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Latin and the Romance language Family | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5543 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 17 of 36 22 September 2009 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nope, it's rather peripheral.
If you learn it, you get a 25 to 50% discount on Romance languages, if you don't, you don't get one :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luís_RJ Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5362 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 18 of 36 22 September 2009 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Portuguese, French and Spanish have Genders while Latin have Cases like German, what make the Syntax different. You can learn Latin as an enthusiastic, but I don't think it will help you so much to learn Romance Languages.
But, definitely, to really understand what is word, phrase, verb, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and so on, will help you much more. Edited by Luís_RJ on 22 September 2009 at 7:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snesgamer Groupie Afghanistan Joined 6410 days ago 81 posts - 90 votes Studies: English*, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Scottish Gaelic | Message 19 of 36 23 September 2009 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latin is useful because so many authors make references to it, and because of the rigorous training its strict grammar provides.
As far as learning other Romance languages go, I think it's HIGHLY overrated. The modern Romance languages are so closely related, that learning one confers roughly the same advantages towards learning the others as Latin would. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5366 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 20 of 36 23 September 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I would argue that it confers even more of those advantages to learn another Romance language than to learn Latin. This is because the Romance languages all derive not from the Classical Latin that is typically learned by Latin students nowadays, but from the Vulgar Latin that was spoken in the streets. Because of the grammatical and lexical differences between Classical and Vulgar Latin, the Romance languages share many features with each other that are not found in Classical Latin. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| poligloton Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5506 days ago 104 posts - 128 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Portuguese, Italian Studies: French, Romanian, Catalan | Message 21 of 36 23 September 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I voted for critically important, but that is only because my goal is to know all Latin languages, including Latin. However, knowing Latin is not critical to learning other Romance languages. Take any two Romance languages, even those that are the most different, Romanian and ______, and they are still more similar to each other than either of them is to Latin.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 5919 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 22 of 36 25 September 2009 at 9:03am | IP Logged | ||
I would go further, and say that learning a romance language provides far more advantages towards learning another romance language, than learning latin would. Despite the lexical similarities, the syntax and grammar of latin seem to be almost completely alien to the romance languages, and I can't imagine how it would help in any way. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5810 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 23 of 36 25 September 2009 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
To summarise JW's post: no. Latin is an Italic* language. The Romance languages are a sub-family of the Italic languages, and Latin is not part of that particular subfamily. I voted not important at all. If it had been "useful", I might have voted slightly useful, but even then, it'll steal time from your real target languages. *Sorry, couldn't help it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5375 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 24 of 36 25 September 2009 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
This is absolutely right. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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