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Grammar of spoken Latin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 1 of 11 22 September 2010 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I saw a post from Iversen this morning when I was WILFing (What Was I Looking For) the internet stating there were a 'small' number of speakers of Latin. I would expect the Catholic church, a few classicists and a few honourable forum members would be just about it ? I have also seen other threads posts about accent in Latin but nothing about grammar.
When taking my Latin classes at school we were told that spoken Latin used a simplified grammar and word order = Vulgar Latin, Ecclesiastical latin used/uses the written grammar and Sung latin was even more flexible in grammar and word order. Does anyone have a view or any further information? Edited for clarity Edited by maydayayday on 22 September 2010 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 2 of 11 22 September 2010 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
I would recommend Vulgar Latin for a first orientation, especially the section sources ("It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a distinct and persistent language so that the citizens or Rome would be regarded as bilingual.") (Medieval Latin is another complication, as the speakers were no longer native speakers. I don't know what "Sung" Latin is, maybe poetry, stuff like hexameters?) Edited by lingoleng on 22 September 2010 at 7:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 3 of 11 22 September 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks lingoleng
I'd seen the Vulgar Latin item which is effectively what i meant by simplified grammar but wondered whether the people who 'speak' latin nowadays used the Vulgar grammar. Ill edit the first post and slot in those exact words! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Goethe_girl Newbie United States Joined 5185 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 4 of 11 22 September 2010 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | ||
From my research, Classical Latin is promoted and preferred. :3 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 5 of 11 22 September 2010 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, more no than yes. One problem with a vulgar grammar is, that this is a vague term and matter. While "classical Latin" is very well documented and can be learned well enough by a kind of immersion (as many humanists for example did, or as it is basically done still today, when Latin is studied by classical philologists), there is no precise grammar of spoken, colloquial, dialectal, lower class Latin. We have Plautus, Petronius (and these are literature, not documentation), the Vetus Latina bible translation, evidence from inscriptions, "graffiti" and the vast but difficult to interpret evidence via the Romance languages, but this is hardly codified anywhere, and people don't learn how to speak like a Greek slave in the Rome of the first century, for example. One needs a good contrastive knowledge of "classical" Latin for extracting the vulgar features, and few people can do this or have done it, and if so, then not with the intention to speak it. So what people really learn is always a more or less classical Latin (which has gone through some modifications through the centuries, but surprisingly little ones) and they are hardly in a position to speak anything else. Now just as in the middle ages one will usually be able to spot some local influence from the native substratum, to say so, people will make grammatical changes according to their preferences and their competence, and it is certainly hardly true to call some modern pidgin classical Latin. But this is not because people want to speak in vulgar Latin, but because they are not native speakers, well, of course. There is more, but that's my short opinion (in pidgin English, of course, what else ...) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 11 23 September 2010 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Our knowledge of "Vulgar Latin" is scattered and inconsistent - anything from Satyricon to graffitti to consistent spelling errors is seen as a potential source for information about it. But I have also concluded that it was an aspect of Latin, just like written Latin, and not a language in its right - maybe somewhat along the lines of Modern French, which also has a popular spoken and a highbrow written side. In the absence of long authentic text specimens I just assume that it used the same grammar as the written language, but without the long and complicated sentence constructions, and maybe without some of the more esoteric details.
I generally concede that the classical pronunciation is fairly well documented, but again the careful and wellgroomed pronunciation described by antique authors may have been supplemented by a more shoddy and speedy way of talking. When I hear modern readings of classical texts they generally seem to be very slow and heavy because of the strict rules about long consonants and vowels - I can't see how the irascable and vivacious populus romanus could have been satisfied with this way of speaking. In my own video I tried to talk at my normal speed, even this meant that I had to break some rules. To know how the classics spoke we cannot go to the monks and nuns and priests within the Catholic church - their language is another and much later variant of Latin. But it must have been used for the same dailylife purposes as the Latin of ordinary Romans - asking for the bread basket at the table didn't change within those 1000 years. One last thing: there were lots of very young novices in the monasteries, and with an unbroken lines of these child learners I do find that Latin could be characterized as a living language in even the strictest sense. Children can learn languages from others than their parents. Edited by Iversen on 23 September 2010 at 7:45pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Agustín76 Newbie Argentina Joined 5181 days ago 11 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English | Message 7 of 11 24 September 2010 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||
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La gente cuando habla (en forma informal o entre amigo), sea el idioma que sea, siempre va usar una gramática mucho más simplificada que cuando escribe (aunque sea también a un amigo).
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| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5496 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 8 of 11 25 September 2010 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Translation When people speak (informal or between friends), any language that it may be, they always will use a much more simplified grammar than when they write (even if it is to a friend). Also, Agustín76, I personally don't care; however the forum rules state that discussion is to take place in English, except in the appropriate other language threads. (Edited for forum language note). Edited by canada38 on 25 September 2010 at 8:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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