Salve! I started learning Latin this week, and I'm utterly fascinated by the language, even more so than French! I really enjoy it, and I think it's much easier than French, although the noun declensions make it a bit more tedious to remember.
^Slightly off topic but related, I've always heard that Modern Greek is extremely close to Ancient Greek, but how close is it? I heard that modern Greeks can read Ancient Greek (well, they do use pretty much the same alphabet, I think, with minor changes?) and understand it with not too much a problem. How true is this? Myself, I'm interested a bit in Medieval/Byzantine Greek. Haven't found much on it, anyhow.
The structure is a bit similar where the adjectives come after the noun. Other than that, I think they're a bit different. It reminds me a lot of English because so many in the English language have borrowed from Latin. I suppose the French language borrowed even more, but I'm uncertain because I've been on a hiatus from that language for a bit. Although I plan to pick it up again soon. The UK government has a Latin tutorial, and you can find it here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners/ I'm using that along with Cambridge Latin Course 1, which I found for $6 bucks. It's usually around $30.00
While I completely support you for doing your own thing, I just have to wonder what use is a dead language unless you plan on going into the sciences or studying ancient Latin-speaking societies. It's a dead language after all. Still, the idea of being able to speek Latin is kinda cool I must admit... :redface:
I took two years of Latin in high school. I do find it occasionally of some use, but not vitally so. If I had gone into medicine, or perhaps law, I probably would have found it more useful.
I took three semesters of Latin in highschool, but since I haven't studied it since then, so I've forgotten a lot fo the vocabulary. Yes, it's not that far off from French. All of the modern Romance languages (ex: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian, Catalan, Corsican, Galician, Leonese, Occitan, Aromanian, Sardinian and Venetian) are just modern dialects of Latin. Oh and you'll find a lot of similarities to English, since English is a hybrid of ancient Latin and ancient German.
Neato! Thanks for the info. I was in French Immersion in grade school, I don't feel comfortable speaking it anymore but I can understand it alright. I've always wanted to learn more languages, and because of the French felt like I could almost understand Spanish and other similar languages. I'm gonna be living with some people who speak Dutch, so maybe I'll pick that up too.
I just finished my third year of Latin in high school. Although i didn't find it as fascinating as you, i have noticed here and there that it helps me a lot with random little things, such as english vocabulary. But you find it more interesting that French? thats interesting. are you learning only the language or are you leaning Culture along with it?
The grammatical rules have changed a little. There are slight differences, but not that many. It is said that we are one of the languages that has stayed remotely the same for years. I'm not sure that every Greek can read ancient Greek. Because the way the Ancient Greek letters were pronounced were directed by someone not like Modern Greek.
Actually, this is why I loved taking Latin classes back in highschool, it was practically a Roman history class. When it comes to learning language, it probably does become a lot more interesting when you're learning about the cultoure/society that it comes from.
For those who have asked the use of dead languages, Dave has made mention of the two most important to speakers of the English Language who are not actually involved in linguistics. I work as a Spanish interpreter; Spanish is a daughter language of Latin. When I translate for doctors, I very rarely have to ask for explanations of Latin terms when they forget themselves and speak to their patients in a high register (as if they were speaking to another doctor.) The Latin medical internal lingo is often nearly the same vocabulary that we use in everyday speech in Spanish, or so close as to make little difference. For those who have asked about similarities between Ancient Latin and modern tongues... I'm sure most are aware that Latin is the momma of the entire line of Romance Languages which include Italian, French, & Spanish. Here's a map showing those and some (but not all) of the other less well known Romance Languages: French took a heavy flavoring from the Celtic and Germanic languages to which it was geographically near. Modern French is grammatically quite distinct from the other Romance Languages for its rather German syntax. Spanish also took heavily from the Celtic and also from Arabic a bit later on. The Italian languages and Romanian retain some of the inflected system of grammar which is the manner in which Latin grammar functions. Spanish and French are no longer inflected and have become isolating languages. Isolating languages are not to be confused with isolate languages. If you look at the map, you will notice a little white chunk on the northern part of the border between Spain and France. That little chunk represent the Basque area. Basque is an isolate language. It is not related to any other language currently extent, nor does it even belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Place names in other areas of France and Spain show that at one time Basque did have "relatives" which are no longer extent.
The above post is right. Celtic languages also have many Latin loanwords, but they're not obvious as even most people who claim to speak them are wrong as far as pronounciation is concerned (not native speakers like me, of course ). It's especially true with Welsh, as the Welsh were conquered by Rome when the Gaels (in Ireland at this time) and Picts (in what would become Scotland) were not. As it is descended from Welsh and Cornish, Brezhoneg is the same sort of thing (no, the Bretons are not the French).
Love the map. There's also a bunch of small almost dead languages around that were missed, but loved it. Anyhow, just as a little side note, there's a common enough misconception that English is descended from Latin, or that the Latin heavily outweighs English's Germanic roots. From what I know, that's not really true, and at its core and root English still retains more grammatical elements of the Germanic languages than the Romance languages. Anyhow, does anyone know where I could find some resources on Byzantine/Medieval Greek? I've been looking around for a while and couldn't find much.
When it comes to English, we get a lot of our grammar and sentence structure from ancient German, this is primarily due to the fact that the Saxons conquered most of Britian. However, most of our vocabulary comes from Latin whether it be directly or indirectly (such as having it come from one of the Romance Languages.
Saxons didn't conquer most of Britain, just most of England. Only languages descended from Latin were marked on the map. The only one I can think of that was not included is Gallo.
Er, yes, I meant almost dead Romance languages, not languages on the map in general. I remember there were a few dead or almost dead Romance languages in the Balkans, besides Romanian, and there is considerable debate other whether some of the Italian "dialects" should be considered their own language. Plus, I'm almost certain there are a number of languages related to French in France that aren't there on the map.
No, actually he is correct to an extent. There are a few others not mentioned like Sicilian and, Provençal, and Spanish as it is spoken in the areas of Extremadura and the Canary Islands (to name only a few,) but now one is crossing into the land of what are arguably dialects. The operative word is arguably. Being of Latin decent myself I can assure that the peoples who speak these dialects will argue vociferously that their manner of speech is distinct and should be considered whole and complete languages as they rattle off the various differences and then fold their arms in front of their chests with a smug look of self satisfaction. Here is a more complete , if rather difficult to read map:
i'm still waiting for an answer from leaka about how close ancient greek is to what's spoken by greeks today...
^Me too. I've heard Modern Greeks could read Ancient Greek texts, like Plato or Homer or whatever, with as much ease as how we could read Shakespeare.
I took latin and ancient greek GCSE. So far as I can see ancient greek isn't that related to modern greek. Lots of latin vocab (and also greek) has obvious links to english/french etc. Can anyone speak latin?!
Pulcra pruela. Agricola travayut. Pulmonary embolism. Ego operor non narro Latin , tamen ego sum valde bonus procul usura reddo muneris.
