36 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6273 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 33 of 36 28 April 2010 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
I voted "not important at all". It will probably do no harm to such an aim to know Latin, but it is hardly indispensible. The Romance languages generally reflect Latin only in vocabulary, the complex case system of Latin usually being lost, and even then, not all Latin vocabulary made it into the Romance languages.
1 person has voted this message useful
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6121 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French
| Message 34 of 36 28 April 2010 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
William Camden wrote:
The Romance languages generally reflect Latin only in vocabulary |
|
|
exactly, and usually its the vocabulary that was directly borrowed from Latin.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| NativeLanguage Octoglot Groupie United States nativlang.com Joined 5339 days ago 52 posts - 110 votes Speaks: French, Spanish, English*, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, Catalan Studies: Japanese, Mayan languages, Irish
| Message 35 of 36 28 April 2010 at 3:25pm | IP Logged |
I suppose it depends on whether or not you include Latin in the Romance language family.
If you do, then, it is critical to learn it or you will not have 'mastered' the family.
However, if you are only including the modern Romance languages when speaking of mastering the family, it probably makes more sense to learn another Romance language than it does to learn Latin.
I've found it extremely valuable to study Romance linguistics. This will teach you what sorts of patterns to look for in various branches of the family as well as the major differences between eastern and western Romance languages. It will put you on solid footing as you work to learn additional languages in the family.
1 person has voted this message useful
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian
| Message 36 of 36 28 April 2010 at 7:04pm | IP Logged |
NativeLanguage wrote:
I've found it extremely valuable to study Romance linguistics. This will teach you what sorts of patterns to look for in various branches of the family as well as the major differences between eastern and western Romance languages. It will put you on solid footing as you work to learn additional languages in the family. |
|
|
Yes, exactly. It is possible to build a "pan-romance" foundation from which you can have a basic understanding of the entire family. From that foundation it is then fairly easy (although time consuming) to master specific languages in the family as needed. I view the entire family as "Modern Day" Latin. Some of the individual members are very important to me (Spanish and French), some are very interesting to me but not important (Italian, Portuguese) and Romanian, Catalan, and the dialects are not of interest to me.
Ancient and Vulgar Latin are of limited interest to me because I prefer Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew when it comes to the Ancient Languages category. I have a specific purpose for these: Studying the Bible in the original languages.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
This discussion contains 36 messages over 5 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum
This page was generated in 0.3750 seconds.
DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
|