Re: Ancient History Question

Ï "Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> Ýãñáøå óôï ìÞíõìá
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"Padraic Brown" <elemtilas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 23:43:54 +0200, "gogu"
<golanule_VA_DA_MUIE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

? "Padraic Brown" <elemtilas@xxxxxxxxx> ?????? ??? ??????
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On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 22:50:33 +0200, "gogu"
<golanule_VA_DA_MUIE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At least you went somewhere it was offered, I would have loved to
have
taken Latin instead of French, Spanish, Russian etc. With Latin you
have
a basis for learning Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian
and
some intelligible English.


I found it was fairly easy to pick up other Romance languages after
having
taken French in school. (I don't know about Romanian)


I am fluent in Romanian and I can say it's the language which is
nearest
to
the Latin.


It is generally accounted the farthest away from Latin! Spanish is
much closer.

???
Padraic, do you speak Romanian?

With extreme difficulty (and not of a phonological nature) I can read
it a little. I'm looking at Spanish, Old Romanian and Latin in
parallel texts (the greatest modern Rosetta Stone of all, the "Babel
Text"). The Old Romanian is much easier to read than the Modern
Romanian, but it is still _very_ far from Latin.

Spanish is really quite conservative phonologically. It's major point
of divergence from Latin seems to be in the treatment of stressed
vowels, which become diphthongs (dormio --> duermo). Romanian has gone
a lot farther. In the end, they both lack some of the distinguishing
features of the Latin text: the passive verb and well distinguished
morphology.

I do speak (bad) and understand (a lot) Spanish and from my experience
Romanian is much
closer to the Latin than Spanish.
This is also what I've read in the past in some linguistic ng.
I also did the following experiment: when I was in Poland for 3 months
with
an exchange program (it was called IASTE IIRC), we were many foreigners
among them one Spanish guy, Jesus.
Out of curiosity I took a book he had with him and tried to read it.
I could understand almost everything (in that time I was not speaking
Spanish...), even words that I didn't know but they were very similar to
Romanian!
When he tried to read something from a Romanian book I had with me, he
could hardly understand more than 25%!

Not a surprise at all. We can do the same experiment with the Babel
Text. You can easily see the Latin "civitate" in the Spanish "ciudad";
less so in the Romanian "cetatea". You can see "lingua" in "lengua"
bit not so readily in "limba". You can see "dixerunt" in "dijeron" but
not so well in "zis". The Romanian "toti sunt de un neam si o limba"
is pretty transparent as Latin "unus est populus, et unum labium
omnibus"; though "Ellos son un solo pueblo y hablan un solo idioma" is
more transparent still.

This is probably because he was not familiar with foreign languages and I
am
saying that because after I was explaining him the root of a given word
in
Romanian he was exclaiming "aha, yes, yes, it's similar to the x word in
Spanish, they have the same root"!

If you were already familiar with Latin, it is not surprising at all
that you could easily see the similarity between a Spanish word and a
Latin word of the same root. I have to say that as someone familiar
with Spanish and Latin and some French too, I find Romanian
tantalisingly similar, but ultimately pretty opaque.

And here it is an example where the Romanian word is exactly the same as
in
Latin, while the Spanish one is different:
- queen
- regina in Romanian
(also regina in Italian)
- reina in Spanish
- regina in Latin

Certainly you will find any number of such examples. I can also show
you isolated words the same in Latin and Spanish, and probably a few
in French. There is, supposedly a whole poem that can be read in
either Latin or Italian.

Grammatically, at least, which is where it really counts!


So you say that if grammar of one language is close to Latin but
vocabulary
is not so related as it is in another language, that means that the first
language is closer to the Latin than the second?...

Grammar is a more telling indicator of relationship. English is said
to be about 40% or more Lain and Romance by vocabulary. Does that make
English a Romance language? No, its grammar is 100% Germanic.

Regarding Spanish and Romanian, both are clearly Romance languages.
Where Romanian has innovated (notably in its borrowing the postposed
definite article), Spanish has not.

Well, I am not a linguist but speaking a couple of Romance language I am
not
sure about it.
Of course this is just my non-specialist opinion so it can be wrong...

Nor am I saying you're wrong. It is a very subjective judgement!

Of course grammar is of great importance but I believe that vocabulary is
essential to *really* speak a language.
You can learn basic grammar in a week but you need much more time to
enrich
your vocabulary.

No question. But I'm not addressing the ability to speak a language,
either!

It's interesting to note that, for being so far away, Romanian was
considerably influenced by French in the way of lexicon during the
19th century.

There is an explanation for that and this is because French was
considered
the "aristocracy" language in Romania also the language of the
intellectuals.

Yep.

Most of the Romanian students were going to Paris to study so returning
to
Romania they were bringing with them the French tradition, vocabulary,
etc.
That's why many "French-isms" found their way to Romanian, like "merci",
"bonjur", etc.

rgrds

Cheers,
Padraic



Good discussion, guys, keep up the good work!


Well, it's a little "off-topic" but I believe we do not disturb a lot:-)
If there are objections please let us know and we will stop it immediately!
Sorry in advance if someone is annoyed.

rgrds

--

E' mai possibile, oh porco di un cane, che le avventure
in codesto reame debban risolversi tutte con grandi
puttane! F.d.A

Coins, travels and more: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/golanule/my_photos
http://gogu.enosi.org/index.html

James


.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Ancient History Question
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  • Re: Ancient History Question
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