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Latin Lives

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Re: Latin Lives

#21

Post by nandemo »

Leszek wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #6

The article doesn't seem to mention this at all, but Latin definitely lives: it's called modern day Romanian. There are many differences but if Latin survived anywhere into modern times it would have to be Romania. I had some Latin in high school and that came in surprisingly handy, much more so than in other Latin derived languages.

Sardinian is considered to be closer to Latin than Romanian, and arguably Italian and Spanish are closer to Latin too. According to a book that I haven't read[1], but is cited by Wikipedia[2], "A 1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of difference from a language's parent (Latin, in the case of Romance languages) by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation,…

Looking at an excerpt in another wikipedia entry, it looks like the metric is based on phonology only:

> Demonstrates a comparative statistical method for determining the extent of change from the Latin for the free and checked accented vowels of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian, Old Provençal, and Logudorese Sardinian. By assigning 3½ change points per vowel (with 2 points for diphthongization, 1 point for modification in vowel quantity, ½ point for changes due to nasalization, palatalization or umlaut, and −½ point for failure to effect a normal change), there is a maximum of 77 change points for free and checked stressed vowel sounds (11×2×3½=77). According to this system (illustrated by seven charts at the end of the article), the percentage of change is greatest in French (44%) and least in Italian (12%) and Sardinian (8%). Prof. Pei suggests that this statistical method be extended not only to all other phonological, but also to all morphological and syntactical, phenomena.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Romance_langu...

Sounds rather arbitrary. Linguistics has come a long way since the 1940s, so I would take that one with a big grain of salt without confirmation from more modern references.

That said, as another comment in this subthread says, Latin survives in all Romance languages. There's no objective basis in claiming that Romanian is the one true descendant.

Re: Latin Lives

#22

Post by laichzeit0 »

amelius wrote: post #5

I took Latin in high-school but I always wondered what Latin would have sounded like.

Firstly, the way Italians pronounce Latin is nothing like what it should should :) In the main, c is hard (Cicero is KIKero not CHIchero), v is to be pronounced as the English w. Those are the main points that irk me.

The best approximation we have is what's called the "restored" pronunciation. If you're interested in all the nuances the best book for this in my opinion is Vox Latina by Allen. Alternatively, just listen to anything by Evan der Miller on his YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/evan1965. His Latin pronunciation is the restored Classical and extremely good.

If you took Latin in Highschool and want to get back into it you should check out a book course called Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It introduces Latin through Latin and also contains MP3 recordings for the first 31 chapters in first book, all in very good restored Latin pronunciation by the author Hans Ørberg. (there's a torrent of all the Lingua Latina resources)

Re: Latin Lives

#23

Post by tomwalker »

I have a friend that is a historian. He was visiting a monastery in Macau to view some very old texts brought by the first Portuguese priests. They were under the care of a very old priest who spoke Cantonese and some Portuguese. My friend spoke Portuguese but they were not getting very far so he tried Latin. They conversed in Latin fluently for the rest of his time there.

Re: Latin Lives

#24

Post by mattlutze »

kylebgorman wrote: post #15
amelius wrote: post #5

I took Latin in high-school but I always wondered what Latin would have sounded like.

We can deduce facts about how the Romans pronounced Latin sounds by: * descriptions of the sounds by the Roman grammarians * wordplay, onomatopoeia, spelling errors in graffiti, etc. * the way in which sounds from other languages (particularly Greek) were adapted into Latin * the way in which sounds of Latin were adapted into other languages * comparative reconstruction of the Romance languages * evidence from metric…

I'd never thought of using misspellings from graffiti as a pronunciation clue, but it seems so obvious.

I wonder how anthropological linguists would someday treat modern rap and hip-hop. In German, for example, it's not uncommon for the artist to slightly or not-so-slightly mispronounce words to make them fit a rhyme. Would that help or hinder a study?

Re: Latin Lives

#25

Post by VLM »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #22
amelius wrote: post #5

I took Latin in high-school but I always wondered what Latin would have sounded like.

Firstly, the way Italians pronounce Latin is nothing like what it should should :) In the main, c is hard (Cicero is KIKero not CHIchero), v is to be pronounced as the English w. Those are the main points that irk me. The best approximation we have is what's called the "restored" pronunciation. If you're interested in all the nuances the best book for this in my opinion is Vox Latina by Allen. Alternatively, just lis…

And there's an interesting tie in to the article WRT the Orberg's Familia Romana. A quick glance at the article and a text search indicates the author is snubbing Orberg for some reason, as Familia Romana is much more famous in that field for that technique of teaching than the folks discussed in the article. I like that book and occasionally digest a chapter or two. Its like solving a puzzle.

I am pretty sure there are no legal ebooks of familia romana, its full of illustrations and the ebook transition would likely be painful. Too bad.

Re: Latin Lives

#26

Post by zhte415 »

mattlutze wrote: post #24
kylebgorman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can deduce facts about how the Romans pronounced Latin sounds by: * descriptions of the sounds by the Roman grammarians * wordplay, onomatopoeia, spelling errors in graffiti, etc. * the way in which sounds from other languages (particularly Greek) were adapted into Latin * the way in which sounds of Latin were adapted into other languages * comparative reconstruction of the Romance languages * evidence from metric…

I'd never thought of using misspellings from graffiti as a pronunciation clue, but it seems so obvious. I wonder how anthropological linguists would someday treat modern rap and hip-hop. In German, for example, it's not uncommon for the artist to slightly or not-so-slightly mispronounce words to make them fit a rhyme. Would that help or hinder a study?

> Would that help or hinder a study?

I imagine it would help. If evidence for that mispronunciation happened consistently, it would be taken as a dialect, class, geographical or cultural thing (or subculture). If it happened consistently over a very short space of time (and there was surviving evidence) it could be confused as a blip, or fashion.

Example:

I'm constantly perplexed why 'where' is spelt as 'were' by so many, but I imagine there are a sufficient number of English-speakers' accents (or a sufficient amount of speakers of a single accent to be significant) where the two words sound similar enough to spell them out on a keyboard as the same.

Re: Latin Lives

#27

Post by laichzeit0 »

VLM wrote: post #25
laichzeit0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the way Italians pronounce Latin is nothing like what it should should :) In the main, c is hard (Cicero is KIKero not CHIchero), v is to be pronounced as the English w. Those are the main points that irk me. The best approximation we have is what's called the "restored" pronunciation. If you're interested in all the nuances the best book for this in my opinion is Vox Latina by Allen. Alternatively, just lis…

And there's an interesting tie in to the article WRT the Orberg's Familia Romana. A quick glance at the article and a text search indicates the author is snubbing Orberg for some reason, as Familia Romana is much more famous in that field for that technique of teaching than the folks discussed in the article. I like that book and occasionally digest a chapter or two. Its like solving a puzzle. I am pretty sure there…

No idea why they would snub Orberg. It's not like what they are doing is totally unique. Terentius Tunberg runs the Conventiculum Latinum, "an annual summer immersion workshop in spoken Latin held on the campus of the University of Kentucky" [1]. Not in Rome, but still full immersion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tunberg

Re: Latin Lives

#28

Post by random_6hm9v »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

The article doesn't seem to mention this at all, but Latin definitely lives: it's called modern day Romanian. There are many differences but if Latin survived anywhere into modern times it would have to be Romania. I had some Latin in high school and that came in surprisingly handy, much more so than in other Latin derived languages.

Romanian was NOT so "Latin" as the people like to put it. Yes, cherry-picking one could find instances of astonishingly well preserved Latin traces, but the fact is that the old Romanian had only under 40% Latin-descending words and was heavily infused with words from Slavic, Turkish, Magyar, Bulgarian, German, and what not! By the way, those layers were being ousted continuously in a political effort to "re-Latinize" the Romanian language. To give you an example, the word "slobod" was a common Romanian word of Slavic origin, meaning "free" and was used broadly in various formal contexts (like administration, where "slobozie" was officially a locality free of taxes), and now its default meaning is the content that was "freed" on ejaculation, thus avoided in all but vulgar instances. For a while now Romanian proffered Latin-originated borrowings and thus become more related, but I think you could force that pretty much on any language if you try hard enough.

Re: Latin Lives

#29

Post by schoen »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #27
VLM wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's an interesting tie in to the article WRT the Orberg's Familia Romana. A quick glance at the article and a text search indicates the author is snubbing Orberg for some reason, as Familia Romana is much more famous in that field for that technique of teaching than the folks discussed in the article. I like that book and occasionally digest a chapter or two. Its like solving a puzzle. I am pretty sure there…

No idea why they would snub Orberg. It's not like what they are doing is totally unique. Terentius Tunberg runs the Conventiculum Latinum, "an annual summer immersion workshop in spoken Latin held on the campus of the University of Kentucky" [1]. Not in Rome, but still full immersion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tunberg

In my experience folks who've studied with Reginald Foster tend to admire Ørberg quite a bit, but they might think Ørberg's books are too basic for their own students (since I guess people coming to Paideia will have studied Latin for several years first) and/or study things that are not explicitly didactic works.

Re: Latin Lives

#30

Post by schoen »

mattlutze wrote: post #24
kylebgorman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can deduce facts about how the Romans pronounced Latin sounds by: * descriptions of the sounds by the Roman grammarians * wordplay, onomatopoeia, spelling errors in graffiti, etc. * the way in which sounds from other languages (particularly Greek) were adapted into Latin * the way in which sounds of Latin were adapted into other languages * comparative reconstruction of the Romance languages * evidence from metric…

I'd never thought of using misspellings from graffiti as a pronunciation clue, but it seems so obvious. I wonder how anthropological linguists would someday treat modern rap and hip-hop. In German, for example, it's not uncommon for the artist to slightly or not-so-slightly mispronounce words to make them fit a rhyme. Would that help or hinder a study?

I see some hand-written signs by native Spanish speakers in my neighborhood that interchange b and v (and sometimes k and c, and sometimes c and s), which would make for good evidence for a future historical linguist that these were homophones or near homophones in certain contexts.

For example, I think I've seen "besino" written by a native speaker for "vecino" 'neighbor'.

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