I thought this was the case as well. But if you look closely, you'll see that they were asking other people (not the guy himself) if anyone can speak english.
Yeah, you're definitely right lol Shorter words in that "ma che stai/sta (he) addì/a dì?" so it's better with each other rather than "ma che stai/sta dicendo?" with any of the two. Although the french one is definitely still not close with that one as the italian one is, it's just the sound, there's no question when it comes to knowing what the words say and recognizing the words, especially because french is hard anyway.
@dusk6159 Yeah, they're definitely not* the same contracted words, but it's funny that it means the same thing and sounds pretty much the exactly the same (ok, the intonnation is different and Mais vs Ma, although they can sound very close in certain french accents)
@ricois3 That, for me new, last thing you've said could be good and bad news simultaneously for me lol Definitely bad for a french that would expect the "mais"/"but" spoken like in french and who of course only knows it from french. The spanish too I guess. Unlike italians.
I have 2 comments regarding this: 1) Just like many other boys my age, I had no idea classical Latin pronunciation existed. I was watching a cover of "Lilium" (the opening from the "Elfen Lied" anime), which is in Latin and criticised the singer because she was using classical pronounciation (which is the one the original singer was using). It was thanks to the "Dead Poets Society" movie (which I had watched like 13 years ago for the first time) that I discovered classical pronounciation existed. 2) I met and spoke (horribly) Latin to Luke myself at a meet and greet in Rome. I had a wonderful time
Around 4:00 i always thought that dead language means that it doesn't evolved anymore and will stay the same forever (which would also happen with non-native speakers)
I have watched the original before with pleasure, but having your commentary as an insider on multiple levels takes things to a new dimension. Thanks, Metatron!
And he was probably looking for a kind of 'lingua franca' to communicate. English being the most universal one for someone who he guessed was a tourist.
well, it's Luke Rainieri. He is Italian descendant. There is nothing in his fisionomy that says he is not Italian. Although sometimes we identify foreigners just by clothing, as weird as that sounds... our brains seem to be wired to identify "strangers".
@@rogeriopenna9014 I’m not familiar with Italian fashion, but yeah Americans are usually easy to pick out just by what we wear and our mannerisms. Also, if someone came up to me and started speaking old English I’d more than likely initially assume it was German he was speaking. If he kept going I might think it was Dutch. And only if he persisted would I maybe figure out it was old English
That's absolutely correct. Just read the subtext, that first guy said something like "can anyone speak to this man? He doesn't speak English or Italian!"
Tbh I think most Sardinians wouldn't understand him, maybe some very specific populations in remote villages night understand some of it, but not much more
@@MrRabiddogg yeah I am from Sardinia, the closest language doesn't mean that they are mutually intelligible. Like Korean is the closest language to japanese but I really don't believe they are mutually intelligible 😂. Also there are 3 main dialects of Sardinian and each of them has dozen of sub local varieties where most small towns have their sub-dialect with many differences (welcome to languages in Europe 😂)
@@GigaDavy91 I understand completely. I was just curious as to how much closer it would be. Ecolinguist's channel does have a ton of episodes where related languages try to understand each other but of course the people on that show appear to be experts so its not quite the same. Luke did one a few years back speaking Latin with Italian, French and a couple others
Metatron, a little note on the part about what kind of pronunciation taught in Italy: I attended classical high school here in Italy up until 2022 and they always taught me Latin with the classical pronunciation. So I think that the trend is changing. Other than that, nice video as always, ciao!!!
Old English is far more removed from Modern English than classical Latin is from modern Italian. Middle English, assuming its late london middle english, not a chance you wouldn't be able to piece together through context whats being asked of you-- it's not as hard to understand as you're letting on, just look up a video of someone reciting Chaucer.
That's valid probably for all languages, as a Czech, I can barely understand 150 years old books. It's not like you don't understand it at all, but it looks like some crazy dialect and many words have completely different meaning now, even writting systems are evolving, when I see 150 years old books, it feels like Polish or something like that more than Czech. I don't know how much English alphabet changed in last like 200 years, but I guess it's gonna be similar.
Modern English has more than half of its vocabulary made by words of latin origin, due to its continued linguistical borrowing though history. That makes it far more distant to Middle English than Italian is to Latin. As an Italian native speaker who never had an education in Latin, I still find several Latin words to sound almost the same to their Italian equivalents.
17 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา +1
I can understand if you don't understand old English. But you wouldn't recognize it is old English? Even if you don't understand what the other person is saying you might know at least that it is old English...... Italians and spaniards Should recognize that a person is speaking in Latin even if they don't understand a word or the majority of the words
So you're telling me that Italians don't feel comfortable with vowel length, but they are addicted to double consonants. I feel like it makes things even
I think you misunderstood the people, they where not saying that he was speaking English, they where asking him if he could speak English and if there where any English speakers to communicate assuming that he could perhaps communicate in English.
Yeah you're right. At this point one could've guessed that the man, and others, just also think and also know that english is the most common language in the world, especially for a tourist, and in a a context like there in Europe, Western Europe at that.
This reminds me of when my best friend and I (he having gone to a German school and I was learning German at the time, around 15 years old) in Louisiana, when we entered a 7-11 and pretended to only speak German. Afterwards we were both in tears from laughing so hard because the extremely patient shop attendant actually believed us: when he told us "that'll be two dollars" we opened up a roll of pennies on the counter and started counting in German.
To break a lance for the natives, in a day to day scenario, you wouldn't expect for someone (probably a tourist in their eyes) to speak Latin to them. I think there's also the fact their mind is going for the more usual situation. They're going for English, Spanish etc ... because those are the most common languages spoken by tourists in Rome.
Salve! Morituri te salutant. My native language is German, 6 years of Latin. The Latin subtitles so clear. Born in Lentia, studied in Vindobona. When I visited Rom with my wife, its in German: tomorrow we will see the Forum Romanum, Kolosseum etc. WHen sneaking in a Church during a mass I could easily understand the prayers in Italian like (from Latin) Pater nostro Ave Maria. In the Video Flavier (German), famous family, it was so funny the guy was clueless in ROMA!!!!!! In school we had different Latin teachers, who insisted in different pronounciations, some was said to be classical, the other's name I do not rembmember. Ceterum censeo YOU need to open a free on the street school, so that the Romans understand the classical names of their buildings, ;-)
When I was 14, I went to Italy with my Latin class, we had a brief Italian class for trip, but I had a conversation with a ww2 veteran (This was 1975) using my Latin knowledge to glean the gist of what he was saying.
Vids like Luke’s here and Xiaoma’s have come up in my feed lately, and I genuinely don’t know how to feel about the trolling aspect of them. Yours is very educational in explaining various aspects of Latin pronunciation and Luke’s use of word choice-and I am grateful for that. But the subtext of a video like Luke’s seems off, and it’s definitely the case that he’s inconveniencing well meaning Romans for the sake of his channel, if not his vanity. immo vero, latine loqui et scribere possum, sed numquam loquerer adversum aliquem qui non in lingua versatus sit ne putet me male sibi loqui aut se ab me ludificatum esse-quod arbitror eum fecisse Romae et eum id fecisse ut haberet “likes.”
I don't think they think he's speaking English. I think they want to know if he speaks English so they can attempt to communicate with him in English. English is usually the langauge that speakers of different languages use if they can't understand each other's language.
Same for me and I speak French. A few words are too close to not be understandable and once you get them, at least, you have a basic idea of the subject is talking about.
Sardinians understand classical republican latin (the one he's using for), but today's Romans understands classical imperial latin from when the pronouncing Ce=Ke and Ci=Ki change into Ce=Che and Ci=Chi; or late imperial and/or ecclesiastical latin when the change was already settled down (except on Sardinia, of course). If he truly wanted to be understood by today's Romans, he'd should used late imperial and/or ecclesiastical latin instead.
Well, that and the v=w sound that it's preserved only on some very few sardinian dialects. Meanwhile, today's Romans pronounce v as a frictative f because on late imperial latin the v=w sound changed into v=ff
I wonder how well Spanish people would understand him. Latin sounds aproximate Spanish quite a bit, like Eclesia is Iglesia in Spanish, Gratia is gracias. Until recently in Hispanic countries church services were in Latín so they will be familiar at least with the ecclesiastical version. I remember as a child being an Altar-boy I noticed the similarities ALL THE TIME. The online Italian teacher Davide of Podcast Italiano went to Spain and only spoke Italian and he found it quite easy to be understood surprisingly!
Most people in the video didn’t even notice it was latin, which is something a lot of us who speak a romance language don’t quite grasp. These are languages that look like latin, but the difference is massive. I got the vibe that people thought he was just a foreign tourist trying to speak italian. 😂
it's classical latin which is indeed a dead language. They probably acknowledged it but couldn't admit someone was pranking them speaking a dead language. It's an overly sophisticated prank and you always hesitate before going uterly hostile against someone
@@cmolodietsThere may be some truth in this. I tend to fill in persons' intentions more to the negative side when I don't grasp what they mean, and I always feel terrible when I assumed bad motives, acted upon it, and then find out they probably weren't there. You try to avoid these situations.
If you want to say the verb “to subscribe” in Latin, you would just say “subscribere”. I have no idea what you said at 7:29, it sounded like “subscribendusque”? Which makes absolutely 0 sense in this context. “Subscribendusque” is the masculine gerundive plus the enclitic “-que” which means “and”
Interesting. In Croatia, the general high school curriculum (opća gimnazija) which lasts four years includes two years of Latin as a mandatory subject. I believe the linguistic programs have it through all four years (in addition to just having more language classes in terms of hours per week: this means Croatian, English, German, and Latin, or at least that was in my school). The classical gymnasium does have Latin, but they also have Greek. We were taught both classical and ecclesiastical pronunciation (German rather than Italian type of school, which means among other things that c before a front vowel is pronounced [ts] where Italian would have [tʃ], I don't know if there's other differences). We used the ecclesiastical in classes, but the differences between classical and traditional (yeah, we called that traditional) were covered in the first week. I would have expected Italian schools would have more Latin, not less. Huh.
14:53 interesting here in Germany we get grade 7-10 Latin to acquire the "Latinum" which is required for some university courses like medicine, biology, theology, history and some others. While we also only translated texts and hardly ever spoke in that subject, we did use classical Latin pronunciation during prayer (Roman Catholic school run by a monk order).
I've had Latin at school, but it was only in the high school (in Portugal), and it wasn't mandatory; I've completely failed on that one because it was always after lunch, and the teacher had such a monocordic cadence. :D
As I'm party italian myself and I never had latin in school or studied it on my own, I can still say you can understand it to a certain level, because quite some words are similar and some exactly the same. So I would say if I would ever start to learn latin it helps that I speak italian. Buzt if understand to you is to be have a full conversation with the latin speaker, then of course no, they don't. Edit: Whenever it comes to understanding or speaking a language, for some people it's easier and for some it's harder. I even can say this about dialects within the same coubtry. There would be people who might ask where that person is from, because they don't understand a word, while others can cleary say what dialect it is and maybe even understand that person. So you can't give an answer how easy or how difficult it is, for the people as as a whole.
Raf, it's all fun and games until you end up in a similar situation! I was never spoken Latin to, but every time I hear an In Extrēmō song I have a real hard time figuring out if it's in Latin or some medieval Portuguese or French.
In my Latin textbook in liceo, we had a few explainations on classical vs ecclesiastical pronunciation at the beginning but after the first lesson I don't think it was ever mentioned again
For me, personally with Romanian, Aromanian, English, Italian, some Greek and some Portuguese, I can understand Latin so well, lol Maybe I'm wrong, but somehow Romanian and Aromanian are based on the Elessiastical Latin pronunciation too. I don't know what Vulgar latin sounded like The alphabet is pronounced the same
in quanto barbari romanizzati, voi avete mantenuto più romanità di noi italiani. noi abbiamo avuto invasioni, abbiamo avuto la cristianità che ha storpiato il tutto per far dimenticare il passato, mentre voi no. restando per millenni romanizzati e cristallizzati a quel periodo chi più chi meno... quindi si, il rumeno è più vicino al latino di quanto non sia l'italiano moderno. infatti romania significa roma (nia) suffisso che probabilmente si potrebbe tradurre con terra di roma o relativa di roma o possedimenti romani... anche rumeno significherebbe romano nuovo o romano oltre (forse)il reno, qualcosa del genere... anche romanov gli zar di russia, significano roma nova roma nuova..
He made one where he did it in the Vatican. And the results were fun. Oh, and the Vatican not only has a homepage in italian, english, french etc. They also offer latin. Which isn't all surprising considering latin is official languge of the Holy See.
"ma che staddi?" Can be understood in some rural areas in Brazil as we usually say "mas o que tá dizendo?("but what are you saying?")",of course with a very heavy accent, especially in those villages with italian descendants.
I did some latin (a year) in school , i was 13 years old and as you said we mostly translated texts. That was before choosing any specialization for my studies. I hated it because i've always been bad with languages. I studied in a catholic school in Barcelona.
He didn't think he was speaking english he was just asking if he can speak english to use it as a lingua franca, which is standard practice in most places in the world. As a portuguese speaker I use english with many spanish speakers
19:22 "sta a parlà" - It's the same structure we use in European Portuguese, instead of the gerund! We seldom say "está falando" (as Brazilians do), we say "está a falar". Is that specific of Roman dialect, or does it also occur in standard Italian?
Hi, I'm from Rome, as far as I know is typical Roman dialect, especially when you drop also the "r". In Italian instead of using the gerund you could say things like "sto a mangiare al ristorante (i'm eating at the restaurant), "sto a mangiar" (poetic form) but in Romanesco will be "sto a magnà" (which drops "re" and uses the sound "gn" instead of "ngi"). In Romanesco almost all the verbs end with an accent, so "dormire" (to sleep)->"dormì", "vedere" (to see)-> vedè (maybe vedé, i'm not good with the accent)
Metatron, would I be wrong to think that any ancient Roman who studied the language, by knowing it's the year 2777 Ab Urbe Condita? I mean, they were perfectly aware they had a lot of difficulty understanding Latin from the time of the founding of the city, just 750 years earlier. For instance, the Salii (priesthood of Mars) sang ancient hymns that even scholars of the late Republic struggled to understand, as the language was an archaic form of Latin. Or the Twelve Tables. Gee, even Caesar cognomen itself was discussed around the time for they didn´t know if it came from baldness, from cut, or from caesai, elephant, from a punic word, which would suggest an ancestor killed by an elephant in battle. And there is also Pontifex Maximus...If pons facere were compounded in Classical Latin, you might expect a form like ponsficus or pontifactor, aligning more with regular patterns of Classical compounding.
I mean to be fair what you expect from a person who do the either did not get a great education or was taught Latin but it’s been a long time, so that knowledge is long gone. It’s like asking any random waiter in their 40s to do a quadratic problem for high school level. They studied it so much but after school they forget it.
One of the difference between a european and an american: When you joked about who to support in a fight, you went with supporting your friend. Which I would als do. An american would choose his fellow citizens before a foreign friend.
Honestly, though. I am Italian and I've never studied Latin in my life, but I can say that I understood almost everything Luke said (at least the meaning, if not the exact words). And I'm not from Rome, but from the North of Italy.
As a Spanish speaker I can also pick out the odd cluster of words and sometimes singular words out of his Latin and somewhat grasp what he MIGHT be talking about I think he'd have a similar experience trying this in Spain.
Spaniard here. I did Latin in my 2nd year of High School aged 15, since it was a *compulsory* subject back then in the 80's. Not any longer. Any current Millenial guy would freak out!!!! The classical pronunciation and entonation with those /k/ phoneme for C's and Q's it's what I was taught here. Not sure about the Italian students. A lot of key names and adjetives would be similar to Spanish, but cases in declensions have been replaced with prepositions and other link words have been lost. Spanish has a small subset of Latin, about 70% of our 95,000 words language, which miss a lot of Latin roots that still are alive in Italian. But for example, "ecclesia" ("iglesia" in Spanish) would be completely understood here ("chiesa" in Italian) and however "loquor" would be ignored, since our verb for "speak" comes from Vulgar Latin "fabulare", even though we have "locuaz", "locutor" and "locutorio" in Spanish, but they're adjetives and nouns, not verbs.
Both you and Luke should work together on a Latin project like this - if you think you could keep a straight face like Luke did. That would be brilliant because one person alone could be speaking gibberish but two people speaking the same language is more believable.
Metatron I definitely think that the man was meaning "però l'inglese..." "non lo parlo", "non riesco, con l'inglese", tipo 😂 and that's what he had in mind with "l'inglese". Anche perché non avrebbe detto prima, subito prima di ciò, "devo spiegare al ragazzo dove sta il Colosseo". Americans, english (people) etc all speaking english brings the usual confusion but in a tremendously fitting video to begin with by Luke lol
Fun fact I hear from this video: It seems the way the letters are pronounced in Latin (For example the B) sounds almost the same as they are pronounced in german, today.
You know it is possible that they just think it is just an American trying (and failing) to speak Italian. When I visited Italy and tried to speak Italian I was (of course) terrible and as soon as they realized how badly I spoke Italian then tried to go to English. But if you think about it an awful lot of modern English is Latin....they are not far off :)
21:32 about English vocabulary, i heard there's 29% from latin and 29% fron french and only 30% words are germanic. Around 60% of English vocabulary is latin, it's crazy
If you can't have a little fun then what's the point? :) Now, I have to wonder if Romanians in Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca would understand Latin and how friendly would they be?
Hey Raffaello, che bello vederti su you tube. Non so se leggi i commenti ma to conosco da una delle attività giovani adulti forse era a Roma. Sei venuto anche credo 2 volte a C/Mare di Stabia. Una volta con Sara Mond. Seguo polymath perché mi piacciono le lingue e seguo a te ora perché davvero fai buoni commenti. Qst video che reagisci l'avevo visto anche io qualche tempo fa e che "criiinge" per come rispondono gli italiani a lui e come chiedono dell'inglese. Madonna che imbarazzo. 🙈
First time I thought "maybe Latin is not dead language", I was on a bus in Rome and I've heard 2 people talking in a strange language, after a while I started hearing "ubi est" "sed" (I've done Latin in scientific high school) and I thought "This two are really speaking Latin, maybe it's their common language".
Honestly, I would not define it as "no native speakers", more like "has ceased to change on its own accord". The one thing "dead" languages have in common is that they are not subjected to then atural soundchanges etc anymore and people who learn it do so with a speciffic sound in mind. While yes, depending on the native language of the learner tehre will be different accents, but any new speaker will learn it with the same material to ultimately reach the taught standard - and that standard is what defines that unchanging nature.
I actually took Latin before English in German school, 6 years alltogether, but the most I ever understood was to look at a Bible in a museum and be able to read it haflway decently long after. Kid me wanted to read Asterix without subtitles. Have to say, that didn't work out.
I am a Romanian and i understood all he asked, many similarity between this and Romanian. Ubi est? Unde este?Rotundum aedificium, Edificiu rotund. Vicinia, vecinatate. Descendere, descindere....
I don't think those 2 Italians thought Luke was speaking English, I think they actually said he *didn't* speak English. They were asking *if* he spoke any English because they thought they would understand more if he spoke English rather than that "devilish tongue" he was speaking... That's not that strange. I'm a native Portuguese speaker and, when speaking with Italians, I usually speak English (unless they don't speak it at all). I could speak Portuguese at a slower pace and carefully choose words that I thought an Italian would understand more easily, and they could do the same with Italian, I we would probably understand most of that bilingual exchange - but it would be a much greater hassle, and probably less effective, than both just switching to English.
the first dude has a beard he's not Roman. After the sac of Rome by the Gauls Romans decided to shave their beards. Radio isn't really a neologism so much The word radio is derived from the Latin word radius, The word "radio" originates from "radius", which in turn came from "ray". That's why "radius" means any line from a central focal point to any directions. Its more of a derived word that is derived from the latin word Radii. I think it may not be a full neologism. "cultural appropriration" ---???? Cultural appropriation is when a person or group adopts aspects of another culture in a way that is considered inappropriate or unacknowledged. It can be especially controversial when members of a dominant culture take elements from a minority culture.
Apropos of "metropolitana": I have a relatively new dictionary of modern Latin terms that my late mother, who knew I loved Latin, gave me as a gift a few years ago. Since then I have often unreflectingly referred to tab water as "aqua ex fistula prompta" in the middle of a German sentence. 😂 Btw., I know "aqua canalibus immissa" is another possible translation (but it doesn't sound as hygienic 😁).
I used to troll people when playing League of Legends. Whenever I got matched with Spanish or Italian players, I'd start typing in Esperanto. Italians typically thinks that it's Spanish and Spaniards thinks it's Italian. It's quite funny.
Credits to Luke for staying "In character" the whole time. I would also have droped it in the end when the guy asked with a little offended voice if Luke is joking. Because in the end no video is worth to risk to get in a fight. I'm glad it didn't happen.
Yo, Metatron How do the current latin speakers update latin to contain modern words like telefon, metro station, gas tubes etc. Where and how do they decide it?
I think they don't understand him so they ask him if he knows English rather than thinking that it's English I am certain that they know it isn't English
sometimes even if it's a language I know, if it's not expected/catch me by surprise it might take a moment before I understand/recognize it even if it's something i'm fluent in. it's really strange & idk why
Link to the original video
th-cam.com/video/DYYpTfx1ey8/w-d-xo.html
You and Luke should do this in Sardinia, that will be fascinating to watch!
I second this!
Yes please
Me too
There language sounds like Latin I agree
He said the he spoke the Latin from the holy Roman empire, from the forest century
9:30 He’s not thinking Luke’s speaking English, at the moment. He’s just asking, if Luke *_COULD_* speak English.
They are indeed thinking he's speaking english and they are trying to find someone that speaks it as well so they can understand him
Right
Yeah I second that
I thought this was the case as well. But if you look closely, you'll see that they were asking other people (not the guy himself) if anyone can speak english.
Yeah, 'tron here not just NOT understanding Roman Italian, he's not reading the damn captions😂
"In Sicily we would get shot" 😂😂😂
"Never go in against a Sicilian, when Death is on the line!"
"Ma che staddi?"
Sounds EXACTLY THE SAME as "Mais qu'est-ce t'as dis?" In French!
Yeah, you're definitely right lol
Shorter words in that "ma che stai/sta (he) addì/a dì?" so it's better with each other rather than "ma che stai/sta dicendo?" with any of the two. Although the french one is definitely still not close with that one as the italian one is, it's just the sound, there's no question when it comes to knowing what the words say and recognizing the words, especially because french is hard anyway.
@dusk6159 Yeah, they're definitely not* the same contracted words, but it's funny that it means the same thing and sounds pretty much the exactly the same (ok, the intonnation is different and Mais vs Ma, although they can sound very close in certain french accents)
@ricois3 That, for me new, last thing you've said could be good and bad news simultaneously for me lol
Definitely bad for a french that would expect the "mais"/"but" spoken like in french and who of course only knows it from french. The spanish too I guess. Unlike italians.
Audio books must be huge in France. Imagine wasting paper for all those silent letters😂
@@ldmtag Nah, we don't really think about it 😅 To be honest, English is just as weird as French
Great to have the Luke's ancient languages videos on here, especially the latin in Italy ones
I know right? How has this video never been here until now?
@@diablohorer "Ubi est? Metatron?"
Metatron: "What the hell are they saying.." "oh, the american Luke Ranieri's video I guess"
I have 2 comments regarding this: 1) Just like many other boys my age, I had no idea classical Latin pronunciation existed. I was watching a cover of "Lilium" (the opening from the "Elfen Lied" anime), which is in Latin and criticised the singer because she was using classical pronounciation (which is the one the original singer was using). It was thanks to the "Dead Poets Society" movie (which I had watched like 13 years ago for the first time) that I discovered classical pronounciation existed.
2) I met and spoke (horribly) Latin to Luke myself at a meet and greet in Rome. I had a wonderful time
Around 4:00 i always thought that dead language means that it doesn't evolved anymore and will stay the same forever (which would also happen with non-native speakers)
I have watched the original before with pleasure, but having your commentary as an insider on multiple levels takes things to a new dimension. Thanks, Metatron!
Same, for both videos
long ago indeed. he messaged him about quite an old video
I don’t think they thought he was speaking English. I think they correctly identified that he looked foreign and assumed he was American
And he was probably looking for a kind of 'lingua franca' to communicate. English being the most universal one for someone who he guessed was a tourist.
well, it's Luke Rainieri. He is Italian descendant. There is nothing in his fisionomy that says he is not Italian. Although sometimes we identify foreigners just by clothing, as weird as that sounds... our brains seem to be wired to identify "strangers".
@@rogeriopenna9014 I’m not familiar with Italian fashion, but yeah Americans are usually easy to pick out just by what we wear and our mannerisms.
Also, if someone came up to me and started speaking old English I’d more than likely initially assume it was German he was speaking. If he kept going I might think it was Dutch. And only if he persisted would I maybe figure out it was old English
That's absolutely correct. Just read the subtext, that first guy said something like "can anyone speak to this man? He doesn't speak English or Italian!"
@@Spartan10k
When I've visited several European countries no one ever noticed me as being American
do it in Sardinia, where the language is the closest to ancient Latin.
Tbh I think most Sardinians wouldn't understand him, maybe some very specific populations in remote villages night understand some of it, but not much more
@@GigaDavy91 Am I getting the islands confused? I thought Sardinia is the one where its the closest to Latin of all the dialects/languages
@@MrRabiddogg yeah I am from Sardinia, the closest language doesn't mean that they are mutually intelligible.
Like Korean is the closest language to japanese but I really don't believe they are mutually intelligible 😂. Also there are 3 main dialects of Sardinian and each of them has dozen of sub local varieties where most small towns have their sub-dialect with many differences (welcome to languages in Europe 😂)
@@GigaDavy91 I understand completely. I was just curious as to how much closer it would be. Ecolinguist's channel does have a ton of episodes where related languages try to understand each other but of course the people on that show appear to be experts so its not quite the same. Luke did one a few years back speaking Latin with Italian, French and a couple others
It isn't the closest. Just phonetically Is the closest, but grammatically wise Is Italian.
Sardinians would understand as much as peninsular Italians.
Metatron, a little note on the part about what kind of pronunciation taught in Italy: I attended classical high school here in Italy up until 2022 and they always taught me Latin with the classical pronunciation. So I think that the trend is changing. Other than that, nice video as always, ciao!!!
To be fair, as a native English speaker if you addressed me in old or even middle English i would be lost.
Old English is far more removed from Modern English than classical Latin is from modern Italian. Middle English, assuming its late london middle english, not a chance you wouldn't be able to piece together through context whats being asked of you-- it's not as hard to understand as you're letting on, just look up a video of someone reciting Chaucer.
Middle English could be understood, if you are highly literate and probably even then just small snippits here and there.
That's valid probably for all languages, as a Czech, I can barely understand 150 years old books. It's not like you don't understand it at all, but it looks like some crazy dialect and many words have completely different meaning now, even writting systems are evolving, when I see 150 years old books, it feels like Polish or something like that more than Czech. I don't know how much English alphabet changed in last like 200 years, but I guess it's gonna be similar.
Modern English has more than half of its vocabulary made by words of latin origin, due to its continued linguistical borrowing though history. That makes it far more distant to Middle English than Italian is to Latin.
As an Italian native speaker who never had an education in Latin, I still find several Latin words to sound almost the same to their Italian equivalents.
I can understand if you don't understand old English. But you wouldn't recognize it is old English? Even if you don't understand what the other person is saying you might know at least that it is old English...... Italians and spaniards Should recognize that a person is speaking in Latin even if they don't understand a word or the majority of the words
So you're telling me that Italians don't feel comfortable with vowel length, but they are addicted to double consonants. I feel like it makes things even
Except that the Latins had those too…
Che diavolo è la vowel length?!
@GM_enderman22 that's the spirit
@@VitorEmanuelOliverlatin had tons of double wovels.
I think you misunderstood the people, they where not saying that he was speaking English, they where asking him if he could speak English and if there where any English speakers to communicate assuming that he could perhaps communicate in English.
Yeah you're right. At this point one could've guessed that the man, and others, just also think and also know that english is the most common language in the world, especially for a tourist, and in a a context like there in Europe, Western Europe at that.
This reminds me of when my best friend and I (he having gone to a German school and I was learning German at the time, around 15 years old) in Louisiana, when we entered a 7-11 and pretended to only speak German. Afterwards we were both in tears from laughing so hard because the extremely patient shop attendant actually believed us: when he told us "that'll be two dollars" we opened up a roll of pennies on the counter and started counting in German.
22:00 thats a really good analogy. Also, i learned so much watching this video. I took 2 years of latin in college.
I can't believe you haven't reacted to this yet! I enjoyed the original when I first watched it.
Big fan of Stereopony! Have listened to them for a long time! Great video as always!
To break a lance for the natives, in a day to day scenario, you wouldn't expect for someone (probably a tourist in their eyes) to speak Latin to them. I think there's also the fact their mind is going for the more usual situation. They're going for English, Spanish etc ... because those are the most common languages spoken by tourists in Rome.
Just started to learn Latin and this video was very fun watched it last week :P
Will Metatron cameo on a Luke video, or vice versa? Linguriosa, Liga Romanica, Lang Focus?
Salve! Morituri te salutant. My native language is German, 6 years of Latin. The Latin subtitles so clear. Born in Lentia, studied in Vindobona. When I visited Rom with my wife, its in German: tomorrow we will see the Forum Romanum, Kolosseum etc. WHen sneaking in a Church during a mass I could easily understand the prayers in Italian like (from Latin) Pater nostro Ave Maria. In the Video Flavier (German), famous family, it was so funny the guy was clueless in ROMA!!!!!! In school we had different Latin teachers, who insisted in different pronounciations, some was said to be classical, the other's name I do not rembmember. Ceterum censeo YOU need to open a free on the street school, so that the Romans understand the classical names of their buildings, ;-)
Luke is such a mountain of a person!
He's the hottest of history buff content creators😅
22:26 As a german, that doesn't just SOUND german, Wein pronounced like that IS german.
Magnus trollorum😂alla fine anche se non ha mai parlato in italiano è riuscito a farsi capire
When I was 14, I went to Italy with my Latin class, we had a brief Italian class for trip, but I had a conversation with a ww2 veteran (This was 1975) using my Latin knowledge to glean the gist of what he was saying.
Vids like Luke’s here and Xiaoma’s have come up in my feed lately, and I genuinely don’t know how to feel about the trolling aspect of them. Yours is very educational in explaining various aspects of Latin pronunciation and Luke’s use of word choice-and I am grateful for that. But the subtext of a video like Luke’s seems off, and it’s definitely the case that he’s inconveniencing well meaning Romans for the sake of his channel, if not his vanity.
immo vero, latine loqui et scribere possum, sed numquam loquerer adversum aliquem qui non in lingua versatus sit ne putet me male sibi loqui aut se ab me ludificatum esse-quod arbitror eum fecisse Romae et eum id fecisse ut haberet “likes.”
'Ma stai scherzando con me?'
Hitohira No Hanabira is such a great song, good taste!
27:41
😅
Well spotted.
I don't think they think he's speaking English. I think they want to know if he speaks English so they can attempt to communicate with him in English. English is usually the langauge that speakers of different languages use if they can't understand each other's language.
Closing my eyes to not see the subtitles I can also understand a % of it, just by similarities to Portuguese words.
Same for me and I speak French. A few words are too close to not be understandable and once you get them, at least, you have a basic idea of the subject is talking about.
Sardinians understand classical republican latin (the one he's using for), but today's Romans understands classical imperial latin from when the pronouncing Ce=Ke and Ci=Ki change into Ce=Che and Ci=Chi; or late imperial and/or ecclesiastical latin when the change was already settled down (except on Sardinia, of course). If he truly wanted to be understood by today's Romans, he'd should used late imperial and/or ecclesiastical latin instead.
Well, that and the v=w sound that it's preserved only on some very few sardinian dialects. Meanwhile, today's Romans pronounce v as a frictative f because on late imperial latin the v=w sound changed into v=ff
@@santiagodelpilar6701 in ciociaro and some dialects of abruzzese v=w
@@mandlebot990 《Sardinia Magna Est.》
You should do a video on the corsican language if you can understand it.
Why don't you run through the whole clip first then comment ... you're annoying stopping it every 5 seconds!!!!
He completely changes what the video is about and makes mistakes whilst sounding pedantic.
I wonder how well Spanish people would understand him. Latin sounds aproximate Spanish quite a bit, like Eclesia is Iglesia in Spanish, Gratia is gracias. Until recently in Hispanic countries church services were in Latín so they will be familiar at least with the ecclesiastical version. I remember as a child being an Altar-boy I noticed the similarities ALL THE TIME. The online Italian teacher Davide of Podcast Italiano went to Spain and only spoke Italian and he found it quite easy to be understood surprisingly!
I think no better than Italians do. The pronunciation wouldn't be a problem for a Spanish speaker, but most words and the grammar is very different.
Your commenting on this was very entertaining!
Most people in the video didn’t even notice it was latin, which is something a lot of us who speak a romance language don’t quite grasp. These are languages that look like latin, but the difference is massive.
I got the vibe that people thought he was just a foreign tourist trying to speak italian.
😂
And just because he says Forum Romanum doesn't mean he's speaking Latin with all the other words, yeh.
it's classical latin which is indeed a dead language. They probably acknowledged it but couldn't admit someone was pranking them speaking a dead language. It's an overly sophisticated prank and you always hesitate before going uterly hostile against someone
@@cmolodietsThere may be some truth in this. I tend to fill in persons' intentions more to the negative side when I don't grasp what they mean, and I always feel terrible when I assumed bad motives, acted upon it, and then find out they probably weren't there. You try to avoid these situations.
If you want to say the verb “to subscribe” in Latin, you would just say “subscribere”. I have no idea what you said at 7:29, it sounded like “subscribendusque”? Which makes absolutely 0 sense in this context. “Subscribendusque” is the masculine gerundive plus the enclitic “-que” which means “and”
i'm at the end of the video and just realizing that you made a 29min reaction to a 6min video... i don't even know how that happened
Lots of pauses.
So happy to see you enjoy that skit and that you two are friends😆
Interesting. In Croatia, the general high school curriculum (opća gimnazija) which lasts four years includes two years of Latin as a mandatory subject. I believe the linguistic programs have it through all four years (in addition to just having more language classes in terms of hours per week: this means Croatian, English, German, and Latin, or at least that was in my school). The classical gymnasium does have Latin, but they also have Greek.
We were taught both classical and ecclesiastical pronunciation (German rather than Italian type of school, which means among other things that c before a front vowel is pronounced [ts] where Italian would have [tʃ], I don't know if there's other differences). We used the ecclesiastical in classes, but the differences between classical and traditional (yeah, we called that traditional) were covered in the first week.
I would have expected Italian schools would have more Latin, not less. Huh.
Well, I went to opća gimnazija and we learnt something between Classical and Ecclesiastical pronunciation.
Same in the Netherlands. You learn Latin and classical Greek at athenaeum and gymnasium level.
14:53 interesting here in Germany we get grade 7-10 Latin to acquire the "Latinum" which is required for some university courses like medicine, biology, theology, history and some others. While we also only translated texts and hardly ever spoke in that subject, we did use classical Latin pronunciation during prayer (Roman Catholic school run by a monk order).
I've had Latin at school, but it was only in the high school (in Portugal), and it wasn't mandatory; I've completely failed on that one because it was always after lunch, and the teacher had such a monocordic cadence. :D
@metatronacademy you should do this in Romania, I think you would be understood way better than in Italy.
17:53 Interesting similarity between Latin 'prōrsus' and Polish 'prosto':
Prōrsus, ad sinistram?
Prosto, na lewo?
(Straight, to the left?)
I like what you said "It is NOT wrong to use ecclesiastical in the right context". I agree, when in Rome...well....lol...
As I'm party italian myself and I never had latin in school or studied it on my own, I can still say you can understand it to a certain level, because quite some words are similar and some exactly the same. So I would say if I would ever start to learn latin it helps that I speak italian. Buzt if understand to you is to be have a full conversation with the latin speaker, then of course no, they don't.
Edit: Whenever it comes to understanding or speaking a language, for some people it's easier and for some it's harder. I even can say this about dialects within the same coubtry. There would be people who might ask where that person is from, because they don't understand a word, while others can cleary say what dialect it is and maybe even understand that person.
So you can't give an answer how easy or how difficult it is, for the people as as a whole.
Raf, it's all fun and games until you end up in a similar situation! I was never spoken Latin to, but every time I hear an In Extrēmō song I have a real hard time figuring out if it's in Latin or some medieval Portuguese or French.
In my Latin textbook in liceo, we had a few explainations on classical vs ecclesiastical pronunciation at the beginning
but after the first lesson I don't think it was ever mentioned again
For me, personally with Romanian, Aromanian, English, Italian, some Greek and some Portuguese, I can understand Latin so well, lol
Maybe I'm wrong, but somehow Romanian and Aromanian are based on the Elessiastical Latin pronunciation too. I don't know what Vulgar latin sounded like
The alphabet is pronounced the same
in quanto barbari romanizzati, voi avete mantenuto più romanità di noi italiani. noi abbiamo avuto invasioni, abbiamo avuto la cristianità che ha storpiato il tutto per far dimenticare il passato, mentre voi no. restando per millenni romanizzati e cristallizzati a quel periodo chi più chi meno...
quindi si, il rumeno è più vicino al latino di quanto non sia l'italiano moderno. infatti romania significa roma (nia) suffisso che probabilmente si potrebbe tradurre con terra di roma o relativa di roma o possedimenti romani... anche rumeno significherebbe romano nuovo o romano oltre (forse)il reno, qualcosa del genere...
anche romanov gli zar di russia, significano roma nova roma nuova..
20:24 "I think the dog is more likely to understand." 😂😂😂
He made one where he did it in the Vatican. And the results were fun.
Oh, and the Vatican not only has a homepage in italian, english, french etc. They also offer latin. Which isn't all surprising considering latin is official languge of the Holy See.
This is day 11 of commenting on every new video until he reacts to Cajun French and Louisiana Creole
"ma che staddi?"
Can be understood in some rural areas in Brazil as we usually say "mas o que tá dizendo?("but what are you saying?")",of course with a very heavy accent, especially in those villages with italian descendants.
I did some latin (a year) in school , i was 13 years old and as you said we mostly translated texts. That was before choosing any specialization for my studies.
I hated it because i've always been bad with languages.
I studied in a catholic school in Barcelona.
He didn't think he was speaking english he was just asking if he can speak english to use it as a lingua franca, which is standard practice in most places in the world. As a portuguese speaker I use english with many spanish speakers
I'm Polish and don't speak any romance language. But I would instantly know that he's speaking Latin to me.
19:22 "sta a parlà" - It's the same structure we use in European Portuguese, instead of the gerund!
We seldom say "está falando" (as Brazilians do), we say "está a falar".
Is that specific of Roman dialect, or does it also occur in standard Italian?
Hi, I'm from Rome, as far as I know is typical Roman dialect, especially when you drop also the "r". In Italian instead of using the gerund you could say things like "sto a mangiare al ristorante (i'm eating at the restaurant), "sto a mangiar" (poetic form) but in Romanesco will be "sto a magnà" (which drops "re" and uses the sound "gn" instead of "ngi").
In Romanesco almost all the verbs end with an accent, so "dormire" (to sleep)->"dormì", "vedere" (to see)-> vedè (maybe vedé, i'm not good with the accent)
Metatron, would I be wrong to think that any ancient Roman who studied the language, by knowing it's the year 2777 Ab Urbe Condita? I mean, they were perfectly aware they had a lot of difficulty understanding Latin from the time of the founding of the city, just 750 years earlier.
For instance, the Salii (priesthood of Mars) sang ancient hymns that even scholars of the late Republic struggled to understand, as the language was an archaic form of Latin.
Or the Twelve Tables.
Gee, even Caesar cognomen itself was discussed around the time for they didn´t know if it came from baldness, from cut, or from caesai, elephant, from a punic word, which would suggest an ancestor killed by an elephant in battle.
And there is also Pontifex Maximus...If pons facere were compounded in Classical Latin, you might expect a form like ponsficus or pontifactor, aligning more with regular patterns of Classical compounding.
I mean to be fair what you expect from a person who do the either did not get a great education or was taught Latin but it’s been a long time, so that knowledge is long gone.
It’s like asking any random waiter in their 40s to do a quadratic problem for high school level. They studied it so much but after school they forget it.
One of the difference between a european and an american: When you joked about who to support in a fight, you went with supporting your friend. Which I would als do. An american would choose his fellow citizens before a foreign friend.
Honestly, though. I am Italian and I've never studied Latin in my life, but I can say that I understood almost everything Luke said (at least the meaning, if not the exact words). And I'm not from Rome, but from the North of Italy.
That was awesome 😂😂
Cadê a opção de tradução ia?
He should do “speaking Ancient Greek in Greece” next
As a Spanish speaker I can also pick out the odd cluster of words and sometimes singular words out of his Latin and somewhat grasp what he MIGHT be talking about I think he'd have a similar experience trying this in Spain.
6:41 Or from just an Anglophone country.
Spaniard here. I did Latin in my 2nd year of High School aged 15, since it was a *compulsory* subject back then in the 80's. Not any longer. Any current Millenial guy would freak out!!!!
The classical pronunciation and entonation with those /k/ phoneme for C's and Q's it's what I was taught here. Not sure about the Italian students.
A lot of key names and adjetives would be similar to Spanish, but cases in declensions have been replaced with prepositions and other link words have been lost.
Spanish has a small subset of Latin, about 70% of our 95,000 words language, which miss a lot of Latin roots that still are alive in Italian.
But for example, "ecclesia" ("iglesia" in Spanish) would be completely understood here ("chiesa" in Italian) and however "loquor" would be ignored, since our verb for "speak" comes from Vulgar Latin "fabulare", even though we have "locuaz", "locutor" and "locutorio" in Spanish, but they're adjetives and nouns, not verbs.
As a New Zealander, I can confidently say there are no islands east of us where Latin is spoken.
23:05 "oh Micky you're so fine..."😂
Both you and Luke should work together on a Latin project like this - if you think you could keep a straight face like Luke did. That would be brilliant because one person alone could be speaking gibberish but two people speaking the same language is more believable.
Metatron I definitely think that the man was meaning "però l'inglese..." "non lo parlo", "non riesco, con l'inglese", tipo 😂 and that's what he had in mind with "l'inglese".
Anche perché non avrebbe detto prima, subito prima di ciò, "devo spiegare al ragazzo dove sta il Colosseo". Americans, english (people) etc all speaking english brings the usual confusion but in a tremendously fitting video to begin with by Luke lol
What an experiment😁👍
What i really wanted to see is the oart where he tells the people he was speaking latin and it was being recorded
23:05 is the mihi/mi pronunciation not a matter of gramatical cases?
Mihi/mi is the same case
Fun fact I hear from this video: It seems the way the letters are pronounced in Latin (For example the B) sounds almost the same as they are pronounced in german, today.
I saw this and I could understand some stuff. I am Colombian which helps a bit.
You know it is possible that they just think it is just an American trying (and failing) to speak Italian. When I visited Italy and tried to speak Italian I was (of course) terrible and as soon as they realized how badly I spoke Italian then tried to go to English. But if you think about it an awful lot of modern English is Latin....they are not far off :)
as native speaker of Spanish, I understood about the same the itallians did, but I would recognize the language for the um and us and quo, etc.
21:32 about English vocabulary, i heard there's 29% from latin and 29% fron french and only 30% words are germanic. Around 60% of English vocabulary is latin, it's crazy
11:20 you better. Love to see that one.
have you studied Latin?
If you can't have a little fun then what's the point? :) Now, I have to wonder if Romanians in Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca would understand Latin and how friendly would they be?
Hey Raffaello, che bello vederti su you tube. Non so se leggi i commenti ma to conosco da una delle attività giovani adulti forse era a Roma. Sei venuto anche credo 2 volte a C/Mare di Stabia. Una volta con Sara Mond.
Seguo polymath perché mi piacciono le lingue e seguo a te ora perché davvero fai buoni commenti. Qst video che reagisci l'avevo visto anche io qualche tempo fa e che "criiinge" per come rispondono gli italiani a lui e come chiedono dell'inglese. Madonna che imbarazzo. 🙈
First time I thought "maybe Latin is not dead language", I was on a bus in Rome and I've heard 2 people talking in a strange language, after a while I started hearing "ubi est" "sed" (I've done Latin in scientific high school) and I thought "This two are really speaking Latin, maybe it's their common language".
Honestly, I would not define it as "no native speakers", more like "has ceased to change on its own accord". The one thing "dead" languages have in common is that they are not subjected to then atural soundchanges etc anymore and people who learn it do so with a speciffic sound in mind.
While yes, depending on the native language of the learner tehre will be different accents, but any new speaker will learn it with the same material to ultimately reach the taught standard - and that standard is what defines that unchanging nature.
I actually took Latin before English in German school, 6 years alltogether, but the most I ever understood was to look at a Bible in a museum and be able to read it haflway decently long after.
Kid me wanted to read Asterix without subtitles. Have to say, that didn't work out.
I am a Romanian and i understood all he asked, many similarity between this and Romanian. Ubi est? Unde este?Rotundum aedificium, Edificiu rotund. Vicinia, vecinatate. Descendere, descindere....
This is the Italian equivalent of speaking Old Anglo Saxon English in London.
I don't think those 2 Italians thought Luke was speaking English, I think they actually said he *didn't* speak English.
They were asking *if* he spoke any English because they thought they would understand more if he spoke English rather than that "devilish tongue" he was speaking...
That's not that strange. I'm a native Portuguese speaker and, when speaking with Italians, I usually speak English (unless they don't speak it at all).
I could speak Portuguese at a slower pace and carefully choose words that I thought an Italian would understand more easily, and they could do the same with Italian, I we would probably understand most of that bilingual exchange - but it would be a much greater hassle, and probably less effective, than both just switching to English.
the first dude has a beard he's not Roman. After the sac of Rome by the Gauls Romans decided to shave their beards. Radio isn't really a neologism so much The word radio is derived from the Latin word radius, The word "radio" originates from "radius", which in turn came from "ray". That's why "radius" means any line from a central focal point to any directions. Its more of a derived word that is derived from the latin word Radii. I think it may not be a full neologism. "cultural appropriration" ---???? Cultural appropriation is when a person or group adopts aspects of another culture in a way that is considered inappropriate or unacknowledged. It can be especially controversial when members of a dominant culture take elements from a minority culture.
I love Latin Mega-Troll Luke❤!
Apropos of "metropolitana": I have a relatively new dictionary of modern Latin terms that my late mother, who knew I loved Latin, gave me as a gift a few years ago.
Since then I have often unreflectingly referred to tab water as "aqua ex fistula prompta" in the middle of a German sentence. 😂
Btw., I know "aqua canalibus immissa" is another possible translation (but it doesn't sound as hygienic 😁).
Do a collaboration with him!!!!!
I used to troll people when playing League of Legends. Whenever I got matched with Spanish or Italian players, I'd start typing in Esperanto.
Italians typically thinks that it's Spanish and Spaniards thinks it's Italian. It's quite funny.
Credits to Luke for staying "In character" the whole time. I would also have droped it in the end when the guy asked with a little offended voice if Luke is joking. Because in the end no video is worth to risk to get in a fight. I'm glad it didn't happen.
Yo, Metatron
How do the current latin speakers update latin to contain modern words like telefon, metro station, gas tubes etc. Where and how do they decide it?
While you are in Italy, with and without your roman armor. Make it a plus to add Lucius to normalize your latin conversation.
Luke already made a video on that topic
I think they don't understand him so they ask him if he knows English rather than thinking that it's English I am certain that they know it isn't English
sometimes even if it's a language I know, if it's not expected/catch me by surprise it might take a moment before I understand/recognize it even if it's something i'm fluent in. it's really strange & idk why