

Scholiast said:


> (A  simple example is the characteristic Spanish θ- sound, wholly alien to  Latin.)



As far as I know, it is not more alien to Latin as it is to Medieval Spanish or American Spanish for that matter. The phoneme seems to have developed in Northern Spain later on, which I'd say precludes a direct Celtic origin. 

Anyway, and now I'm displaying all my ignorance about this old language or the people who spoke it, was there really *a* Celtic language as we would understand it today? Their communities were very autonomous, right? They might unite to war against a common enemy, like Caesar for instance, much like the Greeks united against the Persians, but other than that, they might have not done many things together, right? Lacking not only a common language, but a written one -like others have said-, which by the way might not be much of a coincidence, wasn't it to expected that they found it much convenient to adopt a much unified and widespread language, such as Latin, without keeping any of the old Celtic words, which might have not been understood even by the neighboring Celts? In Spain, lots of different tribes of Iberians, Celts and Celtiberians had villages over overlapping territories, to what extent any of the words they used could be understood by another tribe? 

Considering this, I don't find that surprising that not much of any language spoken before Latin in the Western Empire has made it into Romances, while these are rich in words of languages with a written tradition and some sort of central administration or a centralized army -like the Arabs or the Visigoths in Spain, I don't know about the Franks in France or the Slavs in Romania.



> The question is being considered from a 21st century point of view. I  strongly suspect that 2000 years ago people did not associate language  with their collective identity (whatever form that might have taken back  then) quite as strongly as some people do today, but regarded language  as no more than a means of communication -



That must be quite true for people from a culture where no one reads or writes and all knowledge is passed on orally. Tribal identity must be based on myths, I guess, which evolve and change shape and contents from generation to generation.

However, as soon a human being can see his or her language written in letters, he actually has a thing, a new totem for the tribe. The "companion of the empire", as the 15th century humanist and most celebrated Spanish Grammarian defined "language" to Queen Isabella the Catholic, has been conceived.


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