I got sooooo excited when I saw the title of this video + 40 minutes. Keep it up! The other vid you put up about why Latin is important to learn was also very encouraging
Haha really?! :D I thought that the video was *way* too long. But if you enjoyed it I am really happy! Thanks. I hope you like part 2 as well, coming later this week.
I had a history teacher in high school who when we learned the periods of those times in which Latin was spoken made us say the answer to his questions in Latin which he also asked us in Latin.
It is definitely necessary to keep Latin standardized. However, I think it should be allowed to add new constructions to the language to better fit modern usage, so long as it doesn't detract from the value of Classical Latin or inhibit the ability for Latin speakers to read all Latin literature. I'm not too informed on this subject, but that's what I would say.
I would say that the language should certainly allow for new words and expressions (as it has done very ably for 2,000+ years). But I would push back against new constructions (e.g., replacing the genitive with "de ___," or the _wholesale_ replacement of accusative + infinitive with "quod ____" for indirect discourse). That's how the structure of the language itself changes over time, something which would not be appropriate for Latin.
Standardize the language doesn't mean fossilize it. I would argue that the introduction of neologisms can be avoided if we use latin roots, suffixes and prefixes to create new words.
I am learning Latin, not gonna lie, very exhausting language (but also, very interesting on how different it really is). I totally encourage people who like to learn, to also include Latin in your learning process !! .
Exactly. People say that Latin is a dead language which is not true at all. It's like saying that English is a dead language because no one speaks it the way it was spoken 1500 years ago. Latin is basically another name for Old Italian, Old. Spanish, Old Romanian, etc.
Honestly, I think the neologisms are fine. As long as the core remains there and faithful, it won't cause too much harm. The language is still Latin and the books from antiquity and communication from more conservative speakers will still make sense, but you still have more options for expression if you choose to use them.
I liked this video. It taught me something. You can learn the words of another language, but that doesn't mean you know the order in which they go. Like you said, some words don't exist in other languages, and so you must be poetic when you speak. For instance, a famous roman senator ended his speeches with "Carthage must fall." In our present language, there are many ways to say this. I would have said : "Carthage must be destroyed." You could also say "Carthage must die." It's possible in ancient Latin that the word "die" had another meaning, and the word "destroy" never existed at all. So if anything died or was destroyed in ancient times, It was referred to as "fallen, or has fell." If you wanted to say something was a redish orange color, you would say "It is the color of autumn leaves of oak." I think it is a descriptive language, and over the years, people found ways to shorten the vernacular for ease of use. Great video.
"Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." - Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Carthago has to be destroyed. The Roman senator Cato the Elder is said to have said this sentence at the end of every speech he held in the Senate. He lived in the midst of the second century before Christ. It is not certain whether Cato actually said this sentence. Only the historian Plutarch quotes him saying so in the first volume of his biography in the year 75 AD in Greek language ("Δοκεῖ δέ μοι καὶ Καρχηδόνα μὴ εἶναι"), which literally means: "It seems to me alright that Carthago shall not be."
Great video, I've enjoyed it very much. Everyone interested in the Latin language should know all the things you say in this video. I think the 'Golden Age' Latin is the only 'version' that should be studied, all the rest (like Late Latin and Medieval) picking up and accommodating as one wishes to read Latin literature from that given period. Be that as it may, but I think speaking Latin and writing books nowadays in Latin give way to the more important goal of learning Latin: to be able to read ancient books in original, not in translated forms. I mean isn't it the primary goal, isn't it why the majority of people start to learn this language: just to be able to read and understand original thoughts of men, not translated, interpreted and placed on the dish for consumption? : ) So, I think the basis should be - the Golden Age, the rest - as one wishes afterwards. Your channel is the gem for a lover of the Latin language, keep up the good work! (Sorry for my broken English)
Thanks for your response, Andrey! Your English is entirely unbroken. А вы говорите по-русски или по-украиски? Thank you so much for your kind words! Also thank you for the thoughtful response. I have a question in turn: if the goal is to read the literature, and the vast, vast majority of Latin literature was written after the Classical period, should we not be equally prepared to read the Mediaeval and Renaissance literature?
Absolutely! Moreover, I'm convinced that one should strive to master Latin in all its variety to be able to read everything that was ever written in it, the important books. But, I still think that the Classical Latin should have a priority in learning Latin, and only afterwards, after one has mastered it at least at some level, should one proceed to learn the rest. Since what's the point of learning such words as 'ecclesia' and the grammar of the Late/Medieval Lain if they don't appear in writings of the Classical period. But when one starts reading ecclesiastical writings then he, of course, should expand his vocabulary etc., but that is the next step, in my opinion. P.S. И да, я говорю по-русски и по-украински, мои родные языки. Как я посмотрю, то вы и эти языки уже присматриваете для изучения, помимо латинского, итальянского и сколько там ещё языков вы знаете? : )
@@andrey5666 - I get where you’re coming from but I think that even if we stay more with ancient Latin, the other eras should at least be mentioned more often. Like e.g.: letting students read Horatius? Throw in a poem by Konrad Celtis (~1500 AD) that obviously referenced him! Reading Ovidius or Tibullus? Let them read love poetry by later _pope_ Pius II.! 😄 In Germany, many people have learned a bit of Latin in school but no one knows what Middle- and Neo-Latin is. In Austria then, school curriculums afaik prescribe up to 30% of Latin school texts to be post-classical! People, at least if they even learn Latin, should know how essential that language has been for Western culture: Latin as international language at universities instead of English! Latin being printed more than German _in Germany_ up until around the year 1600!
Beware! I started out by just getting a video from TH-cam. Now I am have become beguiled by language and its history. Be careful the spell is not caste upon you. TH-cam has a way of sending their algorithms. 😂
As for the main question, how much is too far... The problem is as old as Erasmus' "Ciceronianus" :) I think we can really use Latin in a very flexible way, provided we're doing it consciously (keep "ipsissimus" a joke and you'll be fine, to use your own example). First of all (and this is my confiteor, too), let us read 50x more than we speak, and we should be all right. The new wave of Latin speakers (which is by all means a reason to celebrate) often seems to be a little over-enthusiastic about inventing new words or phrases when there's no need to do so. We have to remember that there has been continuity in the use of Latin from the 1st century BC practically to the 19th century, and most of the things we could ever wish to speak about have been already covered by our predecessors. The only break is the one that happened at the end of the 19th century (and definitely after the Second World War) - technological advancement (and ideological changes, possibly) were faster than the development of Latin vocabulary. These changes happened - for the first time in history - thanks to people who hadn't received full Latin education and therefore didn't use Latin to speak about their inventions from day one. It is only because of this that we sometimes struggle to give Latin names to certain modern objects, actions or processes, or rather: this should be considered the only justifiable reason of this struggle - otherwise it's simply our own ignorance of Latin. We are fully entitled to fill in this 19th/20th/21st century gap - it is even our duty. However, before we start to think about introducing something new into Latin, we need to make sure three times that this new word describes a really modern concept, something that people had absolutely NO CHANCE to discuss before the 19th century. We don't want to use "internationalis", because the idea of internationality is not new: there have always been different nations or countries and there must have been some way to speak about it - sometimes we just need to search deeper in order to find expressions like "omnium gentium" or "commercia, quae inter homines habentur". We need to be respectful of the choices made by the previous generations, but we have a free hand when it comes to giving Latin names to things that they couldn't even imagine. This is why I'm allergic to the notorious "laboro" in the meaning of "opus facio", but have nothing against the modern usage of "raeda", introducing "computatorium" (NOT "computatrum" ;) ), or even "pagina facebookiana" (although "prosopobiblion" is growing strong ;) ). This will be also a rule of thumb when assessing the quality of non-classical Latin of all periods: does this medieval author use this word because it is a completely new idea, unknown to ancient Romans, or is it merely a sign of his ignorance? If the latter is the case, we should probably disregard his choice and stick to the older usage. We need to be very sensitive, though: I would never dare to censor a poet or a person with "special abilities" like Hildegard - if she decided that "coruscatio" is the best word to describe what she saw in her vision, who am I to judge :) One last point is that there is nothing wrong in introducing new new formations into Latin as long as they do not replace the previous ones. Leonhardt gives the example of the medieval "quod" phrases which were commonly used at some point by less educated writers, but have never replaced the classical ACI. This is a great characteristic of the development of Latin: as long as we look back at the classical canon, Latinitas can only be expanded, but never changed.
Thank you for such a detailed and thoughtful response, Katarzyna! Those of us who know your mastery of Classical literature as well as spoken Latin should look to your counsel in these matters, as you may have given a more satisfactory response than I could have imagined receiving with respect to these challenging issues. We decided to read your comments aloud today in the weekly Latin chat on Google Hangouts, and we came up with an analogy that you inspired: Italians, among other peoples the world over beyond the Anglosphere, often use (and too much! in opinion) English in their daily proceedings, replacing their common words with the seemly fancier English ones, saying "meeting," "boyfriend, and "weekend" without batting an eye, words that sound utterly strident in the otherwise exquisitely beautiful language. But their overuse of English replacing their native words in common discourse is only part of the problem; more and more they invent new English terms and titles and phrases, often for the purpose of advertising to tourists, that no English speaker can rightly understand. They do this, as always, because it's cool. But there are proper English terms and phrases that would be perfectly apt for their intended uses; they are merely ignorant of them. They end up looking as foolish as the nonsensical phrases one might find on www.Engrish.com (a great site for a laugh). And we who over-invent Latin neologisms (and you have rightly kept me in line in this regard :-) ) can end up sounding just as silly and wrong to people who do know the language well, creating barbarisms that distance ourself from all Latinity, rather than approach it. I think your advice, that to be intimately familiar with, and to research, the entire corpus literature, particularly the Latīnitās recentior, in order to find the right terms that might already have currency, is of vital importance. Speaking for myself at least, an error we modern teachers can, and have, fallen into is being familiar fairly exclusively with the staples of Classical literature *only* (and not having read wonderful pieces like the Noctes Atticae, whose next installment from you I am eagerly awaiting, by the way! :-D ), while eschewing the recent Latin literature due to the mistaken belief that it is truly "lesser," thus missing a potentially perfect word or phrase, while falling into the very barbarity that we might have initially sought to avoid.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Great analogy! Although "weekend" (or "łikend", as we say in Polish ;) ) is a very recent concept introduced in the English speaking world, so the borrowing is justified, possibly even in Latin 😜
@@NoctesWratislavienses Hehe at least you spell it phoneticaly! :D Unlike the Italians. The more Italian term is "il fine settimana," which seems to do the job just fine.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Aww, sorry to disappoint you, but "łikend" spelled phonetically is substandard Polish, informal communication. Official dictionaries give "weekend". We do say "koniec tygodnia" (lit. "end of the week"), but it has a different meaning: "end of the working week", i.e. "by Friday". I repeat: LET THE LANGUAGE EXPAND. Change is good - as long as we are fully aware of what's being changed and why.
@Noctes Wratislavienses The laziness and mechanicalness of borrowing. In Dutch we use 'weekend' pronounced like English but with a Dutch accent, so it comes out as veekent. The irony is that a perfectly Dutch form is available, either weekeinde, weekeind, or even the shortened form weekend (pronounced more or less vaykent).
I would LOVE to learn Latin. I already speak 6 languages (at different levels obviously) so it can't be too difficult. The only thing keeping me back is the fact that I have never learned a "dead" (I know it isn't dead, but you know what I mean) language before.
Among the many song translations I make on my channel, there are some into Romagnolo and some into Sicilian. So I'm doing my part towards preserving "dialetti" :).
Another question: What happened to the Italic contemporaries of Old Latin? I would expect them rather having merged into rural dialects of Latin retaining some degree of substrate features, than outright having disappeared. Something similar happened to much of the East Frisian language when the region merged into other northern German principalities: It converged into Low German, retaining a lot of substrate vocabulary, while a lot of local people did not directly feel the shift and loss of their original language. This happened within a few centuries, within a few generations.
With this idea in mind, not only Latin is the proto-language of the romance languages, but, at lest for Italy, the other Italic languages and hence proto-Italic was for the Italian dialects...
@@burkhardstackelberg1203 A lot of the speakers of the Italic languages took part in and perished with the Social War (91 - 87 BCE), after which their land was colonized with Roman Latin speaking veterans.
@@someopinion2846 Did they indeed? I would not expect a four year war being devastating to millions of people in antiquity, without leaving us with an appropriate historical and archeological record. This might have happened to the elites to some degree, but I doubt this for the entire population.
@@someopinion2846 Did I claim, there wasn't *any* record for the social war? Re-reading my comment, I would say I did not - I said, a war killing millions in four years leaving no ttaces of the other Italic cultures should leave us with a different set of archeological and historical evidence than the one I was taught in school or I found on the net. Do you have good sources to study this mass-killing you propose? My state of knowledge is: The war was settled with surviving Italic socii, giving them Roman civil rights, but the construct still favoured very much the romans, and the non-Roman Italic languages had still some decades to live.
Thanks for making this! I of course teach classical Latin, explaining to my kids that it will give them a foundation from which to read any other Latin sources from other periods, much like learning the basic footwork for a ballroom dance before taking on the myriad of variations. I would love to see a follow-up video, though, that addresses the parallel timeline of ecclesiastical Latin. Say, for example, I pick up an encyclical (or other papal document) from the late Latin period, vs an encyclical from the medieval period, vs one from the Renaissance period, vs one from, say, the 19th or 20th century. I would expect that the grammatical changes track differently than they do on your "academic/literary Latin" timeline, since ultimately, they end up looking quite different in the modern age. Or, I suppose, at what point do they begin to diverge?
Thanks for watching, Marisa! :D By a parallel timeline of Ecclesiastical Latin, I'm not sure what that would be. The Latin of the church has always had the characteristics of the Latin of other speakers and writers of the same period; Augustine writes in Latin Latin, Aquinas in Mediaeval Latin, and Egger in Contemporary Latin. The Vatican's Latin today is also entirely Classical - but like Latin of any period after the Golden Age, it can be susceptible to certain less Classical terms and infusions of barbarisms, which are not meant to create an alternative form of the language, but are merely mistakes or ignorance of proper style. See Aemilius Springhetti's Institutiones Stili Latini for more on the proper usage of theological terms. Can you think of examples to explain the differences you see in Ecclesiastical Latin in certain periods? The only difference I can think of today is in the pronunciation standards.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I was really asking! I didn't know if the shifts happened at different points in ecclesiastical Latin, particularly in the later periods, once it fell out of use in other secular areas, or how today's ecclesiastical Latin differs stylistically from the contemporary Latin which is largely imitative of classical Latin.
@@marisabruce6119 Ah I see! Well hopefully someone with a better education in the literature than what I have can lend us a helping hand. Adjuvāte nōs! :)
Many recent Vatican documents (Vatican II and later) are characterized by barbarisms which would have been quite shocking to knowledgeable Latinists of a century earlier (Vatican I). I don't think that comes under the heading of the evolution of ecclesiastical Latin. It is the result of a terrible decline in standards. Present day Vatican Latinists are no longer proficient in their jobs. They're clumsy translators. In earlier periods Latin scholarship within the Church was subject to the same trends as outside the church. Renaissance Latinists and i.e. the Jesuits in the Counter Reformation were steeped in Classical Latin and often just as much in the business of emulating Golden Latin as secular authors. They had their Jerome and their Aquinas, which they honoured as the authors of the Vulgate and the Summa but whose Latin was not considered exemplary.
I think if you want Latin to remain a functional language like it was in the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods, you'll have to accept, not necessarily grammar or syntax changes, but certainly new vocabulary and perhaps new phrases. After the fall of Rome, Latin ceased to really be about preserving some sort of replica of the classical language and became more of a conlang that was meant to serve as a functional lingua franca for all of Christendom.
You are confusing catholics for protestants and latin ties us to every other speaker of latin in history if we change it it will be as good as the romance languages and someone just a few countries away won't understand your latin. For example italian and portuguese or italian and romanian. If you want to speak a strange and abnormal latin for convenience then learn a romance language the latinitians have no patience for those who do not appreciate latin as is. Again learn a romance language if you want to speak a strange latin but might I remind you that you wouldn't be able to comunicate with most people who speak other romance languages. Latin is the only language that ties them together and all the romance languages can mostly understand it so if you learn latin you cancommunicate with everh speaker of any romance language. we can't change it now.
@Kamil Debiola If a language says ete for some word and three languages come from it. One says te while the other says et those two can understand the mother language but not eachother. A third says ate and that one can understand the other three and the other three them. If the romans languages can't understand latin they have to be pretty messed up. I would list off a bunch of vocabulary but in summary the basic words are messed up such as french's ce for it while spanish and italian say lo while latin says id and the romance languages got lo from illius and ce from I think hoc or hic or haec. And by the way they are mutually inteligible you don't need to understand every single syllable that comes out of the other language speaker's mouth if you actually think that then you must be mental. My point still stands.
@Kamil Debiola The declensions don't matter because the roots are the similar and the other endings for tense don't matter because the roots are similar again my point still stands the endings don't matter the roots are similar enough.
As someone writing his Ph.D. thesis about Neo-Latin literature, I really cannot stress enough how great people’s misconceptions are about Latin literature and how essential Latin actually as been for Western history and culture. If I mention the terms “Middle-Latin” and “Neo-Latin”, people look at me like, “Honestly sounds like a cool niche subject, but never heard of it.” And it’s really not their fault but partly actually that of Latin philology which, until the last ~50 years or less, looked down on most post-classical authors except maybe those of the absolute highest esteem (let’s say Erasmus and the poet Konrad Celtis as German examples). One simply has to consider the following: it was only around _1600 fucking AD_ that German printing presses started to print more texts in German than in Latin.
Do you have a course on how to learn latin? I saw your conversation with the people from brazil and italy as well as spain? And was impressed with your fluency
So whenever you have prescriptivism in language, there is usually some goal and that goal often has political dimensions. For example, the condemnation of certain dialects of English has a goal of asserting racial or class superiority. I think, with respect to why we have decided that Latin from the Late Republican Period is THE Latin, many commenters admired the authors for other reasons and perhaps identified with their outlooks on politics and philosophy, especially Cicero, and want to reconstruct this "ideal" period of history where (they believe) everyone was an educated scholar building massive public works and innovating engineering practices. Likewise, the same folks dislike the medieval period for its superstition and preoccupation with Medieval Christian values, so they are predisposed to discarding that. On some level, I think many latinists want to feel like they are continuing the legacy of people and a society that they admire and want to distance themselves from the legacy of a society that they feel strayed from the ideal and this manifests in making judgements about the "validity" of the language used.
True as far as it goes, but I think it’s worthwhile to look at Classical Latin as from a period when it was still spoken as a native language (as a formal register with the “vulgar” Latin of the day, which varies mostly in style rather than substance), and with a huge corpus of written work by these native speakers. It’s harder to recommend a period in history in which (for instance) the spelling or grammar varies widely because it’s no longer spoken natively, and what people *do* speak is drifting farther and farther until it becomes the Romance languages (coming into their own in the 12th to 14th centuries with Marie de France and the various tales of chivalry that so preoccupy Don Quixote several centuries later). It’s the same reason why Classical Chinese and Classical Arabic exist: they’re vital for reading and understanding written works that form the very bedrock of their literary traditions. Authors writing in these languages in a period of massive linguistic upheaval would also have paradoxically safeguarded their work against language change: you can safely study Classical Latin and read later works written in it, but the number of people who would understand, say, 9th-century proto-French is likely smaller.
heldenautie that’s definitely a factor. What’s funny is that Mediaeval Latin is barely distinguishable from Classical Latin, depending on the author. I’d say there are more differences between Modern English authors of different centuries, or between UK and US dialects.
I’m not sure “vulgar” is cognate with “folk”. Latin v usually corresponds to English w, not f. Examples: vidēre/wit, vidua/widow. English f, on the other hand, corresponds to Latin p. Examples: father/pater, hēafod/caput. (“Hēafod” is the progenitor of “head”.) If “vulgar” and “folk” were cognate, I would expect the English word to be “wolk” or the Latin word to be “pulgar”.
I would tend to think that Erasmus was the greatest of them all; his mother tongue being Dutch, he went on to become one of the greatest style masters of Latinitas.
A living language suggests that it has native, primary language speakers who learns this tongue first from other native speakers, like family and friends. Today, speakers of Latin are students who grew up from childhood with a distinctly different mother tongue, and have adopted Latin as a secondary or tertiary language. I'll admit it would be great in my opinion if Latin became a living language again or at least merited wide adoption as a universal language for academic, political, or other international context. Hypothetically, a restored classical Latin that could accommodate some new vocabulary while maintaining the grammatical structure or making allowances for colloquialisms, dialectical, and vulgar forms for spice would be a reasonable compromise. We tend to speak in a professional way at times, while speaking less formally much of the time, so it shouldn't be as problematic for students who have mastered Classical Latin to play with and enjoy the language as dynamically, creatively, humorously as we do in our native languages.
I don't know if Luke has moderated his view, that Latin isn't "dead", because it just seems like wishful thinking. I also wish Latin was alive again! But I think of it like this: I am a native speaker of American English, but I live in Germany and have a group of international friends where nobody is a native speaker of English. There is a big difference between how the group of Americans will speak vs. the group of non-native internationals. That doesn't mean the non-natives can't speak well, but they often do lack the shared full-fledged understanding of nuance, idioms, slang. Latin is no Hebrew, and even modern Hebrew is not the same as that spoken 2000 years ago.
Great video! I subscribed. I have one question though, through time most important changes in latin occurred with the addition of new vocabulary? Or did the vocabulary from "classical latin" variate too much?. Thanks and greetings from Chile (forgive my english).
In respect to Lingua Latina, how long did it take you to be able to read original works in latin? Was it after pars secunda? I am currently immersed in the course myself, studying theology on the side, and am curious about the time-frame. Also, what is your experience with the students whom you are teaching the language, when do they start reading the originals? Thanks for reading.
Salvē! The end of the first book introduces original poems in the context of a party. You'll be able to understand original texts immediately. And the second book is almost entirely original texts.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Salve! iam primum librum usque ad finem legi et mihi valde placuit! mensibus duobus ante coepi legere librum secundum ,nomine 'Roma aeterna', et unum quaestionem tibi habet: nonnumquam sententias lectas quae ex coniunctivo et vocabulo 'priusquam aut antequam' constant legi et volebam scire quid hac sententia cum coniunctivo significet? Fortasse tu mihi monstrabis ubi inveniam hanc explicationem, nam oblitus sum ubi legerim?
Thank you soo much for this video! been pausing and replaying it many times! very helpful and you really say what i wanted to know! one thing though,,, every time you say Cicero and Caesar i can't help to think about the pronunciation, why do you choose the English pronunciation over the latin if I may bluntly ask?? Thanks again for your very helpful video and keep up the good work !!!
He’s speaking in English so using the English pronunciation is proper here. I would pronounce Mexico using an English pronunciation rather than a Spanish one when communicating in English.
It’s kind of interesting that Marcus Aurelius wrote his “Meditations” in a language other than Latin. I wonder why he chose to do so. Is this because he didn’t think Latin had the range of language to express his thoughts on those matters even though there were Roman Stoic philosophers, such as Seneca the Younger, he probably read the works of before he kept that diary.
Yeah well there is quite a lot of good philosophy vocabulary in Greek, but my guess is just that as it was his personal journal, he chose to write it in this cool more ancient language.
Would you consider discussing the neo-Latinate IALs (international auxiliary languages), like Latino sine Flexione, Interlingua and Occidental-Interlingue?
My only comment on them is that 1) their premise is wrong: they assume highly inflected languages are difficult to learn, but this if false. Latin has been thought badly for a century or more in most places, but when taught well it’s just as easy to pick up as any language. 2) I strongly discourage people from what I consider a waste of time in studying them. Learning Latin brings access to the most amazing poetry ever composed and world history in the original. The conlangs, if they have any culture, are far more limited.
@@polyMATHY_Luke The second part of your response definitely hurts, being an Esperanto speaker myself. Nevertheless, I appreciate your honest and rapid response to my question. Thank you very much!
Golden/Silver age is the standard that should be taught/spoken/written. There are fewer sources than at later periods for sure but that is a factor of how much has been lost to time (perhaps 75%). Golden/Silver age Latin is far more standardized and therefore much easier to learn and is standard so there for a better tool to communicate with.
Etymology means the search for the Ετυμον=étumon, “true sense”), neuter of ἔτυμος (étumos, “real, true, actual”) + Greek λόγος (lógos, “word, speech, discourse”).of the words, the origin (first root) and their original meaning, the result and the publication of the investigation of the origin, the origin, the course and the evolution of a word over time. It starts from the current state of the word and goes back as far as possible to the past, based on phonetic and semantic rules.
I think that you should have drawn that time graph the other way around: the older times up in the line and the more recent times down the line. At least in Spanish we say "bajo latín" for the latter and "alto latín" for the older one. I might be wrong, not an expert.
I am currently learning Latin. At dinner time my family has trivia around the table with the kids. We were going over the moghs of the year when we got to December. I thought to myself, Decem is ten in Latin. But its the twelth month. I had to look it up. I had totally forgotten that there was a calendar change in Julius Caesar's time. I wonder why they didnt change December or October to something dufferent. Anyways, i thought it was neat I recognized decem in December from my studies on Latin.
Crazily enough, the calendar change where January was made the first month instead of March was instituted under King Numa, the second king after Romulus; as far as we know, he was legendary more than historical.
The transition from "Old Latin" to "Classical Latin" seems quite political to me. I'd love to hear more about the shaping and creation of Latin by those forces. I am mostly untrained in language, so, as an outsider, Latin seems contrived to me. But, I had only one semester of Latin. I've been working on learning Spanish for a few years which seems a little more organic and grass roots than Latin. Not surprising. I've also been learning German at the same time, which is a interesting combination. Now, I have just started Greek and I often find myself laughing. Learning Greek makes me feel like I am a contortionist. My goal isn't so much to speak any of the languages, but to understand history and people. For context, I have an Industrial Design background.
I have a question. At about 9:20 you mention a text from the mid 2nd Century AD about conversations in Latin. What is the name of that text? You were speaking too quickly, I couldn't catch the name
I think that he is referring to "Interpretamenta" sometimes attributed to Dositheus Magister. It's called Hermeneumata or Ἑρμηνεύματα in Greek. It was written to teach Greek to Latin speakers and vice versa in the 3rd century.
Ho una curiosità per te (so che parli italiano e il mio inglese col traduttore è ridicolo); perché riguardo la "Golden age" scrivi di Cicerone e Cesare ma non di Virgilio? Lo trovo abbastanza strano visto che è considerato il più grande autore latino (per non parlare della sua influenza su Dante e non solo). Non è una critica ma una autentica curiosità, semplice dimenticanza o c'è dell'altro? Grazie.
Virgilio è eccezionale! Certo. Lo stile della nostra prosa in latino è fondato sulle scritte di Cesare e Cicerone, questo è il motivo. Ma si ci sono molti autori nel periodo classico, per cui vedi questa mia pagina: bit.ly/ranierilatingreekauthors
@@polyMATHY_Luke Innanzitutto grazie per aver risposto.🙂 Non sapevo, non ho fatto il Classico e non ho mai studiato il latino, che gli scritti di Cicerone e Cesare rivestissero addirittura una importanza fondativa riguardo lo studio del latino, ho sempre pensato a Virgilio come massima espressione della letteratura latina e credevo in automatico fosse così anche per la lingua. In ogni caso, sto guardando molti tuoi video e anche se non conosco l'inglese, grazie ai sottotitoli (non lo parlo ma riesco a leggerlo) comprendo praticamente tutto; ho fatto una riflessione, nel primo video che ho visto, riguardo la "musicalità" mentre parlavi latino (l'ho trovata strana), poi ne ho visti altri e questa musicalità mi è parso non ci fosse (dipenderà da me e dalla mia non conoscenza del latino e delle lingue in genere). Ok, finisco questo lungo poema complimentandomi con te per la chiarezza con cui ti esprimi e la passione che trasmetti, ciao e grazie.
Why don't we ask computer programs (based on neural networks) to evaluate different forms of Latin? GPT3 might help creating new words in Latin or to answer some of the questions you pose. Teach the computer Latin based on the Cicero works and it can come up with new words. This type of approach should be studied for each and every language around the world, and to compare languages and create a family tree of languages over time.
Salve, Lûke. Is there anything such a Latin Academy that regulates the neologisms and new uses of Latin? I know that there are the Circuli Latini in certain cities where they practise and use Latin normally, the same as they do with Esperanto in the Esperanto Associations and Clubs. Is there any global congress on this?
Is it possible to find the text of the Interpretamenta? What's the whole title of this text? I'd like to know how did romans talk in their everyday life. ;-)
Yes! If you google the PDF you can definitely find it. But you should be warned that the Intepretamenta are definitely post-Classical Latin, so certain grammatical constructions are not part of the conversational language of Cicero’s or Augustus’s age.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you. First of all, I apologize for my English mistakes! ;-) Of course, we must not confuse the history of Latin in its vulgar and erudite varieties. My aim is to learn various pronunciations and linguistic styles of Latin. I am very attached to the typical prudence of the philologist and linguist. My background is in fact that of Italian Philology and of "sciences of language" (which is why I have a greater curiosity for vulgar Latin). It is in the context of that course of studies that I discovered historical linguistics and vulgar Latin that I began to become passionate about. But unfortunately, the university did not allow me to go deeper into these themes because they were not the main object of those studies. And so I find myself to be really interested and grateful to your videos and any help to learn better the history of vulgar Latin and the history of Latin pronunciation (both vulgar and classical).
A lot of scientists, linguists, archaeologists, historians etc. are considering that 8,500 years ago, Romania was the heart of the old European civilization. The new archaeological discoveries from Tartaria, (Romania), showed up written plates older than the Sumerian ones. More and more researches and studies converged to the conclusion that the Europeans are originated in a single place, the lower Danube basin. Down there, at Schela and Cladova in Romania have been discovered proves of the first European agricultural activities which appear to be even older than 10,000 years. Out of 60 scientifically works which are covering this domain, 30 of them localize the primitive origins of the man-kind in Europe, where 24 of them are localizing this origin in the actual Romania, (Carpathian- Danubian area); 10 are indicating western Siberia, 5 Jutland and/or actual Germany room, 4 for Russia, 4 for some Asian territories, 1 for actual France area and all these recognisied despite against the huge pride of those nations. Jean Carpantier, Guido Manselli, Marco Merlini, Gordon Childe, Marija Gimbutas, Yannick Rialland, M. Riehmschneider, Louis de la Valle Poussin, Olaf Hoekman, John Mandis, William Schiller, Raymond Dart, Lucian Cuesdean, Sbierea, A. Deac, George Denis, Mattie M.E., N. Densuseanu, B.P. Hajdeu, P Bosch, W. Kocka, Vladimir Gheorghiev, H. Henchen, B.V. Gornung, V Melinger, E. Michelet, A. Mozinski, W. Porzig, A. Sahmanov, Hugo Schmidt, W. Tomaschek, F.N. Tretiacov are among the huge number of specialists which consider Romania the place of otehr Europeans origines and Romanian the oldest language in Europe, older even than Sanskrit. According to the researchers and scientists, the Latin comes from the old Romanian (or Thracian) and not vice versa. The so called "slave" words are in fact pure Romanian words. The so called vulgar Latin is in fact old Romanian, or Thracian language, according to the same sources... The arguments sustaining the theories from above are very numerous and I don't want to go into them so deeply as long as the forum is and has to remain one languages dedicated, to. In the limits of the language, please allow me to present a list of just a few (out of thousands of words), which are very similar/ even identical in Romanian and Sanskrit: Romanian numerals : unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci, sase, sapte...100=suta Sanskrit numerals: unu, dvi, tri, ciatru, penci, sas, saptan...100 = satan then Romanian Sanskrit acasa acasha (at home) acu acu (now) lup lup ( wolf) a iubi (considered slave) iub (love) frate vrate (brother) camera camera (room) limba lamba (tongue) nepot napat (neffew) mandru mandra (proud) lupta lupta (fight) pandur pandur (infanterist) nevasta navasti (wife) prieten prietema (friend) pranz prans (lunch time) Ruman Ramana (Romanian) saptamana saptnahan (week) struguri strughuri (grapes) vale vale (valley) vadana vadana (widow) a zambi dzambaiami (to smile) umbra dumbra (shadow) om om (man-kind) dusman dusman (enemy) a invata invati (to study) a crapa crapaiami (to break something) naiba naiba (evil) apa apa (water) and not AQUA like in Latin. It looks like aqua came from apa and not the other way around... and so on for more than thousand situations... According to M. Gimbutas, the confusion Roman (Romanian as in original language) = Roman (ancient Rom citizen), is generated by the fact that Romans and Romanians have been the same nation, the same people. The Dacians/Thracians and Romans have been twins. The illiterate peasants called Romanians, Ruman and not Roman. Why do they call so? Because RU-MANI, RA-MANI, RO-MANI, API, APULI, DACI and MAN-DA , VAL-AH are all synonyms expressing the person from the river banc or from the river valley. APII could be found under the form of mez-APPI in the ancient Italy, under he same name as the APPULI Dacians. APU-GLIA, (or Glia Romanilor in Romanian - Romanian land) can be found with this meaning only in Romanian (Glia= land) In the Southern side of Italian "booth" exists the first neolitical site of Italy and it is called MOL-feta. The name itself has Romanian names, according to Guido A. Manselli: MOL-tzam (popular Thank you), MUL-tumire (satisfaction), na-MOL (mud); MOL-dova (province and river in Romania, Za-MOL-xis, Dacian divinity. Manselli said that this archaeological sit is 7,000 years old and has a balcanic feature. I came up with this topic just to hear decent opinions and not banalities like those of a few days ago when while surfing for a language forum, I read all kind of suburban interventions. This topic is for people whith brain only. th-cam.com/video/IhDMWmGOBrA/w-d-xo.html
Locutio sermonis translata est proxima non idem et quid fuit conceptum in mente. Necesse cognoscere totum mundum sermonis ut intelligeri sermo sicut locutor sermonis voluit significare.
With regards to if and how the language should be allowed to change, I think that Arabic is a great example. The classical language or Fusha remains relatively conservative, which allows people to be able to read the Qur'an and other old texts, while the "dialects" (essentially different languages if you ask me) continue to develop and change. This combination of a standard, relatively unchanging, literary language (that still can be and is spoken!) alongside more colloquial versions of the language that freely develop even until different variations are barely intelligible to each other, is ideal to me. It seems to me to be what the situation of Latin and the Romance languages was for much of the middle ages until the latter were standardized themselves. Anyway that's just my two cents.
My Dad and his 7 siblings were all born in the US to a pair of Italian immigrant parents. His parents were both from Avellino, Campania, in Southern Italy. He and his sibs were all taught Italian before learning English. His parents, for the most part, spoke no English at all throughout their lives. His mother, my grandmother, learned to speak a little English as she got older, i.e., in her senior years after all her children were adults. My Dad was the youngest child in the family. He learned English from his siblings, friends, and while attending public school. In high school, he learned to read and write Latin and then to speak it... but I don't think he really spoke it in a way anyone would call conversational. (Side Note: My Dad was Salutatorian of his high school class. Not bad for a pre-war Italian kid from very poor, illiterate, immigrant parents. 🙂) During WW2, he served in France and Germany as a US Army combat soldier. During that time, he learned to speak both French and German. I wouldn't say he spoke those languages fluently, but he spoke them close to fluently. He always said that his background of speaking Italian and English, and then learning to read and write Latin, made learning French and German a piece of cake for him.
If Renaissance, new Latin, contemporary Latin all model after the same golden age Classical Latin, what distinguishes them into different eras? They seem very similar to one another compared to the differences with classic vs. late or Medieval Latin
I just came here from your "vulgar latin is not a thing" video. I'm curious: do you use the term here to simplify things or did you change your mind? I mean, did you think there was "vulgar latin" but then you investigated more and learned it wasn't a thing?.
Thanks for checking out the content. This is indeed an earlier video. But like I said in the Vulgar Latin video, the term can be used if defined clearly. The problem is that it’s defined so differently in various academic disciplines that it is best avoided unless very explicitly explained.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for your reply!. I find videos about languages fascinating, I've been watching a lot of stuff about romance languages and it's very fun and educational.
I'm only 12 minutes into the video, but it seems you might want to take a look at Jürgen Leonhardt's "Latin. Story of a World Language" (bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-07-21.html - incidentally, "world language" reminds me of the phrase discussed by Jessie Craft in the recent episode of Leg. XIII). There's also this excellent lecture by prof. Leonhardt at Columbia University (th-cam.com/video/oERbD19kyRY/w-d-xo.html) - basically a summary of his book. Chapter 1 contains some VERY interesting statistics, and answers to many questions you're asking here.
I need a translation in Contemporary Latin for "Atlantic Daylight Time". This recently new term originally was Atlantic Daylight Savings Time, which the word Savings was removed, so you understand the context of the phrase. The problem I have is the word "Daylight". As well, I need a correct form of the phrase in Contemporary Latin. The results I was given varied. Typical word arrangement was in reverse to English. Example: Tempus Dies Lux Atlanticus. The problem with this phrase is Daylight becomes 2 words. I would appreciate help from anyone who can assert correct grammar, from a certified linguistics point. THANKS
English does not come from Latin, but after the Norman conquest its vocabulary and structure was brutally modified. In a BBC report, the University of Oxford states the following: the English language is made up of this way: Vocabulary: 60% Latin, and only 28% Anglo-Saxon; grammar: 48% Anglo-Saxon structure, 39% Latin structure; the rest of the grammar structure comes from Celtic and Greek. For this reason philologists consider English a Hybrid, saying that English is a hybrid is the right thing to do.
It's worth bearing in mind also that English has a freakishly enormous vocabulary, because we have a LOT of synonyms. Consider "help" vs "aid", help has a Germanic etymology and aid has a Latin etymology. The way we use them today will differ depending on context and formality, but it is essentially the same meaning. There are many many more examples in English of this Germanic vs Latin etymology of synonyms.
And yet there are subtle differences of meaning: freedom/liberty, worth/value, feeling/sentiment, work/labour and so on. It would be interesting to compare words of ancient Greek origin and Latin origin: democracy/republic, logic/reason or ratio, philanthropy/charity erotic/amorous, ethics/morality and so on.
As long as Latin stays in use it will necessarily have innovations. We can preserve the style and grammar, but it is absolutely impossible to avoid new vocabulary and new phrases as long as the language is alive. If today we use the terms and phrases our ancestors couldn't have even imagined in the 19th century, it doesn't mean we are using "improper" English, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Ukrainian etc. Latin has fixed grammar, as it is a "standardized" literary language - so be it. But we shouldn't absolutely avoid innovations if we don't want the language to die out.
On the 'questio' of words. You mentioned that we want to access the golden age literature. I think many want to access all the literature (before and after). I want to read medieval texts too, so I do not find it strange to you medieval words too. There are also new things to be described - new inventions, new ideas - which need new terms. I think it's natural to adopt new words for them. Changing the language into a new romance one would require much more than just a bunch of new words - English is still considered a Germanic language even though most of its vocabulary is not Germanic. We can still use the style and language of Cicero instead of later or earlier Latin with these small additions. I'm personally open to them because I learn Latin for the sake and fun of learning it. It's not my main goal to read classical literature. I'm more interested in language history, so I personally wouldn't stick too prescriptively to the golden age rules. Having this as a reference point is very useful for international usage - it's easier to understand each other if we all use e.g. more or less the same pronunciation instead of all the variations (like it can be really difficult or impossible to understand Australian English for someone who is not used to it, even if the speaker uses standard words). In my humble opinion sticking to strictly to the classical period and not seeing the development of this language (without it changing to another one) would mean losing a lot of it. Latin is the rare case (maybe the only one) when a language kept on developing without actually changing into another language. It would be a little bit like saying that we should only speak Shakespeare and ignore everything that happened after his time. Anyway, a wonderful video! Thanks! :)
Thank you for your comments, Jan! You say Latin "developed" after the Classical period - but did it? I would say no. Other than a scant few new vocabulary terms, and the occasional lapse of proper grammar in the Mediaeval period, Latin has not developed at all. But perhaps we are thinking of different things. In which way do you feel Latin has undergone development or transformation?
@@polyMATHY_Luke I think we should think of a language evolution as a process of language change (like Latin to Italian, Old English to Modern English etc.). Development is not this kind of change. It's more on vocabulary level, because every language must adapt to describe new inventions, ideas, thoughts. Usually this is a part of language evolution, but I think with Latin the situation is different. It stayed the same, so we still use Latin as it was used by Cicero (grammar for example), but developed to describe all the development of human thought, philosophy, technology that has developed since Cicero. Without this, I think, it would be a dead language, unable to describe the way we, modern people, think.
Wow I see you were really careful in not using the word Greek or Greece and it’s influence on Latin and Rome But it was very interesting as Grade 3 subject
Bit late to this. But I’d say dead would just be described in this sense that it’s never going to be someone’s first language. Thinking in native tongue is always going to be more intertwined to your brain
Late (by 4 years) but how were the events of the Punic Wars remembered if not by the written word? I know historians, then as now, wrote of events that happened centuries before but weren’t there contemporary historians? No minutes of senate meetings? I ask because his timeline reads as though nothing of written Latin was much known before Plautus.
Absolutely there were, but they were lost by the end of antiquity. We know about several such authors thanks to the Classical authors’ writings about them, but we usually only have Classical authors since those were deemed of greater value. I know, a tragedy.
Most folks are familiar with the similar evolution of Greek versions from the early tribes, to their fusion in the Koine, Byzantine then Katharevousa and modern. Likewise English, old - middle - modern. But few may know that ancient Egyptian still echoes in Coptic.
I believe the definition of a dead language is: A language not used in everyday basic trade, education, or communication. This definition can be spun around by word spinners, so....I guess whether a language is dead is based on the success of using the language and seeing how many people understand it in your everyday adventures.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Apparently Late Modern English isn't a used term, but if it were, J.A. would be LME, since EME is up to the 17th century and J.A. was born in the 1700s.
You said “don’t worry about it” so would like an earlier version be phrased more like “worry not”. Is that the type of ‘splitting hairs’ that you’re talking about?
When we speak Latin (or listen to rock stars such as you guys speak Latin), I describe project that not as one of "living Latin" but rather as "live Latin".
Thinking of the manner in which the Roman empire extended itself, like tentacles, probing into the hinterlands and rubbing shoulders ultimately with barbarians of every shade and tongue, it would seem logical that Latin would quickly begin a process of metamorphosis in adapting to the realities of those who spoke it day in and day out. The soldier building Hadrian's wall might end up interacting with a Gaelic speaker and vice versa, in the south, east, west, everywhere it was a matter of survival, daily interaction, we pick up phrases, ways of expressing things, words are adopted. Really, it is amazing it remained as stable as it did. My Latin is terrible, but if I read something from 1500, (my experience is with Latin chant music) I'm pretty sure if Plautus could see it he would understand it. Having punctuation, capitals, etc certainly make reading Latin easier for me. I struggle at the best of times, but if it is messy hand script with no spaces or anything it is like omg impossible. The letters don't even look normal to modern eyes with the best glasses on. I love singing in Latin, so that is my main interest, and of course it is ecclesiastical pronunciation mostly, but I do try to get it right. Someone once asked me if I was Italian after hearing me lol. (I'm not)
A very good introduction to Latin & its place in modern language studies. But .... You totally ignored the 1st 501 years, according to your timeline, of the language. The problem, as I see it, is in Latin teaching, which concentrates on getting exam passes, certainly in the UK, as I'm aware from personal knowledge. I'd be interested to know your views on this, since it relates to my primary interest - the development of languages generally.
St Jerome would have been a priest of Christianity, which was the poor man's religion in Rome for many years, and Augustine was rumored to have been taught Latin by priests and was not a born speaker of Latin. So in many ways, both of those guys probably spoke vulgar Latin. The Latin spoken by scholars and the wealthy roman born Latin speakers was classical Latin, like you said in the video. To sum it up, You learned how to speak rich man's Latin.🧐
Personnally i think using the color terms etc from late/mediæval/renaissance/new latin is ok. But i'm not much of a classicist, i don't think latin belongs exclusively to the classical era.
Latin was the international language of all affairs of business, law, politics, diplomacy for thousands of years. Many laws and their traditions were established in Europe when Latin was the only dominant language
Gratias plurimas! 18: Death of Ovid. 133: Don't know. People talk about the death of either Juvenal or Suetonius, but we don't have sure dates for those. Oxford Latin Dictionary goes down to 180 because that's the date of the Acts of Scillitan Martyrs, the first dated Christian Latin, and I guess they thought the language fell off a cliff after that.
Ahh, thank you! Of course, I should have remembered that was the death of Ovid. Very sad. I visited his statue in Constanța, Romania, in 2017. Haha, good point on the 180 AD.
polýMATHY That’s why gender neutral PC English is focussed on pronouns whilst gender neutral German needed to invent the Binnen-I, the Innen suffix with a capital I.
Watch Part 2 of this discussion here! th-cam.com/video/S-s3Wfdt2y8/w-d-xo.html 😃 Thanks so much for liking and subscribing!
I got sooooo excited when I saw the title of this video + 40 minutes. Keep it up! The other vid you put up about why Latin is important to learn was also very encouraging
Haha really?! :D I thought that the video was *way* too long. But if you enjoyed it I am really happy! Thanks. I hope you like part 2 as well, coming later this week.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I AGREE....WAY TOO LONG.
@@polyMATHY_Luke no it’s great you have plenty of short videos.
I had a history teacher in high school who when we learned the periods of those times in which Latin was spoken made us say the answer to his questions in Latin which he also asked us in Latin.
Best history teacher ever!
@@polyMATHY_Luke More of a Latin teacher than a History teacher IMO.
It is definitely necessary to keep Latin standardized. However, I think it should be allowed to add new constructions to the language to better fit modern usage, so long as it doesn't detract from the value of Classical Latin or inhibit the ability for Latin speakers to read all Latin literature. I'm not too informed on this subject, but that's what I would say.
I would say that the language should certainly allow for new words and expressions (as it has done very ably for 2,000+ years). But I would push back against new constructions (e.g., replacing the genitive with "de ___," or the _wholesale_ replacement of accusative + infinitive with "quod ____" for indirect discourse). That's how the structure of the language itself changes over time, something which would not be appropriate for Latin.
@@tnyeager this. Maintain structure but add vocabulary for modern context, like automobile.
Standardize the language doesn't mean fossilize it.
I would argue that the introduction of neologisms can be avoided if we use latin roots, suffixes and prefixes to create new words.
I appreciate your open and honest teaching style. Thank you.
Thanks for watching!
I am learning Latin, not gonna lie, very exhausting language (but also, very interesting on how different it really is).
I totally encourage people who like to learn, to also include Latin in your learning process !! .
Wow, honestly didn’t expect a reply, let alone from the host! I should have led with I really enjoy your channels. Cheers from the Windy City.
🇦🇩🇪🇸🇵🇹 - iberic latin
🇧🇪🇫🇷🇲🇨🇨🇭 - gallic latin
🇮🇹🇸🇲🇻🇦 - italic latin
🇷🇴🇲🇩 - balcanic latin (italian + french dictionary)
Now you have to know which country belongs with these flags
@@anniemannie6 easy
Exactly. People say that Latin is a dead language which is not true at all. It's like saying that English is a dead language because no one speaks it the way it was spoken 1500 years ago. Latin is basically another name for Old Italian, Old. Spanish, Old Romanian, etc.
@@FarfettilLejl The romance languages are just latin with accents.
Romania and Moldova are not part of the Balkans is only 5% of the country
He has a wonderful friendly voice. I sure enjoyed listening to him explain about Latin. He has great pronunciation. Thank You sir. 2021
Honestly, I think the neologisms are fine. As long as the core remains there and faithful, it won't cause too much harm. The language is still Latin and the books from antiquity and communication from more conservative speakers will still make sense, but you still have more options for expression if you choose to use them.
How is a language harmed, exactly?
@@HM-vk8bd By allowing Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings use of it.
cant believe there are so many friends who love latin
Mirabile visu. Nonne?
an enjoyable watch! i was confused about all the different versions, but now I have a clearer picture. thanks!
I liked this video. It taught me something. You can learn the words of another language, but that doesn't mean you know the order in which they go. Like you said, some words don't exist in other languages, and so you must be poetic when you speak. For instance, a famous roman senator ended his speeches with "Carthage must fall." In our present language, there are many ways to say this. I would have said : "Carthage must be destroyed." You could also say "Carthage must die." It's possible in ancient Latin that the word "die" had another meaning, and the word "destroy" never existed at all. So if anything died or was destroyed in ancient times, It was referred to as "fallen, or has fell." If you wanted to say something was a redish orange color, you would say "It is the color of autumn leaves of oak." I think it is a descriptive language, and over the years, people found ways to shorten the vernacular for ease of use. Great video.
"Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." - Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Carthago has to be destroyed.
The Roman senator Cato the Elder is said to have said this sentence at the end of every speech he held in the Senate. He lived in the midst of the second century before Christ. It is not certain whether Cato actually said this sentence. Only the historian Plutarch quotes him saying so in the first volume of his biography in the year 75 AD in Greek language ("Δοκεῖ δέ μοι καὶ Καρχηδόνα μὴ εἶναι"), which literally means: "It seems to me alright that Carthago shall not be."
so THAT's why I have been having such a hard time finding color terminology when trying to teach my children latin!
Thank you Luca ❤
Great video, I've enjoyed it very much. Everyone interested in the Latin language should know all the things you say in this video. I think the 'Golden Age' Latin is the only 'version' that should be studied, all the rest (like Late Latin and Medieval) picking up and accommodating as one wishes to read Latin literature from that given period. Be that as it may, but I think speaking Latin and writing books nowadays in Latin give way to the more important goal of learning Latin: to be able to read ancient books in original, not in translated forms. I mean isn't it the primary goal, isn't it why the majority of people start to learn this language: just to be able to read and understand original thoughts of men, not translated, interpreted and placed on the dish for consumption? : ) So, I think the basis should be - the Golden Age, the rest - as one wishes afterwards.
Your channel is the gem for a lover of the Latin language, keep up the good work! (Sorry for my broken English)
Thanks for your response, Andrey! Your English is entirely unbroken. А вы говорите по-русски или по-украиски?
Thank you so much for your kind words! Also thank you for the thoughtful response. I have a question in turn: if the goal is to read the literature, and the vast, vast majority of Latin literature was written after the Classical period, should we not be equally prepared to read the Mediaeval and Renaissance literature?
Absolutely! Moreover, I'm convinced that one should strive to master Latin in all its variety to be able to read everything that was ever written in it, the important books. But, I still think that the Classical Latin should have a priority in learning Latin, and only afterwards, after one has mastered it at least at some level, should one proceed to learn the rest. Since what's the point of learning such words as 'ecclesia' and the grammar of the Late/Medieval Lain if they don't appear in writings of the Classical period. But when one starts reading ecclesiastical writings then he, of course, should expand his vocabulary etc., but that is the next step, in my opinion.
P.S. И да, я говорю по-русски и по-украински, мои родные языки. Как я посмотрю, то вы и эти языки уже присматриваете для изучения, помимо латинского, итальянского и сколько там ещё языков вы знаете? : )
@@andrey5666 - I get where you’re coming from but I think that even if we stay more with ancient Latin, the other eras should at least be mentioned more often. Like e.g.: letting students read Horatius? Throw in a poem by Konrad Celtis (~1500 AD) that obviously referenced him! Reading Ovidius or Tibullus? Let them read love poetry by later _pope_ Pius II.! 😄 In Germany, many people have learned a bit of Latin in school but no one knows what Middle- and Neo-Latin is. In Austria then, school curriculums afaik prescribe up to 30% of Latin school texts to be post-classical! People, at least if they even learn Latin, should know how essential that language has been for Western culture: Latin as international language at universities instead of English! Latin being printed more than German _in Germany_ up until around the year 1600!
I'm not a linguist so not very interesting to me, But seems well summarized and worth enough to know the latin language history
Beware! I started out by just getting a video from TH-cam. Now I am have become beguiled by language and its history. Be careful the spell is not caste upon you. TH-cam has a way of sending their algorithms. 😂
Haha you are most welcome here!
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🤦
As for the main question, how much is too far... The problem is as old as Erasmus' "Ciceronianus" :) I think we can really use Latin in a very flexible way, provided we're doing it consciously (keep "ipsissimus" a joke and you'll be fine, to use your own example). First of all (and this is my confiteor, too), let us read 50x more than we speak, and we should be all right. The new wave of Latin speakers (which is by all means a reason to celebrate) often seems to be a little over-enthusiastic about inventing new words or phrases when there's no need to do so. We have to remember that there has been continuity in the use of Latin from the 1st century BC practically to the 19th century, and most of the things we could ever wish to speak about have been already covered by our predecessors. The only break is the one that happened at the end of the 19th century (and definitely after the Second World War) - technological advancement (and ideological changes, possibly) were faster than the development of Latin vocabulary. These changes happened - for the first time in history - thanks to people who hadn't received full Latin education and therefore didn't use Latin to speak about their inventions from day one. It is only because of this that we sometimes struggle to give Latin names to certain modern objects, actions or processes, or rather: this should be considered the only justifiable reason of this struggle - otherwise it's simply our own ignorance of Latin.
We are fully entitled to fill in this 19th/20th/21st century gap - it is even our duty. However, before we start to think about introducing something new into Latin, we need to make sure three times that this new word describes a really modern concept, something that people had absolutely NO CHANCE to discuss before the 19th century. We don't want to use "internationalis", because the idea of internationality is not new: there have always been different nations or countries and there must have been some way to speak about it - sometimes we just need to search deeper in order to find expressions like "omnium gentium" or "commercia, quae inter homines habentur". We need to be respectful of the choices made by the previous generations, but we have a free hand when it comes to giving Latin names to things that they couldn't even imagine. This is why I'm allergic to the notorious "laboro" in the meaning of "opus facio", but have nothing against the modern usage of "raeda", introducing "computatorium" (NOT "computatrum" ;) ), or even "pagina facebookiana" (although "prosopobiblion" is growing strong ;) ). This will be also a rule of thumb when assessing the quality of non-classical Latin of all periods: does this medieval author use this word because it is a completely new idea, unknown to ancient Romans, or is it merely a sign of his ignorance? If the latter is the case, we should probably disregard his choice and stick to the older usage. We need to be very sensitive, though: I would never dare to censor a poet or a person with "special abilities" like Hildegard - if she decided that "coruscatio" is the best word to describe what she saw in her vision, who am I to judge :)
One last point is that there is nothing wrong in introducing new new formations into Latin as long as they do not replace the previous ones. Leonhardt gives the example of the medieval "quod" phrases which were commonly used at some point by less educated writers, but have never replaced the classical ACI. This is a great characteristic of the development of Latin: as long as we look back at the classical canon, Latinitas can only be expanded, but never changed.
Thank you for such a detailed and thoughtful response, Katarzyna! Those of us who know your mastery of Classical literature as well as spoken Latin should look to your counsel in these matters, as you may have given a more satisfactory response than I could have imagined receiving with respect to these challenging issues. We decided to read your comments aloud today in the weekly Latin chat on Google Hangouts, and we came up with an analogy that you inspired: Italians, among other peoples the world over beyond the Anglosphere, often use (and too much! in opinion) English in their daily proceedings, replacing their common words with the seemly fancier English ones, saying "meeting," "boyfriend, and "weekend" without batting an eye, words that sound utterly strident in the otherwise exquisitely beautiful language.
But their overuse of English replacing their native words in common discourse is only part of the problem; more and more they invent new English terms and titles and phrases, often for the purpose of advertising to tourists, that no English speaker can rightly understand. They do this, as always, because it's cool. But there are proper English terms and phrases that would be perfectly apt for their intended uses; they are merely ignorant of them. They end up looking as foolish as the nonsensical phrases one might find on www.Engrish.com (a great site for a laugh).
And we who over-invent Latin neologisms (and you have rightly kept me in line in this regard :-) ) can end up sounding just as silly and wrong to people who do know the language well, creating barbarisms that distance ourself from all Latinity, rather than approach it. I think your advice, that to be intimately familiar with, and to research, the entire corpus literature, particularly the Latīnitās recentior, in order to find the right terms that might already have currency, is of vital importance.
Speaking for myself at least, an error we modern teachers can, and have, fallen into is being familiar fairly exclusively with the staples of Classical literature *only* (and not having read wonderful pieces like the Noctes Atticae, whose next installment from you I am eagerly awaiting, by the way! :-D ), while eschewing the recent Latin literature due to the mistaken belief that it is truly "lesser," thus missing a potentially perfect word or phrase, while falling into the very barbarity that we might have initially sought to avoid.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Great analogy! Although "weekend" (or "łikend", as we say in Polish ;) ) is a very recent concept introduced in the English speaking world, so the borrowing is justified, possibly even in Latin 😜
@@NoctesWratislavienses Hehe at least you spell it phoneticaly! :D Unlike the Italians. The more Italian term is "il fine settimana," which seems to do the job just fine.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Aww, sorry to disappoint you, but "łikend" spelled phonetically is substandard Polish, informal communication. Official dictionaries give "weekend". We do say "koniec tygodnia" (lit. "end of the week"), but it has a different meaning: "end of the working week", i.e. "by Friday".
I repeat: LET THE LANGUAGE EXPAND. Change is good - as long as we are fully aware of what's being changed and why.
@Noctes Wratislavienses The laziness and mechanicalness of borrowing. In Dutch we use 'weekend' pronounced like English but with a Dutch accent, so it comes out as veekent. The irony is that a perfectly Dutch form is available, either weekeinde, weekeind, or even the shortened form weekend (pronounced more or less vaykent).
AWESOME VIDEO!! THANK YOU! I LEARNED ALOT!!!
I would LOVE to learn Latin. I already speak 6 languages (at different levels obviously) so it can't be too difficult. The only thing keeping me back is the fact that I have never learned a "dead" (I know it isn't dead, but you know what I mean) language before.
Here is the solution! my videos: th-cam.com/video/j7hd799IznU/w-d-xo.html
learn Tamil. The only living classical language worth to be learned at all.
LIngua Latina Per Se Illustrata Pars I Familia Romana....You can teach yourself!
@@user-xk2ot7eg7f lmfao? why
You are giving a multi-faceted illustration of how Latin is not a "dead" language.
Thanks! Though I think this clarifies it: th-cam.com/video/krNKKZa6VP4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=q9kjee4bjQ-oVdTA
Among the many song translations I make on my channel, there are some into Romagnolo and some into Sicilian. So I'm doing my part towards preserving "dialetti" :).
Another question: What happened to the Italic contemporaries of Old Latin? I would expect them rather having merged into rural dialects of Latin retaining some degree of substrate features, than outright having disappeared. Something similar happened to much of the East Frisian language when the region merged into other northern German principalities: It converged into Low German, retaining a lot of substrate vocabulary, while a lot of local people did not directly feel the shift and loss of their original language. This happened within a few centuries, within a few generations.
With this idea in mind, not only Latin is the proto-language of the romance languages, but, at lest for Italy, the other Italic languages and hence proto-Italic was for the Italian dialects...
@@burkhardstackelberg1203
A lot of the speakers of the Italic languages took part in and perished with the Social War (91 - 87 BCE), after which their land was colonized with Roman Latin speaking veterans.
@@someopinion2846 Did they indeed? I would not expect a four year war being devastating to millions of people in antiquity, without leaving us with an appropriate historical and archeological record. This might have happened to the elites to some degree, but I doubt this for the entire population.
@@burkhardstackelberg1203
Did you just claim that the Social War of 91 - 87 BCE didn't leave any historical and archeological record?
@@someopinion2846 Did I claim, there wasn't *any* record for the social war? Re-reading my comment, I would say I did not - I said, a war killing millions in four years leaving no ttaces of the other Italic cultures should leave us with a different set of archeological and historical evidence than the one I was taught in school or I found on the net. Do you have good sources to study this mass-killing you propose? My state of knowledge is: The war was settled with surviving Italic socii, giving them Roman civil rights, but the construct still favoured very much the romans, and the non-Roman Italic languages had still some decades to live.
Beautiful Luke! Thank you!!
Your handwriting is really cool
Thanks for making this! I of course teach classical Latin, explaining to my kids that it will give them a foundation from which to read any other Latin sources from other periods, much like learning the basic footwork for a ballroom dance before taking on the myriad of variations. I would love to see a follow-up video, though, that addresses the parallel timeline of ecclesiastical Latin. Say, for example, I pick up an encyclical (or other papal document) from the late Latin period, vs an encyclical from the medieval period, vs one from the Renaissance period, vs one from, say, the 19th or 20th century. I would expect that the grammatical changes track differently than they do on your "academic/literary Latin" timeline, since ultimately, they end up looking quite different in the modern age. Or, I suppose, at what point do they begin to diverge?
Thanks for watching, Marisa! :D By a parallel timeline of Ecclesiastical Latin, I'm not sure what that would be. The Latin of the church has always had the characteristics of the Latin of other speakers and writers of the same period; Augustine writes in Latin Latin, Aquinas in Mediaeval Latin, and Egger in Contemporary Latin. The Vatican's Latin today is also entirely Classical - but like Latin of any period after the Golden Age, it can be susceptible to certain less Classical terms and infusions of barbarisms, which are not meant to create an alternative form of the language, but are merely mistakes or ignorance of proper style. See Aemilius Springhetti's Institutiones Stili Latini for more on the proper usage of theological terms. Can you think of examples to explain the differences you see in Ecclesiastical Latin in certain periods? The only difference I can think of today is in the pronunciation standards.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I was really asking! I didn't know if the shifts happened at different points in ecclesiastical Latin, particularly in the later periods, once it fell out of use in other secular areas, or how today's ecclesiastical Latin differs stylistically from the contemporary Latin which is largely imitative of classical Latin.
@@marisabruce6119 Ah I see! Well hopefully someone with a better education in the literature than what I have can lend us a helping hand. Adjuvāte nōs! :)
@irishxxkelt I love Poland!
Many recent Vatican documents (Vatican II and later) are characterized by barbarisms which would have been quite shocking to knowledgeable Latinists of a century earlier (Vatican I). I don't think that comes under the heading of the evolution of ecclesiastical Latin. It is the result of a terrible decline in standards. Present day Vatican Latinists are no longer proficient in their jobs. They're clumsy translators. In earlier periods Latin scholarship within the Church was subject to the same trends as outside the church. Renaissance Latinists and i.e. the Jesuits in the Counter Reformation were steeped in Classical Latin and often just as much in the business of emulating Golden Latin as secular authors. They had their Jerome and their Aquinas, which they honoured as the authors of the Vulgate and the Summa but whose Latin was not considered exemplary.
I think if you want Latin to remain a functional language like it was in the Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern periods, you'll have to accept, not necessarily grammar or syntax changes, but certainly new vocabulary and perhaps new phrases. After the fall of Rome, Latin ceased to really be about preserving some sort of replica of the classical language and became more of a conlang that was meant to serve as a functional lingua franca for all of Christendom.
You are confusing catholics for protestants and latin ties us to every other speaker of latin in history if we change it it will be as good as the romance languages and someone just a few countries away won't understand your latin. For example italian and portuguese or italian and romanian. If you want to speak a strange and abnormal latin for convenience then learn a romance language the latinitians have no patience for those who do not appreciate latin as is. Again learn a romance language if you want to speak a strange latin but might I remind you that you wouldn't be able to comunicate with most people who speak other romance languages. Latin is the only language that ties them together and all the romance languages can mostly understand it so if you learn latin you cancommunicate with everh speaker of any romance language. we can't change it now.
@Kamil Debiola Go watch ecolinguist's playlist titled Latin Language vs Romance Lnguages. They understand latin just fine even romanian.
@Kamil Debiola If a language says ete for some word and three languages come from it. One says te while the other says et those two can understand the mother language but not eachother. A third says ate and that one can understand the other three and the other three them. If the romans languages can't understand latin they have to be pretty messed up. I would list off a bunch of vocabulary but in summary the basic words are messed up such as french's ce for it while spanish and italian say lo while latin says id and the romance languages got lo from illius and ce from I think hoc or hic or haec. And by the way they are mutually inteligible you don't need to understand every single syllable that comes out of the other language speaker's mouth if you actually think that then you must be mental. My point still stands.
@Kamil Debiola The declensions don't matter because the roots are the similar and the other endings for tense don't matter because the roots are similar again my point still stands the endings don't matter the roots are similar enough.
Thank you for this lecture.
As someone writing his Ph.D. thesis about Neo-Latin literature, I really cannot stress enough how great people’s misconceptions are about Latin literature and how essential Latin actually as been for Western history and culture. If I mention the terms “Middle-Latin” and “Neo-Latin”, people look at me like, “Honestly sounds like a cool niche subject, but never heard of it.” And it’s really not their fault but partly actually that of Latin philology which, until the last ~50 years or less, looked down on most post-classical authors except maybe those of the absolute highest esteem (let’s say Erasmus and the poet Konrad Celtis as German examples).
One simply has to consider the following: it was only around _1600 fucking AD_ that German printing presses started to print more texts in German than in Latin.
Well said
Do you have a course on how to learn latin? I saw your conversation with the people from brazil and italy as well as spain? And was impressed with your fluency
Yes I do! Here it is: th-cam.com/play/PLU1WuLg45SiyrXahjvFahDuA060P487pV.html
Thanks!
@@polyMATHY_Luke thank you so much. You're an inspiration to me.
Aw thanks!
So whenever you have prescriptivism in language, there is usually some goal and that goal often has political dimensions. For example, the condemnation of certain dialects of English has a goal of asserting racial or class superiority. I think, with respect to why we have decided that Latin from the Late Republican Period is THE Latin, many commenters admired the authors for other reasons and perhaps identified with their outlooks on politics and philosophy, especially Cicero, and want to reconstruct this "ideal" period of history where (they believe) everyone was an educated scholar building massive public works and innovating engineering practices. Likewise, the same folks dislike the medieval period for its superstition and preoccupation with Medieval Christian values, so they are predisposed to discarding that. On some level, I think many latinists want to feel like they are continuing the legacy of people and a society that they admire and want to distance themselves from the legacy of a society that they feel strayed from the ideal and this manifests in making judgements about the "validity" of the language used.
True as far as it goes, but I think it’s worthwhile to look at Classical Latin as from a period when it was still spoken as a native language (as a formal register with the “vulgar” Latin of the day, which varies mostly in style rather than substance), and with a huge corpus of written work by these native speakers. It’s harder to recommend a period in history in which (for instance) the spelling or grammar varies widely because it’s no longer spoken natively, and what people *do* speak is drifting farther and farther until it becomes the Romance languages (coming into their own in the 12th to 14th centuries with Marie de France and the various tales of chivalry that so preoccupy Don Quixote several centuries later). It’s the same reason why Classical Chinese and Classical Arabic exist: they’re vital for reading and understanding written works that form the very bedrock of their literary traditions. Authors writing in these languages in a period of massive linguistic upheaval would also have paradoxically safeguarded their work against language change: you can safely study Classical Latin and read later works written in it, but the number of people who would understand, say, 9th-century proto-French is likely smaller.
heldenautie that’s definitely a factor. What’s funny is that Mediaeval Latin is barely distinguishable from Classical Latin, depending on the author. I’d say there are more differences between Modern English authors of different centuries, or between UK and US dialects.
I’m not sure “vulgar” is cognate with “folk”. Latin v usually corresponds to English w, not f. Examples: vidēre/wit, vidua/widow. English f, on the other hand, corresponds to Latin p. Examples: father/pater, hēafod/caput. (“Hēafod” is the progenitor of “head”.) If “vulgar” and “folk” were cognate, I would expect the English word to be “wolk” or the Latin word to be “pulgar”.
You’re right, people have attempted to find a connection with each other but never quite truly successful. Thanks! And sorry for the necropost
@@MiguelEMG I enjoyed your necropost and rereading my comment.
So you've never heard of wolksvagen
@@Chrisarva2408 I have not.
I would tend to think that Erasmus was the greatest of them all; his mother tongue being Dutch, he went on to become one of the greatest style masters of Latinitas.
Bravo! Few will dispute you, least of all me. :)
Is Latium coterminous with the modern Italian region of Lazio?
saiyajedi yes 😊
No, the modern region includes territories that in ancient times were part of Etruria or Sabinia.
For example, the Vatican was in Etruscan territory.
✨️🙂✨️
"How can we be post-modern when modern is today"... I thought I was the only one.
A living language suggests that it has native, primary language speakers who learns this tongue first from other native speakers, like family and friends.
Today, speakers of Latin are students who grew up from childhood with a distinctly different mother tongue, and have adopted Latin as a secondary or tertiary language.
I'll admit it would be great in my opinion if Latin became a living language again or at least merited wide adoption as a universal language for academic, political, or other international context.
Hypothetically, a restored classical Latin that could accommodate some new vocabulary while maintaining the grammatical structure or making allowances for colloquialisms, dialectical, and vulgar forms for spice would be a reasonable compromise. We tend to speak in a professional way at times, while speaking less formally much of the time, so it shouldn't be as problematic for students who have mastered Classical Latin to play with and enjoy the language as dynamically, creatively, humorously as we do in our native languages.
I don't know if Luke has moderated his view, that Latin isn't "dead", because it just seems like wishful thinking. I also wish Latin was alive again! But I think of it like this: I am a native speaker of American English, but I live in Germany and have a group of international friends where nobody is a native speaker of English. There is a big difference between how the group of Americans will speak vs. the group of non-native internationals. That doesn't mean the non-natives can't speak well, but they often do lack the shared full-fledged understanding of nuance, idioms, slang.
Latin is no Hebrew, and even modern Hebrew is not the same as that spoken 2000 years ago.
Hey Luke, love your videos! With the recent advances in knowledge of Etruscan pronunciation, have you spent any time studying it?
Not lately but it is very exciting
Great video! I subscribed. I have one question though, through time most important changes in latin occurred with the addition of new vocabulary? Or did the vocabulary from "classical latin" variate too much?. Thanks and greetings from Chile (forgive my english).
In respect to Lingua Latina, how long did it take you to be able to read original works in latin? Was it after pars secunda? I am currently immersed in the course myself, studying theology on the side, and am curious about the time-frame. Also, what is your experience with the students whom you are teaching the language, when do they start reading the originals?
Thanks for reading.
Salvē! The end of the first book introduces original poems in the context of a party. You'll be able to understand original texts immediately. And the second book is almost entirely original texts.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Salve! iam primum librum usque ad finem legi et mihi valde placuit! mensibus duobus ante coepi legere librum secundum ,nomine 'Roma aeterna', et unum quaestionem tibi habet: nonnumquam sententias lectas quae ex coniunctivo et vocabulo 'priusquam aut antequam' constant legi et volebam scire quid hac sententia cum coniunctivo significet? Fortasse tu mihi monstrabis ubi inveniam hanc explicationem, nam oblitus sum ubi legerim?
Thank you soo much for this video! been pausing and replaying it many times! very helpful and you really say what i wanted to know! one thing though,,, every time you say Cicero and Caesar i can't help to think about the pronunciation, why do you choose the English pronunciation over the latin if I may bluntly ask?? Thanks again for your very helpful video and keep up the good work !!!
He’s speaking in English so using the English pronunciation is proper here. I would pronounce Mexico using an English pronunciation rather than a Spanish one when communicating in English.
It’s kind of interesting that Marcus Aurelius wrote his “Meditations” in a language other than Latin. I wonder why he chose to do so. Is this because he didn’t think Latin had the range of language to express his thoughts on those matters even though there were Roman Stoic philosophers, such as Seneca the Younger, he probably read the works of before he kept that diary.
Yeah well there is quite a lot of good philosophy vocabulary in Greek, but my guess is just that as it was his personal journal, he chose to write it in this cool more ancient language.
23:07 #DiGLOSSIA equals for #BiLiNGÜE (#QuestionMark?)
PS: I love seeing your handwriting 🌈❤✍🏻🦄
Would you consider discussing the neo-Latinate IALs (international auxiliary languages), like Latino sine Flexione, Interlingua and Occidental-Interlingue?
My only comment on them is that
1) their premise is wrong: they assume highly inflected languages are difficult to learn, but this if false. Latin has been thought badly for a century or more in most places, but when taught well it’s just as easy to pick up as any language.
2) I strongly discourage people from what I consider a waste of time in studying them. Learning Latin brings access to the most amazing poetry ever composed and world history in the original. The conlangs, if they have any culture, are far more limited.
@@polyMATHY_Luke The second part of your response definitely hurts, being an Esperanto speaker myself. Nevertheless, I appreciate your honest and rapid response to my question. Thank you very much!
Can you please do a similar video for greek language?
I got goosebumps when he mentioned Newton
Golden/Silver age is the standard that should be taught/spoken/written. There are fewer sources than at later periods for sure but that is a factor of how much has been lost to time (perhaps 75%). Golden/Silver age Latin is far more standardized and therefore much easier to learn and is standard so there for a better tool to communicate with.
I love your voice
16:50 wasn't Dante the chap who thought that "Italian" should be standard? I think he wrote it in the De Vulgari Eloquentia
If etymology means the study of language..So what is the definition of language in the etymology behind the word language?
"etymology" is Greek for "true sense" en.wiktionary.org/wiki/etymology
the etymology is naakku meaning the organ tongue in tamil language.
Etymology means the search for the Ετυμον=étumon, “true sense”), neuter of ἔτυμος (étumos, “real, true, actual”) + Greek λόγος (lógos, “word, speech, discourse”).of the words, the origin (first root) and their original meaning, the result and the publication of the investigation of the origin, the origin, the course and the evolution of a word over time. It starts from the current state of the word and goes back as far as possible to the past, based on phonetic and semantic rules.
I think that you should have drawn that time graph the other way around: the older times up in the line and the more recent times down the line. At least in Spanish we say "bajo latín" for the latter and "alto latín" for the older one. I might be wrong, not an expert.
I am currently learning Latin. At dinner time my family has trivia around the table with the kids. We were going over the moghs of the year when we got to December. I thought to myself, Decem is ten in Latin. But its the twelth month. I had to look it up. I had totally forgotten that there was a calendar change in Julius Caesar's time. I wonder why they didnt change December or October to something dufferent. Anyways, i thought it was neat I recognized decem in December from my studies on Latin.
Crazily enough, the calendar change where January was made the first month instead of March was instituted under King Numa, the second king after Romulus; as far as we know, he was legendary more than historical.
@polyMATHY_Luke I did not know that. Thank you for sharing!
The transition from "Old Latin" to "Classical Latin" seems quite political to me. I'd love to hear more about the shaping and creation of Latin by those forces.
I am mostly untrained in language, so, as an outsider, Latin seems contrived to me. But, I had only one semester of Latin. I've been working on learning Spanish for a few years which seems a little more organic and grass roots than Latin. Not surprising. I've also been learning German at the same time, which is a interesting combination.
Now, I have just started Greek and I often find myself laughing. Learning Greek makes me feel like I am a contortionist. My goal isn't so much to speak any of the languages, but to understand history and people. For context, I have an Industrial Design background.
Very nice talk, but it would have been good to see more about ecclesiastical Latin.
Thats all we know from the ruins...salute u. Keep on going.
Do you have videos of the Latin versions of songs, like "Hīc sub mārī" or this video's "Ō herī"?
Yeah, they’re my videos, on my other channel ScorpioMartianus
I have a question. At about 9:20 you mention a text from the mid 2nd Century AD about conversations in Latin. What is the name of that text? You were speaking too quickly, I couldn't catch the name
I think that he is referring to "Interpretamenta" sometimes attributed to Dositheus Magister. It's called Hermeneumata or Ἑρμηνεύματα in Greek. It was written to teach Greek to Latin speakers and vice versa in the 3rd century.
Ho una curiosità per te (so che parli italiano e il mio inglese col traduttore è ridicolo); perché riguardo la "Golden age" scrivi di Cicerone e Cesare ma non di Virgilio? Lo trovo abbastanza strano visto che è considerato il più grande autore latino (per non parlare della sua influenza su Dante e non solo).
Non è una critica ma una autentica curiosità, semplice dimenticanza o c'è dell'altro? Grazie.
Virgilio è eccezionale! Certo. Lo stile della nostra prosa in latino è fondato sulle scritte di Cesare e Cicerone, questo è il motivo. Ma si ci sono molti autori nel periodo classico, per cui vedi questa mia pagina: bit.ly/ranierilatingreekauthors
@@polyMATHY_Luke Innanzitutto grazie per aver risposto.🙂
Non sapevo, non ho fatto il Classico e non ho mai studiato il latino, che gli scritti di Cicerone e Cesare rivestissero addirittura una importanza fondativa riguardo lo studio del latino, ho sempre pensato a Virgilio come massima espressione della letteratura latina e credevo in automatico fosse così anche per la lingua.
In ogni caso, sto guardando molti tuoi video e anche se non conosco l'inglese, grazie ai sottotitoli (non lo parlo ma riesco a leggerlo) comprendo praticamente tutto; ho fatto una riflessione, nel primo video che ho visto, riguardo la "musicalità" mentre parlavi latino (l'ho trovata strana), poi ne ho visti altri e questa musicalità mi è parso non ci fosse (dipenderà da me e dalla mia non conoscenza del latino e delle lingue in genere).
Ok, finisco questo lungo poema complimentandomi con te per la chiarezza con cui ti esprimi e la passione che trasmetti, ciao e grazie.
Why don't we ask computer programs (based on neural networks) to evaluate different forms of Latin? GPT3 might help creating new words in Latin or to answer some of the questions you pose. Teach the computer Latin based on the Cicero works and it can come up with new words. This type of approach should be studied for each and every language around the world, and to compare languages and create a family tree of languages over time.
talk about the Satyricon by Petronius
Salve, Lûke.
Is there anything such a Latin Academy that regulates the neologisms and new uses of Latin? I know that there are the Circuli Latini in certain cities where they practise and use Latin normally, the same as they do with Esperanto in the Esperanto Associations and Clubs. Is there any global congress on this?
See my Dictionaries video
Is it possible to find the text of the Interpretamenta? What's the whole title of this text? I'd like to know how did romans talk in their everyday life. ;-)
Yes! If you google the PDF you can definitely find it. But you should be warned that the Intepretamenta are definitely post-Classical Latin, so certain grammatical constructions are not part of the conversational language of Cicero’s or Augustus’s age.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you. First of all, I apologize for my English mistakes! ;-)
Of course, we must not confuse the history of Latin in its vulgar and erudite varieties.
My aim is to learn various pronunciations and linguistic styles of Latin. I am very attached to the typical prudence of the philologist and linguist. My background is in fact that of Italian Philology and of "sciences of language" (which is why I have a greater curiosity for vulgar Latin). It is in the context of that course of studies that I discovered historical linguistics and vulgar Latin that I began to become passionate about. But unfortunately, the university did not allow me to go deeper into these themes because they were not the main object of those studies. And so I find myself to be really interested and grateful to your videos and any help to learn better the history of vulgar Latin and the history of Latin pronunciation (both vulgar and classical).
A lot of scientists, linguists, archaeologists, historians etc. are considering that 8,500 years ago, Romania was the heart of the old European civilization. The new archaeological discoveries from Tartaria, (Romania), showed up written plates older than the Sumerian ones. More and more researches and studies converged to the conclusion that the Europeans are originated in a single place, the lower Danube basin. Down there, at Schela and Cladova in Romania have been discovered proves of the first European agricultural activities which appear to be even older than 10,000 years.
Out of 60 scientifically works which are covering this domain, 30 of them localize the primitive origins of the man-kind in Europe, where 24 of them are localizing this origin in the actual Romania, (Carpathian- Danubian area); 10 are indicating western Siberia, 5 Jutland and/or actual Germany room, 4 for Russia, 4 for some Asian territories, 1 for actual France area and all these recognisied despite against the huge pride of those nations.
Jean Carpantier, Guido Manselli, Marco Merlini, Gordon Childe, Marija Gimbutas, Yannick Rialland, M. Riehmschneider, Louis de la Valle Poussin, Olaf Hoekman, John Mandis, William Schiller, Raymond Dart, Lucian Cuesdean, Sbierea, A. Deac, George Denis, Mattie M.E., N. Densuseanu, B.P. Hajdeu, P Bosch, W. Kocka, Vladimir Gheorghiev, H. Henchen, B.V. Gornung, V Melinger, E. Michelet, A. Mozinski, W. Porzig, A. Sahmanov, Hugo Schmidt, W. Tomaschek, F.N. Tretiacov are among the huge number of specialists which consider Romania the place of otehr Europeans origines and Romanian the oldest language in Europe, older even than Sanskrit.
According to the researchers and scientists, the Latin comes from the old Romanian (or Thracian) and not vice versa. The so called "slave" words are in fact pure Romanian words. The so called vulgar Latin is in fact old Romanian, or Thracian language, according to the same sources...
The arguments sustaining the theories from above are very numerous and I don't want to go into them so deeply as long as the forum is and has to remain one languages dedicated, to.
In the limits of the language, please allow me to present a list of just a few (out of thousands of words), which are very similar/ even identical in Romanian and Sanskrit:
Romanian
numerals : unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci, sase, sapte...100=suta
Sanskrit
numerals: unu, dvi, tri, ciatru, penci, sas, saptan...100 = satan
then Romanian Sanskrit
acasa acasha (at home)
acu acu (now)
lup lup ( wolf)
a iubi (considered slave) iub (love)
frate vrate (brother)
camera camera (room)
limba lamba (tongue)
nepot napat (neffew)
mandru mandra (proud)
lupta lupta (fight)
pandur pandur (infanterist)
nevasta navasti (wife)
prieten prietema (friend)
pranz prans (lunch time)
Ruman Ramana (Romanian)
saptamana saptnahan (week)
struguri strughuri (grapes)
vale vale (valley)
vadana vadana (widow)
a zambi dzambaiami (to smile)
umbra dumbra (shadow)
om om (man-kind)
dusman dusman (enemy)
a invata invati (to study)
a crapa crapaiami (to break something)
naiba naiba (evil)
apa apa (water) and not AQUA like in Latin. It looks like aqua came from apa and not the other way around...
and so on for more than thousand situations...
According to M. Gimbutas, the confusion Roman (Romanian as in original language) = Roman (ancient Rom citizen), is generated by the fact that Romans and Romanians have been the same nation, the same people. The Dacians/Thracians and Romans have been twins. The illiterate peasants called Romanians, Ruman and not Roman. Why do they call so? Because RU-MANI, RA-MANI, RO-MANI, API, APULI, DACI and MAN-DA , VAL-AH are all synonyms expressing the person from the river banc or from the river valley. APII could be found under the form of mez-APPI in the ancient Italy, under he same name as the APPULI Dacians. APU-GLIA, (or Glia Romanilor in Romanian - Romanian land) can be found with this meaning only in Romanian (Glia= land)
In the Southern side of Italian "booth" exists the first neolitical site of Italy and it is called MOL-feta. The name itself has Romanian names, according to Guido A. Manselli: MOL-tzam (popular Thank you), MUL-tumire (satisfaction), na-MOL (mud); MOL-dova (province and river in Romania, Za-MOL-xis, Dacian divinity. Manselli said that this archaeological sit is 7,000 years old and has a balcanic feature.
I came up with this topic just to hear decent opinions and not banalities like those of a few days ago when while surfing for a language forum, I read all kind of suburban interventions. This topic is for people whith brain only. th-cam.com/video/IhDMWmGOBrA/w-d-xo.html
Muh Romanisch supremacy
Hai frate, las-o balta.
Locutio sermonis translata est proxima non idem et quid fuit conceptum in mente. Necesse cognoscere totum mundum sermonis ut intelligeri sermo sicut locutor sermonis voluit significare.
With regards to if and how the language should be allowed to change, I think that Arabic is a great example. The classical language or Fusha remains relatively conservative, which allows people to be able to read the Qur'an and other old texts, while the "dialects" (essentially different languages if you ask me) continue to develop and change. This combination of a standard, relatively unchanging, literary language (that still can be and is spoken!) alongside more colloquial versions of the language that freely develop even until different variations are barely intelligible to each other, is ideal to me. It seems to me to be what the situation of Latin and the Romance languages was for much of the middle ages until the latter were standardized themselves. Anyway that's just my two cents.
That’s a spot-on description
My Dad and his 7 siblings were all born in the US to a pair of Italian immigrant parents. His parents were both from Avellino, Campania, in Southern Italy. He and his sibs were all taught Italian before learning English. His parents, for the most part, spoke no English at all throughout their lives. His mother, my grandmother, learned to speak a little English as she got older, i.e., in her senior years after all her children were adults. My Dad was the youngest child in the family. He learned English from his siblings, friends, and while attending public school. In high school, he learned to read and write Latin and then to speak it... but I don't think he really spoke it in a way anyone would call conversational. (Side Note: My Dad was Salutatorian of his high school class. Not bad for a pre-war Italian kid from very poor, illiterate, immigrant parents. 🙂) During WW2, he served in France and Germany as a US Army combat soldier. During that time, he learned to speak both French and German. I wouldn't say he spoke those languages fluently, but he spoke them close to fluently. He always said that his background of speaking Italian and English, and then learning to read and write Latin, made learning French and German a piece of cake for him.
Thanks for the anecdote.
I just started learning latin for fun but I think I'm most interested in Vulgar Latin and then the golden age latin. I like roots
If Renaissance, new Latin, contemporary Latin all model after the same golden age Classical Latin, what distinguishes them into different eras? They seem very similar to one another compared to the differences with classic vs. late or Medieval Latin
Time
Cool
I just came here from your "vulgar latin is not a thing" video. I'm curious: do you use the term here to simplify things or did you change your mind? I mean, did you think there was "vulgar latin" but then you investigated more and learned it wasn't a thing?.
Thanks for checking out the content. This is indeed an earlier video. But like I said in the Vulgar Latin video, the term can be used if defined clearly. The problem is that it’s defined so differently in various academic disciplines that it is best avoided unless very explicitly explained.
@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for your reply!.
I find videos about languages fascinating, I've been watching a lot of stuff about romance languages and it's very fun and educational.
I'm only 12 minutes into the video, but it seems you might want to take a look at Jürgen Leonhardt's "Latin. Story of a World Language" (bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-07-21.html - incidentally, "world language" reminds me of the phrase discussed by Jessie Craft in the recent episode of Leg. XIII). There's also this excellent lecture by prof. Leonhardt at Columbia University (th-cam.com/video/oERbD19kyRY/w-d-xo.html) - basically a summary of his book. Chapter 1 contains some VERY interesting statistics, and answers to many questions you're asking here.
I need a translation in Contemporary Latin for "Atlantic Daylight Time".
This recently new term originally was Atlantic Daylight Savings Time, which the word Savings was removed, so you understand the context of the phrase.
The problem I have is the word "Daylight".
As well, I need a correct form of the phrase in Contemporary Latin. The results I was given varied.
Typical word arrangement was in reverse to English.
Example:
Tempus Dies Lux Atlanticus.
The problem with this phrase is Daylight becomes 2 words.
I would appreciate help from anyone who can assert correct grammar, from a certified linguistics point. THANKS
What fascinates most is that there're a latin terms for cell phones and computers.
English does not come from Latin, but after the Norman conquest its vocabulary and structure was brutally modified. In a BBC report, the University of Oxford states the following: the English language is made up of this way: Vocabulary: 60% Latin, and only 28% Anglo-Saxon; grammar: 48% Anglo-Saxon structure, 39% Latin structure; the rest of the grammar structure comes from Celtic and Greek. For this reason philologists consider English a Hybrid, saying that English is a hybrid is the right thing to do.
It's worth bearing in mind also that English has a freakishly enormous vocabulary, because we have a LOT of synonyms. Consider "help" vs "aid", help has a Germanic etymology and aid has a Latin etymology. The way we use them today will differ depending on context and formality, but it is essentially the same meaning. There are many many more examples in English of this Germanic vs Latin etymology of synonyms.
And yet there are subtle differences of meaning: freedom/liberty, worth/value, feeling/sentiment, work/labour and so on. It would be interesting to compare words of ancient Greek origin and Latin origin: democracy/republic, logic/reason or ratio, philanthropy/charity erotic/amorous, ethics/morality and so on.
As long as Latin stays in use it will necessarily have innovations. We can preserve the style and grammar, but it is absolutely impossible to avoid new vocabulary and new phrases as long as the language is alive. If today we use the terms and phrases our ancestors couldn't have even imagined in the 19th century, it doesn't mean we are using "improper" English, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Ukrainian etc. Latin has fixed grammar, as it is a "standardized" literary language - so be it. But we shouldn't absolutely avoid innovations if we don't want the language to die out.
On the 'questio' of words. You mentioned that we want to access the golden age literature. I think many want to access all the literature (before and after). I want to read medieval texts too, so I do not find it strange to you medieval words too. There are also new things to be described - new inventions, new ideas - which need new terms. I think it's natural to adopt new words for them. Changing the language into a new romance one would require much more than just a bunch of new words - English is still considered a Germanic language even though most of its vocabulary is not Germanic. We can still use the style and language of Cicero instead of later or earlier Latin with these small additions. I'm personally open to them because I learn Latin for the sake and fun of learning it. It's not my main goal to read classical literature. I'm more interested in language history, so I personally wouldn't stick too prescriptively to the golden age rules. Having this as a reference point is very useful for international usage - it's easier to understand each other if we all use e.g. more or less the same pronunciation instead of all the variations (like it can be really difficult or impossible to understand Australian English for someone who is not used to it, even if the speaker uses standard words). In my humble opinion sticking to strictly to the classical period and not seeing the development of this language (without it changing to another one) would mean losing a lot of it. Latin is the rare case (maybe the only one) when a language kept on developing without actually changing into another language. It would be a little bit like saying that we should only speak Shakespeare and ignore everything that happened after his time. Anyway, a wonderful video! Thanks! :)
Thank you for your comments, Jan! You say Latin "developed" after the Classical period - but did it? I would say no. Other than a scant few new vocabulary terms, and the occasional lapse of proper grammar in the Mediaeval period, Latin has not developed at all. But perhaps we are thinking of different things. In which way do you feel Latin has undergone development or transformation?
@@polyMATHY_Luke I think we should think of a language evolution as a process of language change (like Latin to Italian, Old English to Modern English etc.). Development is not this kind of change. It's more on vocabulary level, because every language must adapt to describe new inventions, ideas, thoughts. Usually this is a part of language evolution, but I think with Latin the situation is different. It stayed the same, so we still use Latin as it was used by Cicero (grammar for example), but developed to describe all the development of human thought, philosophy, technology that has developed since Cicero. Without this, I think, it would be a dead language, unable to describe the way we, modern people, think.
@@IoannesOculus Fair points!
What's the difference between salve and salvete?
Salve is to address one person, salvete to more people.
Wow I see you were really careful in not using the word Greek or Greece and it’s influence on Latin and Rome
But it was very interesting as Grade 3 subject
Bit late to this. But I’d say dead would just be described in this sense that it’s never going to be someone’s first language. Thinking in native tongue is always going to be more intertwined to your brain
Shocked you didn’t mention Virgil.
Indeed. Also..Aennius should be giving more love and Nepote.I guess it's a lot if stuff to track down. But Virgil was immense
Late (by 4 years) but how were the events of the Punic Wars remembered if not by the written word? I know historians, then as now, wrote of events that happened centuries before but weren’t there contemporary historians? No minutes of senate meetings? I ask because his timeline reads as though nothing of written Latin was much known before Plautus.
Absolutely there were, but they were lost by the end of antiquity. We know about several such authors thanks to the Classical authors’ writings about them, but we usually only have Classical authors since those were deemed of greater value. I know, a tragedy.
Most folks are familiar with the similar evolution of Greek versions from the early tribes, to their fusion in the Koine, Byzantine then Katharevousa and modern.
Likewise English, old - middle - modern.
But few may know that ancient Egyptian still echoes in Coptic.
I believe the definition of a dead language is:
A language not used in everyday basic trade, education, or communication. This definition can be spun around by word spinners, so....I guess whether a language is dead is based on the success of using the language and seeing how many people understand it in your everyday adventures.
All languages are dead outside their borders eccept few like English, Twi etc
Would Jane Austen be Early Modern English or Late Modern English?
Modern English
@@polyMATHY_Luke Apparently Late Modern English isn't a used term, but if it were, J.A. would be LME, since EME is up to the 17th century and J.A. was born in the 1700s.
You said “don’t worry about it” so would like an earlier version be phrased more like “worry not”. Is that the type of ‘splitting hairs’ that you’re talking about?
When we speak Latin (or listen to rock stars such as you guys speak Latin), I describe project that not as one of "living Latin" but rather as "live Latin".
That's a clever term.
So the Latin language that Julius Caesar spoken is that of the golden era which ties more into the classical?
Thinking of the manner in which the Roman empire extended itself, like tentacles, probing into the hinterlands and rubbing shoulders ultimately with barbarians of every shade and tongue, it would seem logical that Latin would quickly begin a process of metamorphosis in adapting to the realities of those who spoke it day in and day out. The soldier building Hadrian's wall might end up interacting with a Gaelic speaker and vice versa, in the south, east, west, everywhere it was a matter of survival, daily interaction, we pick up phrases, ways of expressing things, words are adopted. Really, it is amazing it remained as stable as it did. My Latin is terrible, but if I read something from 1500, (my experience is with Latin chant music) I'm pretty sure if Plautus could see it he would understand it. Having punctuation, capitals, etc certainly make reading Latin easier for me. I struggle at the best of times, but if it is messy hand script with no spaces or anything it is like omg impossible. The letters don't even look normal to modern eyes with the best glasses on. I love singing in Latin, so that is my main interest, and of course it is ecclesiastical pronunciation mostly, but I do try to get it right. Someone once asked me if I was Italian after hearing me lol. (I'm not)
Good 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍
16:30: *PetraRch
A very good introduction to Latin & its place in modern language studies. But ....
You totally ignored the 1st 501 years, according to your timeline, of the language. The problem, as I see it, is in Latin teaching, which concentrates on getting exam passes, certainly in the UK, as I'm aware from personal knowledge. I'd be interested to know your views on this, since it relates to my primary interest - the development of languages generally.
Does anyone know what power latin is? Not the word power but the language?
St Jerome would have been a priest of Christianity, which was the poor man's religion in Rome for many years, and Augustine was rumored to have been taught Latin by priests and was not a born speaker of Latin. So in many ways, both of those guys probably spoke vulgar Latin. The Latin spoken by scholars and the wealthy roman born Latin speakers was classical Latin, like you said in the video. To sum it up, You learned how to speak rich man's Latin.🧐
Personnally i think using the color terms etc from late/mediæval/renaissance/new latin is ok. But i'm not much of a classicist, i don't think latin belongs exclusively to the classical era.
How did Latin become a Legal base Language.. or use in legal terminologies
Latin was the international language of all affairs of business, law, politics, diplomacy for thousands of years. Many laws and their traditions were established in Europe when Latin was the only dominant language
Largely thanks to how influential Roman law was.
Res ipsa loquitur.
"The wine-dark sea"!
Doesn't "dead language" mean a language no longer spoken natively? Are there native speakers of Latin nowadays?
There are some bilingual children but that’s not really enough
I can speak it, but can't right it. Where can I learn that?
Gratias plurimas! 18: Death of Ovid. 133: Don't know. People talk about the death of either Juvenal or Suetonius, but we don't have sure dates for those. Oxford Latin Dictionary goes down to 180 because that's the date of the Acts of Scillitan Martyrs, the first dated Christian Latin, and I guess they thought the language fell off a cliff after that.
Ahh, thank you! Of course, I should have remembered that was the death of Ovid. Very sad. I visited his statue in Constanța, Romania, in 2017.
Haha, good point on the 180 AD.
5:36 So in english they call a female writer "autor" not "auctrix"...
We say "author" for both
polýMATHY That’s why gender neutral PC English is focussed on pronouns whilst gender neutral German needed to invent the Binnen-I, the Innen suffix with a capital I.
word for word, thought for thought, "I'm not very well versed on these texts"