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Ok, I know I'm taking the easy road here but according to Wikipedia, Neapolitan, like other Romance languages, has partly evolved from vulgar Latin but also has a pre-Latin Oscan influence. An example is the pronunciation of the group of consonants "nd" (of Latin) as "nn" (e.g.- "munno" (world, compare to Italian "mondo"). In addition, Neapolitan also seems to have been affected by Greek. Unfortunately, no examples are provided in Wikipedia.

 

Interestingly, Griko (or Grico) is a modern Greek dialect which is still spoken in the region in Southern Italy which roughly corresponds to the ancient Magna Graecia. So I think it is fair to say that Greek has had a strong influence on most dialects spoken in this part of Italy even if most are nowadays predominatly Romance languages. Probably, as with all major Romance languages today, the most obvious traces of Greek are to be found in their lexicon (as docoflove already suggested).

 

There are other interesting websites (some of them only in Italian) which touch on the subject:

 

Vierb Vulant

 

OmniglotNapulitano

 

Napoletanita

Edited by Aurelia
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Aurelia: I wouldn't use the Wikipedia information, mostly because, well, it's a start, but it will lead you down the wrong path on this topic.

 

I lifted this directly from the Wikipedia entrance: "Standard Italian and Neapolitan are generally mutually comprehensible, though with notable grammatical differences such as nouns in the neuter form and unique plural formation."

 

Neopolitan, then, is not a language by the linguistic definition. In order for two speeches to be of different languages, there must be mutually unintelligible. I'm not saying there can't be some ability of understanding--we've talked about it in this thread and others where Spanish and Italian speakers, Portuguese and Spanish speakers, etc., can understand some of what the other is saying, but the differences in the grammar between these speeches is quite enough to constitute separate languages.

 

The other problem that comes in (and I think this has been brought up before): often Italian linguists will term the various dialetti as different languages...there is a blurring of the linguistic definitions of 'language' and 'dialect'.

 

Now I want to go through Rohlfs again (Silentium...if you're reading this, do you have a copy at hand?), but I would say that 'Neopolitan' is much like 'Genovese' or 'Milanese' that I grew up around--I'm sure they have elements of Celtic in the substratum, but they're both truly dialects of Italian and not separate languages.

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Kosmo: According to Elcock (p. 198), lapis does survive in:

Italian: lapide 'gravestone, tombstone; tablet, plaque'

Spanish: laude 'tombstone'

 

I also perused the Spanish and Italian dictionaries that I have, and found:

Spanish:

[*]l

Edited by docoflove1974
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Aurelia: I wouldn't use the Wikipedia information, mostly because, well, it's a start, but it will lead you down the wrong path on this topic.

 

I lifted this directly from the Wikipedia entrance: "Standard Italian and Neapolitan are generally mutually comprehensible, though with notable grammatical differences such as nouns in the neuter form and unique plural formation."

 

Neopolitan, then, is not a language by the linguistic definition. In order for two speeches to be of different languages, there must be mutually unintelligible. I'm not saying there can't be some ability of understanding--we've talked about it in this thread and others where Spanish and Italian speakers, Portuguese and Spanish speakers, etc., can understand some of what the other is saying, but the differences in the grammar between these speeches is quite enough to constitute separate languages.

 

The other problem that comes in (and I think this has been brought up before): often Italian linguists will term the various dialetti as different languages...there is a blurring of the linguistic definitions of 'language' and 'dialect'.

 

Now I want to go through Rohlfs again (Silentium...if you're reading this, do you have a copy at hand?), but I would say that 'Neopolitan' is much like 'Genovese' or 'Milanese' that I grew up around--I'm sure they have elements of Celtic in the substratum, but they're both truly dialects of Italian and not separate languages.

 

Mea culpa, I know Wikipedia is not always accurate. I didn't mean to refer to Neapolitan as a language per se. My first degree was in languages and translation so I'm no stranger to linguistics. I wanted to use a more reliable source but I don't think I kept any books on linguistics (or on any related topic for that matter) that I used at university. Anyway, sorry about the confusion.

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Kosmo: According to Elcock (p. 198), lapis does survive in:

Italian: lapide 'gravestone, tombstone; tablet, plaque'

Spanish: laude 'tombstone'

 

I also perused the Spanish and Italian dictionaries that I have, and found:

Spanish:

[*]l

Edited by Aurelia
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That very well could be. On Monday I'll check Corominas for the Spanish explanation, as I suspect it would be the same.

 

No worries on the language v. dialect thing. What linguistic areas did you specialize in?

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I majored in English and French Language and Literature (I also studied Italian but didn't major in it). Then I did a postgraduate specialization in translation - my working languages were English, French and Portuguese. I had to do a bit of linguistics as a result.

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Aaaaaaaah, that explains the knowledge on Portuguese! I am only partially fluent in it...I'll work on it a bit in my research, but don't feel nearly as comfortable discussing it as I do Spanish and Italian. Welcome aboard!

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Aaaaaaaah, that explains the knowledge on Portuguese! I am only partially fluent in it...I'll work on it a bit in my research, but don't feel nearly as comfortable discussing it as I do Spanish and Italian. Welcome aboard!

 

 

And maybe the fact that I'm Brazilian also helps. :D I introduced myself in another thread but you probably didn't get to read it. If you need any help with Portuguese let me know.

Edited by Aurelia
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  • 5 weeks later...
Ok, I know I'm taking the easy road here but according to Wikipedia, Neapolitan, like other Romance languages, has partly evolved from vulgar Latin but also has a pre-Latin Oscan influence. An example is the pronunciation of the group of consonants "nd" (of Latin) as "nn" (e.g.- "munno" (world, compare to Italian "mondo"). In addition, Neapolitan also seems to have been affected by Greek. Unfortunately, no examples are provided in Wikipedia.

 

The phenomenon you describe here (assimilation of the consonant nexus "nd" to "nn") is in no way an exclusive of Neapolitan. The same thing happens in the Roman dialect mondo>monno , Abruzzese mondo>munnu and in practically all of the dialects of central and southern Italy. If the assimilation of nd>nn was really due to the Oscan substratum then we would have to hypothesise that such substratum was extended to all of central and southern Italy, and I am not sure that is the case.

 

Now I want to go through Rohlfs again (Silentium...if you're reading this, do you have a copy at hand?)

Sorry Doc, I don't have one at the moment but will look for it.

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In fact, Elcock discusses various lexical areas...but he mentions no discussion of any other influence of Greek onto southern Italian dialects. I don't have a copy of Rohlfs' volumes here, and the notes that I have don't cover that section, so perhaps someone else can deal with that. But like I said in an earlier post, I'm pretty sure that there were only lexical, not syntactical or morphological, Greek influences on the speech communities in that area.

 

I agree, I remember Rohlfs' work dealt with the percentage of Greek lexicon in the language of these regions, usually higher than in the rest of the paeninsula, with the exception of southern Calabria, of which he says in a speech at Forte dei Marmi in 1964 (in Italian, sorry):

 

D
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Ok, I know I'm taking the easy road here but according to Wikipedia, Neapolitan, like other Romance languages, has partly evolved from vulgar Latin but also has a pre-Latin Oscan influence. An example is the pronunciation of the group of consonants "nd" (of Latin) as "nn" (e.g.- "munno" (world, compare to Italian "mondo"). In addition, Neapolitan also seems to have been affected by Greek. Unfortunately, no examples are provided in Wikipedia.

 

The phenomenon you describe here (assimilation of the consonant nexus "nd" to "nn") is in no way an exclusive of Neapolitan. The same thing happens in the Roman dialect mondo>monno , Abruzzese mondo>munnu and in practically all of the dialects of central and southern Italy. If the assimilation of nd>nn was really due to the Oscan substratum then we would have to hypothesise that such substratum was extended to all of central and southern Italy, and I am not sure that is the case.

 

 

I can't argue with you there. Italian or Italian dialects are not exactly my area of expertise - Portuguese is. So it's good of you to set things straight.

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Ok, I know I'm taking the easy road here but according to Wikipedia, Neapolitan, like other Romance languages, has partly evolved from vulgar Latin but also has a pre-Latin Oscan influence. An example is the pronunciation of the group of consonants "nd" (of Latin) as "nn" (e.g.- "munno" (world, compare to Italian "mondo"). In addition, Neapolitan also seems to have been affected by Greek. Unfortunately, no examples are provided in Wikipedia.

 

The phenomenon you describe here (assimilation of the consonant nexus "nd" to "nn") is in no way an exclusive of Neapolitan. The same thing happens in the Roman dialect mondo>monno , Abruzzese mondo>munnu and in practically all of the dialects of central and southern Italy. If the assimilation of nd>nn was really due to the Oscan substratum then we would have to hypothesise that such substratum was extended to all of central and southern Italy, and I am not sure that is the case.

 

 

I can't argue with you there. Italian or Italian dialects are not exactly my area of expertise - Portuguese is. So it's good of you to set things straight.

Of course, I used "you" in an impersonal way but I should have said Wikipedia, really. My English is far from perfect as you can see :D . Welcome to UNRV, Aurelia, nice to have a Portuguese native speaker on the forum :).

 

By the way, for clarity's sake, my source for the previous post is: Bonomi, Elementi di Linguistica Italiana, 2003 pp. 25-26, it is an excellent introduction for those who want to deepen their knowledge of the Italian language and all of its varieties (geographical, social, historical, etc.).

Edited by Silentium
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