What living language do scholars believe Latin sounded like?

raccoon

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Aug-16-06 12:13 PM
Original message

What living language do scholars believe Latin sounded like?

Spanish, Italian, French, Rumanian, other?

In the days when it was spoken in real life.

Refresh | 0 Recommendations

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Swamp Rat

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Aug-17-06 12:57 AM
Response to Original message

1. Romanian n/t

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

raccoon

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Aug-17-06 07:40 AM
Response to Reply #1

2. Thanks, Swamp Rat.

Edited on Thu Aug-17-06 07:53 AM by raccoon

After some digging around, I found this:

Britannica Sardinian language
Romance language spoken in Sardinia, the most similar to Vulgar Latin of the modern Romance languages. Its only standard form is the sardo illustre, a literary language used mostly for folk verse. Italian is the island's official language, and few literary works exist in Sardinian. The earliest written materials date from c. 1080.

http://www.answers.com/topic/sardinian-language

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Lydia Leftcoast

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Aug-26-06 06:39 PM
Response to Reply #2

3. Yes, Sardinian preserves such Latin features as the hard "c" before "i"

Edited on Sat Aug-26-06 06:46 PM by Lydia Leftcoast

and "e," and I believe, some of the archaic Latin declensions.

ON EDIT: I just scanned the Wikipedia article, and it looks as if the pre-Latin vocabulary of Sardinia is related to Basque. Fascinating. But then, older forms of language tend to survive best in areas off the beaten track.

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Anarcho-Socialist

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Sep-21-06 11:05 PM
Response to Reply #3

4. That is fascinating

It makes me wonder if Basque and early Sardinian are related to a language group that perhaps was widespread in Europe before Indo-European arrived.

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Maestro

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Dec-10-06 09:36 PM
Response to Reply #4

8. This is fascinating because I have always heard

that scholars had no idea the origins of Basque. It wasn't until the late 19th century that it was actually written, correct?

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

TheBaldyMan

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Sep-29-06 12:47 PM
Response to Original message

5. there is a modern latin studies centre based in the Vatican

I remember hearing the director of the centre being interviewed on the radio a few years ago, he was an American priest and spoke latin with an exuberant italian inflection, it sounded very natural and quite musical.
I suppose latin must have been spoken with a variety of accents all over the Roman world. I read somewhere that latin was better preserved in the outlying European provinces because it was used as a legal and formal language rather than an everyday living language, even after the fall of the western empire.

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

Lydia Leftcoast

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Sep-29-06 10:41 PM
Response to Reply #5

6. I've sometimes wondered when people in Rome realized that

their spoken language had changed so much that it was no longer Latin.

I know that Dante was the first Italian to write in Italian, but surely, there must have been people before him who realized that what they heard in church didn't match their everyday languag

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

nealmhughes

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Nov-08-06 05:00 AM
Response to Original message

7. I think that most Latin scholars agree that some varieties of Sardinian

are the most likely living sound that would be like Classical Latin would be...but then again there are parts of Sardinia that speak Catalan and the pre-Latin people there have influenced as well as the Tuscans...
It is really hard to say, but I would guess that the c was a hard k before e and i, unlike present "Italian."

Printer Friendly | Permalink | Reply | Top

DU AdBot (1000+ posts)

Mon Apr 29th 2024, 04:44 PM
Response to Original message

Advertisements [?]

Top

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators

Important Notices: By participating on this discussion board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.