Why Latin Died Out?

[Q Valerius Scerio]

A "language" is simply a dialect with an army!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of all places, I'd expect that ignorant excuse for a generalization to NOT occur here! I think I'll shoot the next person who uses that!!!!!

Edited February 3, 2006 by Q Valerius Scerio

[M. Porcius Cato]

A "language" is simply a dialect with an army!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of all places, I'd expect that ignorant excuse for a generalization to NOT occur here! I think I'll shoot the next person who uses that!!!!!

 

OK, calm down and explain why you think this generalization is incorrect.

[Q Valerius Scerio]

Are you serious? What army does Latin have? Where are Latin's nukes? The "generalization" betrays a total ignorance of linguistics.

Edited February 3, 2006 by Q Valerius Scerio

[Q Valerius Scerio]

BTW - what did happen to the previous topic? I distinctly remember writing in it, but it's not here anymore?

[Virgil61]

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

 

I think it's commonly accepted among linguists that Italian is the closest to latin in general, somewhere I've read that it has the highest percentage of latin roots of any Romance language. I've also seen the argument on the 'net that Romanian is grammatically closer. The original home of the language in Latium now located in the Lazio region provinces of Roma and Latina.

 

Looking at Italian, with my admittedly moderate skill level, and Latin they seem to have the same relationship as Old English just after the Normans and contemporary English. In fact the English model may be instructive, no one doubts the evolution between modern British English and earlier versions of English but apparently there are words used in the American Southern dialect--most whites there were descendents from English/Scots-Irish stock--that keep certain words from that era where the Brits have long ago dropped them from use. In the same sense remember seeing a few words from Spanish, French and Portugese that were descendent from Latin but were replaced in Italian.

[Q Valerius Scerio]

Looking at Italian, with my admittedly moderate skill level, and Latin they seem to have the same relationship as Old English just after the Normans and contemporary English.

To put it into perspective - just by learning Latin I was able to read a little bit of Italian. Italian is the closest (the Romanian thing is utter BS), followed by Catalan, Spanish, then Portuguese. The rest diverge severely from there.

Edited February 3, 2006 by Q Valerius Scerio

[Andrew Dalby]

Are you serious? What army does Latin have? Where are Latin's nukes? The "generalization" betrays a total ignorance of linguistics.

 

No, Scerio, I would say Latin is excellent evidence for the generalisation (a language is a dialect with an army). Latin began as the sub-dialect spoken in small-town Rome of the dialect of Italic that was spoken in Latium. It crowned its career as the language of the whole western Roman Empire. How did it do that? You can't deny the Roman army had a hand in it!

 

 

Looking at Italian, with my admittedly moderate skill level, and Latin they seem to have the same relationship as Old English just after the Normans and contemporary English.

To put it into perspective - just by learning Latin I was able to read a little bit of Italian. Italian is the closest (the Romanian thing is utter BS), followed by Catalan, Spanish, then Portuguese. The rest diverge severely from there.

 

The Romanian thing has something going for it. You do find Latin words that survive in Romanian only, and Romanian noun declension and verb conjugation have lots of comforting reminiscences of Latin. Admittedly, there are also many Slavic and Balkan words in Romanian, so lots of extra vocab to learn.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Are you serious? What army does Latin have? Where are Latin's nukes? The "generalization" betrays a total ignorance of linguistics.

 

Funny, I heard the generalizaiton from three different professors of linguistics. Latin obviously had an enormous army.

Edited February 3, 2006 by M. Porcius Cato

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

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

 

I think it's commonly accepted among linguists that Italian is the closest to latin in general, somewhere I've read that it has the highest percentage of latin roots of any Romance language. I've also seen the argument on the 'net that Romanian is grammatically closer. The original home of the language in Latium now located in the Lazio region provinces of Roma and Latina.

 

Looking at Italian, with my admittedly moderate skill level, and Latin they seem to have the same relationship as Old English just after the Normans and contemporary English. In fact the English model may be instructive, no one doubts the evolution between modern British English and earlier versions of English but apparently there are words used in the American Southern dialect--most whites there were descendents from English/Scots-Irish stock--that keep certain words from that era where the Brits have long ago dropped them from use. In the same sense remember seeing a few words from Spanish, French and Portugese that were descendent from Latin but were replaced in Italian.

 

 

I often tell my students that Modern Italian is closer in many ways to the Latin spoken in Rome 2000 years ago than Modern English is to the English spoken in London only 1000 years ago. It's like the Boss said:

 

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact

But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

[Caius Maxentius]

I agree that Latin can't be said to have died out, but in terms of "when" the Italian vernacular became significantly divergent from the written forms of Latin (that of scholars and the church), I've read that the seventh century was the time when this divergence really accelerated.

 

Following the 6th-century wars between the Goths and the Byzantines, and later the Lombards, Italy's urban infrastructure was so badly damaged, most of the cities withered, and literacy became increasingly uncommon. Writing does much to standardize a language, and without much literacy, regional vernacular dialects tend to evolve more quickly. There are inscriptions from northern Italy dating from the 9th century that speak of an Italian vernacular as being distinct from Latin. That's what I've read, anyway.

[Q Valerius Scerio]

Are you serious? What army does Latin have? Where are Latin's nukes? The "generalization" betrays a total ignorance of linguistics.

 

Funny, I heard the generalizaiton from three different professors of linguistics. Latin obviously had an enormous army.

Not in any truth you didn't. Else I'd stay far away from your school. Furthermore - where is Latin's army now? Does the language cease to be since it lost its army? What were the Gauls speaking before they gathered their army? China has several different languages within its border, yet only Mandarin can be thought of as having a language. Is Tibetan a language since they don't have an army?

 

Yeah. Real scientific, huh?

[Ursus]

What I fear most is that an army of fanatical Trekkies will take over and force us all to speak Klingon.

 

 

But first they might have to contend with legions of Elvish speaking Tolkien fans ....

[Lucius Calpurnius Capitolinus]

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

 

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

[Q Valerius Scerio]

Sure, but to affirm that it is the only way to distinct a language from a dialect is utterly absurd. To this day, there are some "languages" which still should be considered dialects, and dialects with amries that aren't considered separate languages. American English and British English are dialects of each other, not separate languages, though each have their own "army". Then again, what is American English?

[M. Porcius Cato]

where is Latin's army now?

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

 

China has several different languages within its border, yet only Mandarin can be thought of as having a language.

 

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