There was an hilarious account of a Frank monk from the 700s AD. He wrote something on the lines of "in this land used to live people called the Romans, but we don't know what happened to them, and we don't even know what language they spoke" and he wrote that IN LATIN 😂.
I had a university professor who had a solid grounding in Latin. Years later he was traveling in Romania when his car broke down and not speaking Romanian he just spoke to them in Latin & it worked! Got his car fixed and was on his way
@@thadtuiol1717not really. You don't need an elaborate conversation. Just basic words which are very much resembling Latin. Latin knowing travellers in the medieval times also wrote about this.
@thadtuiol1717 There's a dude on TH-cam who tests his Latin in Romania and in Italy....see for yourself. It's not perfect, of course, but it works. But sure, deny what is clearly PLAUSIBLE....
Sardinian language to this day is still very similar to Latin, thanks to the difficulty of invading an island and for invaders to survive invading THAT island.
That Vulgar Latin "Marcus mi da libru de patre." is so understandable to me as a native Spanish speaker. I could easily understand it as the Spanish equivalent would be "Marco me da (el) libro de (su) padre". I can see now how modern Romance languages descend from Latin.
Vulgar Latin speakers still would have used the genitive for quite some time the preposition de was used alongside it until it fully replaced it. Romanian still has a Genitive today and some of the Old Romance languages sometimes used a prepositionless possessive eg Old French in the Oaths of Strasbourg saying "Pro Deo amur" with the oblique ending implying possession without the use of de. But it seems this weird prepositionless expression only survived in Old italo-Romance and Old Gallo Romance languages. Some Italo Romance languages in Apulia still do it.
@@bellicapelli8155 Yeah, I studied some Italian, and I have a basic understanding of it. It's very similar to Spanish. My goal is to one day visit Italy. I usually tell my brothers that Italian to Spanish is like that one cousin you rarely see but once you do it's like you're always together.
What fascinates me is the fate of African Romance: I remember visiting the ruins of the former Berber-Roman city of Volubilis in Morocco with a Romanian man. During our visit, he remarked to me how, if were not for the Islamic invasions of the early middle ages, the people of Morocco would be speaking a Romance language, related to but probably distinct from either Spanish or Italian. There is some evidence that peasants in North Africa were still speaking a Romance language as late as the 12th c.
There are a few hints about African Romance, for instance it seems to have its vowels match up with Sardinian. Unlike other forms of Latin it seems that the C is still the K sound rather than CH or S. as well as Berber loan words.
Roman Morocco was never really that romanized to begin with in order to sustain a native latin community for long after the roman withdrawal. The province was small and always very militarized. although there were very romanized communities and roman veterans did settle there, they were quite few (around 9-10 major ones) and far between. The last latin inscriptions date from the mid 600s (a few decades before arabs arrive) in Volubilis, and by then it had mostly been settled by berber tribes moving in from the south so they would probably have spoken berber if the arabs had´nt arrived. Romance might have survived but it would have been a small minority language amongst a multitude of berber languages, maybe similar to dalmatian romance in croatia or the aromanians in greece. A huge factor in the decline of romance (and which is actually mentioned by prokopius) was the byzantine reconquest of the vandal north african kingdom. Millions of peoples actually died (probably most of them romance speaking) due to the war and famine with the vandals and later drawn out war with berber kingdoms that lasted decades. The byzantines even destroyed the mauro-roman kingdom without even occupying its vast territory in western algeria which basically was a huge vestige of the legacy of the western roman empire in north africa, so i think that should also be taken into account. Decline of romance happened way before arabs even came to north Africa.
I watched a video about the lost language you're talking about (a language I like to refer to as _Afromance_ or _Afromanian)_ but I forget the channel name. Anyway, St. Augustine of Hippo had written something before the Vandals had come to loot and steal, and apparently yes, that guy @Liethen is actually correct about what he said. It was also noted that unlike most Romance languages, the C's kept a K sound, so even though their word for "hundred" is the exact same as Italian and Spanish, "Cento", it would've been pronounced "kento", not "chento" or "sento".
No, that "loser" as you call him, a man who saved Rome from near destruction, was merely recognising a reality that had long been in place. Greek was the lingua franca in the East, had been for centuries. Ever heard of a guy called Alexander? Or the Diadochi? @@baha3alshamari152
@@baha3alshamari152 The hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire started under emperor Theodosius II after he married Aelia Eudocia,a greek from Athens. Anastasius I wanted to finish the hellenization but he faced the revolt of Vitalianus from Moesia Inferior. Justinus I and Justinianus II reversed the process for a while.
There is a story that Charlemagne went to the cell of scholar John Scotus Erigenia and had dinner with him. At one point he looked over at John Scotus and asked "Quod destat (what separates/what is the difference between) sotto (a fool) et Scotto (an Irishman, specifically John Scotus). Scotus replied "Tanta tabula," or "just this table." I should add that it's probably apocryphal.
In the Austro-Hungarian Reichstag of the mid-19th century, the Czechs and deputies from other ethnic groups were barred from using their native tongues but were unwilling to use the German or Magyar of their overlords. So they delivered their speeches and conducted their business IN LATIN! Cicero would have been proud! Similar conditions have led to English being the official language of present-day India!
As a historian, I look back to my school days, and it upsets me that teachers explained the end of the (Western) Roman Empire as giving birth to the medieval kingdoms of England, France, Spain and Portugal, as if the latter had risen out of nowhere, with no continuity with the Romans.
The sheer number of people who call themselves Roman princes, or tried to base their authority on Rome, is absolutely insane. I think there are a whole bunch of Asian rulers called Khan after the Mongols, even if they aren’t at all Mongol themselves.
I love learning how Latin evolved. I learned French in high school, and learned Latin about a decade after that, along with some other Romance languages.. It's super interesting how Latin becomes Gallo-Romance becomes French, or Latin becomes Ibero-Romance becomes Spanish and Portuguese. Anca la lenga Dalmata es bun.
They aren’t associated with them. The direct continuation is with the Eastern Romans. Who your ancestors called Byzantine’s to dispossess them of their own heritage.
Definitely, this woman loves Roman and Greek history! Thanks for mentioning me, Sebastian, your channel is the best! (I tried to upgrade my membership, when you appealed to us for more support, but not really knowing what I’m doing, I think I ended up at two different support levels! One of these days I’ll try to check this, I’m new to Patreon). I don’t use Patreon for anyone else! Anyone who provides such top-quality history content shouldn’t have to also drive for Uber, etc., just to support their family! We Americans need all the help we can get, we get very little history education here, only a little US and State-specific history, in high school and university. I don’t think any other history is even required for the Baccalaureate here, can’t remember, that was 40+ years ago!
I am the one who has to thank you Kimberly, thanks again for your generous support of the channel and for all your excellent comments over the last months. It is really heartwarming for me to see that there are so many people who share this same fascination and love for the history of antiquity and especially of late antiquity. And especially since most of the audience on the channel is male, I am of course especially happy that the content also resonates with women. Thanks again for your support and all the best, Sebastian
As a classics major (albeit from twenty years ago) I can assure you and this TH-camr that I knew many female classicists. One of the best writers I read in college was Averil Cameron.
Latin became French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. I said something similar in my historical note at the end of my historical fiction book, and I asked the question, "Who assimilated who?" This was how I was trying to forshadow the coming of the European kingdoms as well. This is why I like French. Merci mon ami, et de rien.
Isolation ,geography separates humans, and the most important in the dark era the majority of the people were illiterate,wich made easy for langueges to change.
My grandmother was a Latin teacher. (I probably still have some of her Latin textbooks stored somewhere around the house.) It was still being taught and used in scholarship, and church services when I was a child. That was only fifty years ago. And then somehow it mostly disappeared from use in schools and churches in America - almost as if an order had been sent out (like with Imperial measurements).
Your channel always brings content of interest, but damn this is one of your top tier pontifications about our beloved predecessors. Keep swing for the fences with these big brain essays you legend 🙏
The map showing where Latin was mostly spoken explains why the Eastern Roman Empire continued using Latin as the military language until the late 7th century. Most soldiers came from the Danube region where Latin was mostly spoken. When the Slavs overran the Balkans, the Romans looked for military man power in Hellenized Anatolia.
There is is a Romance Creole language in Mindanao Philippines. In Zamboanga City in the southwest of Mindanao, people speak Chavacano. The language combines 17th Century Castellano with Cebuano. Having studied Latin at high school and university, I can understand it well. Living in Mindanao, I've learned to speak and understand Cebuano as well. Chavacano is the only Spanish Creole in Asia. I also recently saw a TH-cam video that showed a Roman coin bearing the image of Marcus Aurelius, which was in a museum in Vietnam. It's hard to tell if it was brought there in the time of the Roman Empire or if it arrived much later.
By the 2nd Century AD the vocative case disappeared and the accusative and ablative Latin case merged together. Then by the late 4th and by the 5th century spoken Latin had the genitive and dative merge together leaving just a 3-case system but as that was happening prepositions were beginning to be used more alongside this reduced case system. This 3-case system survived into Romanian today and lasted elsewhere probably until the late 6th century AD and early 7th century AD. Then we have a binary nominative and oblique case that survived in Medieval Gallo-Romance in the literary period but was lost by the time Romance was written in Spain and Italy. Apparently and according to linguist Roger Wright literary Late Latin was read aloud with Romance pronunciation in the very early Middle Ages up until the Carolingian Renaissance in 800 not unlike how French today is pronounced very differently from how it's written. A Late Latin sentence in the late 8th century such as Populus in illis montibus would have been read aloud as very early French Pobles en les montz. Words like Viridiarium would have been read aloud as Vergier in Frankia. Then they went back to reading Latin letter for letter as it was written down and this severed Romance and Latin from each other as sermons and texts read aloud were not understood anymore.
I need to go look up linguistic termanology. The technical words got me, not my area of knowledge. Vocative, accusative, ablative, genative, dative ect, I have a vague understanding of them. But it seemed interesting and I followed the second half of what you said. Languages can change in strange ways. It is not surprising that when words are regularly misused or pronounced differently that the meaning drifts to something else. There are some strange instances where mishearings of words are taken to be other words and written as such. In English a common recent change I see online is the mishearing is 'have' being shortend to 'av' and being heard and written by others as 'of'. I wonder how long it will be before that becomes the accepted term of use. Languages do seem to be constantly drifting and never in a crystalised form for the most part.
I love this channel and when life inevitably turns around, this will be the place I support. Thank you for giving me something to look forward to for so long!
I’ve been looking forward to this, Dominus. One of the biggest ironies in history is Heraclius’ reign. There’s lots but I’m focusing on Maurice (before Phocas’ usurpation) who was the first native Greek-speaking Emperor but he learned Latin for the sake of administration, then Heraclius who spoke Latin being raised in Africa changed the administrative language to Greek for sake of practicality.
Why did former emperor Marcus Aurelius, a native of the city of Rome, write his own personal diary in Greek 400 years before Maurice? His diary wasn't intended for publication so this is pretty strong evidence that Greek was his preferred language and most likely his mother tongue.
@@savvageorgeMarcus Aurelius was a stoic philosopher emperor. He was born in Rome so the odds that he spoke Greek first is beyond slim. If that were true he’d had been raised by a Greek teacher and everyone around him would be ok with him learning Latin as a second language (rather than prioritize it for a proper Roman education). He revered the ancient Greeks and probably hoped to lead by example but he learned Greek whether young or old. It’s possible he viewed it as the Civilized Language rather than Latin considering its predominance and continuing legacy through late antiquity. But I’d bet money he spoke Latin first and learned Greek over time. Then with a proper education for speaking and writing it he made his own diary. Perhaps he wrote it in Greek so Latin-speakers-only couldn’t read what he wrote but only the highest educated. Edit: a closer comparison to Marcus Aurelius is Emperor Julian rather than Maurice.
@@LordWyatt Hard to know for certain what his first language was. The teacher of Marcus Aurelus in Rome was a Greek called Apollonius of Chalcedon so if it wasn't his mother tongue I think at the very least he learnt Greek from a young age.
I'm from the Philippines, I speak Bisaya as a first language, Tagalog as second but I prefer to write in English. For context, Bisaya would be the local language. Tagalog is the language of administration. English is the language of Science and the Arts. I very much imagine this is exactly how it also went if you were say a local berber in Africa.
It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage video about Latin language from early, classic, and late Latin influenced by Greek language...thanks for sharing
Don't forget the Philippines. There is a small minority of Spanish speakers here, but they still exist. I retired here in 2018 from Texas and as part of my residency requirement, I needed a clearance from the NBI (Philippines version of FBI). The interviewer saw on my form that I also spoke Spanish. He asked me if this was true. I told him it was. He then chose to conduct the entire interview in flawless, but heavily accented Spanish. I liked him immediately.
This was an awesome narrative. Thanks for showing the evolution and connection between late antiquity and the early Medieval period. Fascinating as always!
Once again, Maiorianus delivers a fascinating and informative video. Thank you! Even today's English, while officially classified as a "Germanic" language, contains a significant proportion (up to 60%) of words of Latin origin. Most of which came from Norman French.
Thanks a lot :) Excellent observation with the English, indeed, the influence of Latin is always fascinating, and astounding. The Romans really live on in our language as well.
I’m learning Latin at the University of Michigan, I’m also using Per Illustrata, and I would highly recommend Introduction to Latin by Susan C. Shelmerdine. It’s not very fun like Per Illustrata, but it’s straight to the point and has lots of examples
Thank you so much for the video. I have always enjoyed your vids, your information and your presentations. In whatever form you continue I will be here to learn. Peaceful Skies.
I think the map shown 6:11 is underestimating the Greek language influential zone. Many words in English are Greek in origin so this is evidence that the Greek language influence went all across the empire. Some people estimate that up to 30% of English words are derived from Greek. Also many of the Roman upper classes spoke Greek as a first language. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, a native of the city of Rome, wrote his own personal diary in Greek, a diary never intended for publication so clearly his preferred language was Greek. The red areas on your map would have most likely been bi-lingual areas.
If you want to experience Latin in use today, attend a Traditional Latin Mass. The pronunciation will be ecclesiastical, of course, but it will be actual usage.
Great video Maioranus. One thing though, I wouldn't describe "vulgar" (i.e. common) Latin as more simple than classical Latin, I would describe it as just simply the vernacular Latin spoken by everyone (including the ruling class). Latin continued to change throughout the centuries (as you say), like every language does and did. Classical Latin is a snapshot in time to when Latin was codified in writing at an apex of Roman civilization during the Republic. Roman civilization would continue to grow even more during the imperial age, but the written high register language was enshrined and kept from changing a along with the spoken language bc it is written. This happens in many cultures. The eastern Roman empire switched to Greek and they knew how to read classical Latin, although they wrote in Koine (common) Greek. Written Arabic of the Kora is not what is spoken in the Arabian peninsula today. Parallels also exist in Slavic languages where the church/written language has remained static and unchanged compared to the spoken language.
Y porqué hay que que traducir al anglosajón? 😢el anglosajón no tiene nada de la gracia necesaria para hacer traducciones, en cambio el LATÍN es completamente válido para hacerse entender mundialmente 😅
I am currently learning Latin at the same time as I am reviving my Spanish. It's a great motivational symbiosis, practicing both at the same time, learning the Spanish etymologies and seeing how similar they are, but also learning how Spanish changed. While Latin isn't spoken natively by children anymore, in a way it actually is, if you think Spanish is just New Iberian Latin.
I think there should had been huge regional differences with the Latin spoken among the provinces of the Empire even early on due the lack of the printing press, mass communications systems and the influence of previous local languages. I wouldn't be surprised if a person from Lusitania couldn't communicate well with another person from Britannia
It's not so simple. If command of standard Latin talked to status and earnings ... Also, English speaking countries today understand each other very well despite regional variations and not seeming to stop.
That probably has to do with the geography considering Wales and the highlands of Scotland are very mountainous and thus were more stubborn in being assimilated by peoples like the Anglo-Saxons, Romans and the later English. Whereas modern France is flatter and thus easier to control and assimilate.
Fascinating indeed! There are some evidence pointing to Gaulish still being spoken in some remote areas up until the 1000’s. But it barely left any trace in the French language. On the other hand, why isn’t there a Romance language from Brittano Romans? Latin was well established there, and yet…
@@PurpleFogMusicThere was a Britano-Roman Latin dialect as well as a North African Latin dialect, but the Anglo-Saxons as well as remaining Celts in Britain ended this language. The North African Latin was completely replaced by Arabic during the Muslim expansion.
@@n00b5lay3rRight. But those Celts were Latinized during the Roman days, weren't they? What made them revive their Celtic language after the Roman withdrawal, when in the mainland it just wasn't a thing? Or had they been less Romanized all along?
I was interested to learn that Latin is thought to come from the same region of Europe as the Celtic languages, and then moved into Italy. In a way, Latins were an early Celtic migration into Italy, except not really, as they were far earlier and adopted local practices becoming the Latins that gave rise to Roma.
It would be interesting if you made a video on what happened to the Latin speakers in the Eastern Roman Empire. The people in Moesia and Dalmatia, Im pretty sure both Justinian and Belisarius were from Moesia which explains them being native Latin speakers, as well as how Italian specifically diverged from Latin
You know, I've always wondered what happened to greek in, say Alexandria and the border regions of Byzantium Turkey. I wouldn't put it past some form of greko-arabic existed. We see a form of this this as Cyprus Arabic. Another example is centuries later of a vulgar Turkish being written in Greek.
Well for Alexandria, the Greek alphabet survived in a form when it fused with the Coptic script. That's why it looks so familiar yet so simultaneously different. Probably something similar happened in many of the regions of the Levant, where the script and loan words of Greek were incorporated into the native language. Naturally, the Islamic conquests brought the assimilation (both forced and voluntary) of the languages to Arabic. As for why the Turks didn't adopt the Greek script, well that's a rather interesting question.
Don't forget that many surrounding tribes and villages around ancient Rome spoke related but distinct languages. Some of the differences between French and Spanish is thought to have originated from Pompey (conquerer of Spain) recruiting his soldiers from one part of Italy while Caesar (conquerer of France) took soldiers from another region, each soldier understanding formal Latin, but speaking dialects among themselves. These regional differences ended up flavoring the varying Romance languages.
Spanish is my second language, and I understand that Spanish is the most Latin-like of the four Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese). When I saw the movie The Passion of the Christ many years ago, the Roman soldiers spoke Latin in the movie; and I felt a connection to them, because I could understand what they were saying.
Spanish is not even close to being the most Latin-like of the five main Romance language. Spain was ruled by the Arabs for nearly 800 years, before the reconquista in 1492. Because of this, Spanish now has a lot of Arabic influence on the language, with many words borrowed altogether (any word that begins with “al” in Spanish is likely an Arabic loan word.) Italian is the most Latin-like of the five main Romance languages. Italy is where Rome began, and subsequently where Latin saw its roots. Put into numbers, Italian is like 90% Latin, while Spanish is 75%.
@@jamesMartinelli-x2t Yeah, it is. And that’s just stating the obvious. However, it is NOT the closest Romance language to Latin - and is not mutually intelligible with Latin. Also, we have to recognize that the Romance languages DO NOT directly descend from Classical Latin (language spoken by Caesar), but are instead descendants of Vulgar Latin, which were regional dialects of Classical Latin. Even Italian, the closest language to Latin. Stating that Spanish is the closest language to Latin is like stating that Dutch is the closest language to Proto-Germanic.
@@jamesMartinelli-x2t Sardinian has about an 85% lexical similarity to Latin, while Italian has about 90%. Italian is considered the closest by a long shot.
Yes, in the era of migrations, the various areas where a language of Latin origin was spoken became somewhat isolated and each had a different influence. Therefore they evolved separately. Even if we do not take into account the external factors, in areas that could not communicate it is normal to evolve differently.
Well, when you said that Romans spread latin language throughout the Roman Empire you must understand that there were no public education, media etc. (E.g. russian languages only supressed Belarus language in rural Belarus when the television appeared) So latin used to be a language of official documentation and roman army and a secondary language of the local elites. Nobody tought latin to locals. The second point, those territories which are now Roman speaking countries were already Celtic speaking and even though celto-italic hypothesis isn't 100% accepted but the fact that the languages were close enough so that those people were a lot more suseptable to appropreate some latin than e.g. Germania Interior or north Africa or Greece, Asia Minor and Syria.
Have you read The Geography of Urbanism in Roman Asia Minor? or An Urban Geography of the Roman World, 100 BC to AD 300 ? Ive done some research on Asia minor, i pieced together what i could see from all the cities and saw that the urban centers seemed to be very roman until they were raided by persians, arbabs or turks. If you look at the sites they had forums, baths and theatres in good shape perhaps in some cases even until Timur wrecked the cities. There are so many decently sized urban towns in Anatolia and asia minor with little to no written sources. I found Knidos and Philadelphia interesting , both great even late in the empire. Would be cool if you looked more into it
A town rarely mentioned is Rhodes, we know where the walls was and there are structures all within, its a massive area. Larger than some cities with huge population estimates, we also know Rhodes was powerful with a strong navy. Yet some claim they maybe had 50k people, I think at its hight likely 3-4 times more. There is such a lack of description about some of the large cities in the agean and asia minor. Ephesus and Smyrna is mentioned a lot but there was likely a bunch of towns just as large, and perhaps all the way until the arab raids. Ive been to many greek island and found remains of towns, where its suggested they all were abandoned in the arab raids. Couldnt live along the coast anymore in Greece and anatolia after Egypt and the middle east fell. This is so underrated for the further decline of Eastern Rome, where these coastal large cities where replaced with smaller fortified settlements inland. This must have disturbed trade and roman life. I wish we knew more of this period, a lot of romans were prob killed and enslaved sadly. I wonder where eastern Rome would have gone.. Just imagine, Rhodes town went from being a large metro to a small fort. prob 250k to 20k peoples. And this same across most islands and towns in the regions, massive impact.
I like these channel. It delves into the gap left by school in history lessons, where it divides between antiquity and middle ages basically stopping at the fall of rome and jumping straight into feudalism leaving centuries unexplained. I'm, however not a big fan of the AI generated images. They're becoming so ubiquitous lately, it's like a death to artist work.
Seriously, in the modern English vocabulary, there are three times more words of Latin origin than in actual Latin. For example, just look at the Latin word for fire "ignis" and the English words; ignite, igneous rocks, and ignition switch, etc..... Latin always had a certain snob value.
If you know Spanish you can easily learn Latin since it's not so different and there are a lot of words and grammar used that it's the same, even people that knows Spanish and doesn't know Latin can understand most of the inscriptions made by the Romans
@@WinterascentI don't know, I don't know how to speak Occitan or Romanian but I can understand some Italian and Portuguese just by knowing Spanish. As a Spanish speaker French is completely twisted, I cannot understand it at all
@@Winterascent yes this is true, we can also understand a lot from other romance languages for example Spanish speakers will easily be able to speak with Italian or Portuguese speakers but not with French or Romanian ones although if we see a written text in those languages we will pick up quite a few words and the context of what's being said All romance language speakers share the Latin root hence why we are able to read and understand quite a bit of Latin or another romance language
The intresting about romance language and western Roman Empire is that they all share similar language, religion like thr Roman catholic church and share similar diet of bread cheese butter and wine. Compared to germanic Europe based on beer barely and protestantism
Latin might've become the dominant language of Europe for centuries, but it wasn't dominant in Europe during the Roman Kingdom as stated @0:10 Latin wasn't even the dominant language in *Italy* back then. That quibble aside, great vid. Best insight I've come across re the mechanism by which Latin diverged into various Romance languages.
Languages change over time. People come up with slang and even new words for things they have never seen before. English of the Anglo Saxons is miles away from modern English but it's the same language. We are an odd species.
Same with German. In school, I had lessons on Medieval German, the teacher presented some Medieval texts and songs. It was a totally different language, unrecognizeable even to native German speakers.
In Hispania more languages than "proto-Spanish" (proto-Castilian) and "proto-Portuguese", especially and more importantly "proto-Catalan" followed by "proto-Aragonese", "proto-Leonese", "proto-Asturian"...
English is heavily influenced by Latin. Over 60% of all cognates evolved from a Latin root. The main spoken vocabulary is German, but most legal, scientific, philosophical, or educational terms are derived from Latin roots.
Thats true and its probably because of the Church and the Normans, though it can't be ruled out that the Latin speakers in the Romano-British cities might have contributed some of the words to Old English, though this is hard to prove.
So was the vulgate primarily late Latin with little sophisticated words and simple structures? Woud Aquinas' written Latin be unintelligible to people like Cicero?
I don’t buy the whole “Latin became more simple because it needed to be due to Christianity” seems kind of like a cop out. Do you have a source on that? If you do then I’d be happy to be corrected.
I saw this myself on television but can't be fact-checked cuz I can't remember how long ago. A Texan female evangelist said that if English was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for her
Is Learning Latin Easier Than Learning Greek And I Learned Ancient Greek. Koine Greek But Specifically Spoken In The Hellenistic Period Until The Crises of Third Century.
Wonder if spoken Latin was anything like the brutal economy of words imposed on written Latin? Latin's changing over time is no susprise given the cultural collisions that accelerated evolution of English.
I know this is a modern perspective, but I never understood how the Byzantines justified calling themselves Roman when 1. they didn’t control the city of Rome and 2. Didn’t speak Latin. It seems like such a crucial component of the Roman identity
The Roman elite were heavily Hellenised. Senators spoke Greek to each other like how English aristocrats spoke medieval Anglo-Norman French (until 1400 in parliament). Many Roman senators were encouraged to move to 'Nova Roma' to participate in its equivalent council. The 'Byzantine' senate continued until the 1300s. Constantinople was similar in character e.g. it's own hippodrome like the Circus Maximus. Furthermore all free born were legally Roman after the expansion of citizenship under Emperor Caracalla in 212. Lastly much of this fused cultural character produced the modern greek identity today, throw in greek orthodox Christianity for good measure too. Greeks (especially those from Asia minor ) identified as 'Rhomoi' until the late 19th century. To paraphrase a quote by Horace, 'Greece captured the heart of its captor.'
Actually Rome was part of the Eastern Empire for several hundred years when Justinian reconquered Italy. They only lost it later. There was a time when Rome wasn't even the Capital of the any incarnation of the Empire, before the East and West split Constantinople at one time was the only capital. Even when the East--West split occurred the West had Ravenna as their capital not Rome. The Eastern Empire at it's largest ruled over North Africa, the Balkans, Italy, parts of Spain, which all had Latin speaking subjects. You do know that also the Roman elite in the late Roman Republic times spoke Greek to as an elite language amongst themselves and spoke Latin when dealing with the general public right?
Also, you need to understand that as the empire evolved, the idea that all things resolved around Rome the city diminished. Caracalla made every free man in the empire a citizen, which diminished the need to physically affiliate with the city like Roman citizens of old. Also many emperors spent a huge chunk of their administration on campaign and only really went to Rome as an act of formality. By the time the crisis of the third century ended, the capital was where the emperor was. This becomes apparent with Diocletian, who I think only visited Rome once and chose to spend most of his reign in his villa in modern day Croatia.
We also use Latin in law. Many legal terms are latin: ex post facto, certiorari, exequator, nullum Pena, habeus corpus (release the body). Maybe you could do an episode talking about how Roman Law influenced modern law, both European Civil and Anglo Common Law
im not sure if youve covered this but id be intrested to know what happened to the roman populations in north africa after they fell out of romes orbit, i assume they would have just assimilated with the islamic conquests but what was that process like and what were they doing before that were there any who say themsleves as roman still right before muhammad.
I love your (Classical Latin) pronunciations of Cicero and Vergil! English pronunciation of Latin is pretty awful, mostly because we picked up so much middle French in this language and also because of the “Great Vowel Shift” in (Early Modern) English. Even if one just pronounces C properly, as K, in their attempts at Classical Latin and Greek, I’m happier. The shift from some Cs from the K to the S sound happened in Late Latin, so it affected the later Romance languages, too. Why this shift is applied also to Greek mystifies me, this change never occurred in any form of Greek, including modern Greek. I know Greek areas were under Roman rule for some time, but there’s no need to Latinize Greek spellings and pronunciation, it just doesn’t make any sense.
The English language is an interesting case in all of this. The Germanic tribes that conquered what is today called England used languages or dialects that were not at all influenced by Latin. And yet, in these modern times, you can often hear it being claimed that English is a mixture of Germanic languages and Latin. This is not surprising since, by some estimates, about a third of the words used in English have a Latin or French origin. It wasn't early admixture with the Romano-British Celts that caused this but the much later arrival of the Norman French. English did not really deviate from its Germanic roots until the middle and late medieval period, much later than what had been going on linguistically on the European continent. Add to all of this the use of Latin by the Catholic church in England, and the situation was heavily reinforced However the truth is that despite this history, English is a Germanic language, not a weird version of Latin. Interesting also that Latin was still required learning in the schools of what had become strictly Protestant England well into modern times. On a completely different point, I'm surely not the only one who scratches his head trying to understand why the Frankish kingdom (truly Germanic) did not settle on a common language at some point. This would/should have resulted in some commonality between what is today spoken in east of the Frankish empire (German) and the west (French). Instead the linguistic border is very hard. This is partially explained in the video, the core issue remains; why didn't the Franks develop a common language?
English had some Latin loanwords already before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent. Wine (vinum), mint (as in ‘minting coins’, from moneta), mill (molina), cheese (caseum). Compare with vineyard and money, which are loans from Old French. With christianisation, more Latin loanwords entered Old English: altar, candle, just to name two which still exist today. The same happened in the Old High German language: Wein, Münze, Mühle, Käse, and later, Altar. Those who consider English to be a Romance language have no idea.
I took Latin as my foreign language choice in the 1980's. Didn't retain a single word, though I can still recall about a dozen conjugations of "amo". Moved after my sophomore year and it wasn't offered. Of course, I'd probably have had to retake Latin I about three or four times to have actually been ready for my second year, which I barely passed. I have a complete inability to learn languages, as my attempt at Italian in college proved.
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There was an hilarious account of a Frank monk from the 700s AD. He wrote something on the lines of "in this land used to live people called the Romans, but we don't know what happened to them, and we don't even know what language they spoke" and he wrote that IN LATIN 😂.
Little did he know it was his ancestors
It’s 8am and I’m 70% sure that my fam heard me laugh across the house
Gonna need a source on that, since it sounds made up.
Do you know, by chance, the name of this monk or a source of such anecdote?
Franks😂😒😅
I had a university professor who had a solid grounding in Latin. Years later he was traveling in Romania when his car broke down and not speaking Romanian he just spoke to them in Latin & it worked! Got his car fixed and was on his way
BS
@@thadtuiol1717not really. You don't need an elaborate conversation. Just basic words which are very much resembling Latin. Latin knowing travellers in the medieval times also wrote about this.
Most surprising part isn’t the Latin it’s that he drove through Romania without his car being stolen
@@Chungus581 I think he said it happened in the 60s. 😁
@thadtuiol1717 There's a dude on TH-cam who tests his Latin in Romania and in Italy....see for yourself. It's not perfect, of course, but it works.
But sure, deny what is clearly PLAUSIBLE....
Sardinian language to this day is still very similar to Latin, thanks to the difficulty of invading an island and for invaders to survive invading THAT island.
I compared them. Yes it has roots in latin but i still believe they are extremely different
Its the most similar to latin but certainly not similar per se.
@@ldubt4494 ?
Not really
@@ValeriusMagni out of all languages theyre the closest to latin, but still not as close as for example sardinian to italian.
A Roman senator giving speeches in the 400s was like a modern dude reenacting Shakespeare or Cervantes.
what? the senate existed and convened in 400 and for hundreds of years after
That Vulgar Latin "Marcus mi da libru de patre." is so understandable to me as a native Spanish speaker. I could easily understand it as the Spanish equivalent would be "Marco me da (el) libro de (su) padre". I can see now how modern Romance languages descend from Latin.
spanish is bad latin and italian is bad spanish
as we in Germania Magna say
Vulgar Latin speakers still would have used the genitive for quite some time the preposition de was used alongside it until it fully replaced it. Romanian still has a Genitive today and some of the Old Romance languages sometimes used a prepositionless possessive eg Old French in the Oaths of Strasbourg saying "Pro Deo amur" with the oblique ending implying possession without the use of de. But it seems this weird prepositionless expression only survived in Old italo-Romance and Old Gallo Romance languages. Some Italo Romance languages in Apulia still do it.
@@kleinweichkleinweich What do you say about French then? 😂
Same in italian, "Marco mi da il libro", basically the same indeed
@@bellicapelli8155 Yeah, I studied some Italian, and I have a basic understanding of it. It's very similar to Spanish. My goal is to one day visit Italy. I usually tell my brothers that Italian to Spanish is like that one cousin you rarely see but once you do it's like you're always together.
What fascinates me is the fate of African Romance: I remember visiting the ruins of the former Berber-Roman city of Volubilis in Morocco with a Romanian man. During our visit, he remarked to me how, if were not for the Islamic invasions of the early middle ages, the people of Morocco would be speaking a Romance language, related to but probably distinct from either Spanish or Italian. There is some evidence that peasants in North Africa were still speaking a Romance language as late as the 12th c.
Muslims were and are experts at destroying local cultures most of the time, especially womens past contributions to non mvzlimz societies.
Wow. That’s fascinating
There are a few hints about African Romance, for instance it seems to have its vowels match up with Sardinian. Unlike other forms of Latin it seems that the C is still the K sound rather than CH or S. as well as Berber loan words.
Roman Morocco was never really that romanized to begin with in order to sustain a native latin community for long after the roman withdrawal. The province was small and always very militarized. although there were very romanized communities and roman veterans did settle there, they were quite few (around 9-10 major ones) and far between. The last latin inscriptions date from the mid 600s (a few decades before arabs arrive) in Volubilis, and by then it had mostly been settled by berber tribes moving in from the south so they would probably have spoken berber if the arabs had´nt arrived. Romance might have survived but it would have been a small minority language amongst a multitude of berber languages, maybe similar to dalmatian romance in croatia or the aromanians in greece.
A huge factor in the decline of romance (and which is actually mentioned by prokopius) was the byzantine reconquest of the vandal north african kingdom. Millions of peoples actually died (probably most of them romance speaking) due to the war and famine with the vandals and later drawn out war with berber kingdoms that lasted decades. The byzantines even destroyed the mauro-roman kingdom without even occupying its vast territory in western algeria which basically was a huge vestige of the legacy of the western roman empire in north africa, so i think that should also be taken into account. Decline of romance happened way before arabs even came to north Africa.
I watched a video about the lost language you're talking about (a language I like to refer to as _Afromance_ or _Afromanian)_ but I forget the channel name. Anyway, St. Augustine of Hippo had written something before the Vandals had come to loot and steal, and apparently yes, that guy @Liethen is actually correct about what he said. It was also noted that unlike most Romance languages, the C's kept a K sound, so even though their word for "hundred" is the exact same as Italian and Spanish, "Cento", it would've been pronounced "kento", not "chento" or "sento".
Latin was used to the imperial court in Constantinople till 622AD and in the imperial roman army till 639AD.
Because Heraclius the loser wanted the eastern Roman empire to be Greek and has a unified official language and religion
No, that "loser" as you call him, a man who saved Rome from near destruction, was merely recognising a reality that had long been in place. Greek was the lingua franca in the East, had been for centuries. Ever heard of a guy called Alexander? Or the Diadochi? @@baha3alshamari152
@@baha3alshamari152 The hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire started under emperor Theodosius II after he married Aelia Eudocia,a greek from Athens.
Anastasius I wanted to finish the hellenization but he faced the revolt of Vitalianus from Moesia Inferior.
Justinus I and Justinianus II reversed the process for a while.
@@baha3alshamari152Herakleios the Greay
Greek language became popular amongst elites even during the Republic days. It was said Julius Ceasar preferred speaking it instead of Latin
There is a story that Charlemagne went to the cell of scholar John Scotus Erigenia and had dinner with him. At one point he looked over at John Scotus and asked "Quod destat (what separates/what is the difference between) sotto (a fool) et Scotto (an Irishman, specifically John Scotus). Scotus replied "Tanta tabula," or "just this table." I should add that it's probably apocryphal.
In the Austro-Hungarian Reichstag of the mid-19th century, the Czechs and deputies from other ethnic groups were barred from using their native tongues but were unwilling to use the German or Magyar of their overlords. So they delivered their speeches and conducted their business IN LATIN! Cicero would have been proud! Similar conditions have led to English being the official language of present-day India!
The official language used in the Hungarian Diet was Latin up until 1844
@@varbalvarbalConsidering that barely half of the inhabitants of the Hungary of that period were native Magyar speakers, that was a wise choice!
As a historian, I look back to my school days, and it upsets me that teachers explained the end of the (Western) Roman Empire as giving birth to the medieval kingdoms of England, France, Spain and Portugal, as if the latter had risen out of nowhere, with no continuity with the Romans.
Because they had no continuity with Romans, though influenced by them.
The sheer number of people who call themselves Roman princes, or tried to base their authority on Rome, is absolutely insane. I think there are a whole bunch of Asian rulers called Khan after the Mongols, even if they aren’t at all Mongol themselves.
I love learning how Latin evolved. I learned French in high school, and learned Latin about a decade after that, along with some other Romance languages.. It's super interesting how Latin becomes Gallo-Romance becomes French, or Latin becomes Ibero-Romance becomes Spanish and Portuguese.
Anca la lenga Dalmata es bun.
You can add Germany and Russia to the list, they wouldn't have existed without Roman influence.
They aren’t associated with them. The direct continuation is with the Eastern Romans. Who your ancestors called Byzantine’s to dispossess them of their own heritage.
Definitely, this woman loves Roman and Greek history! Thanks for mentioning me, Sebastian, your channel is the best! (I tried to upgrade my membership, when you appealed to us for more support, but not really knowing what I’m doing, I think I ended up at two different support levels! One of these days I’ll try to check this, I’m new to Patreon). I don’t use Patreon for anyone else! Anyone who provides such top-quality history content shouldn’t have to also drive for Uber, etc., just to support their family! We Americans need all the help we can get, we get very little history education here, only a little US and State-specific history, in high school and university. I don’t think any other history is even required for the Baccalaureate here, can’t remember, that was 40+ years ago!
I am the one who has to thank you Kimberly, thanks again for your generous support of the channel and for all your excellent comments over the last months. It is really heartwarming for me to see that there are so many people who share this same fascination and love for the history of antiquity and especially of late antiquity. And especially since most of the audience on the channel is male, I am of course especially happy that the content also resonates with women. Thanks again for your support and all the best, Sebastian
As a classics major (albeit from twenty years ago) I can assure you and this TH-camr that I knew many female classicists. One of the best writers I read in college was Averil Cameron.
As always: high quality content, thanks a lot!
Latin became French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. I said something similar in my historical note at the end of my historical fiction book, and I asked the question, "Who assimilated who?" This was how I was trying to forshadow the coming of the European kingdoms as well. This is why I like French. Merci mon ami, et de rien.
French has a terrible phonetic system, way too many silent letters
I just donated $50.00. Thanks for your great work!!
Such an interesting topic, I always wondered how Latin evolved into the Romance languages.
Herr Eintracht ich bin completamente de acuerdo mit vous 🎉
Isolation ,geography separates humans, and the most important in the dark era the majority of the people were illiterate,wich made easy for langueges to change.
My grandmother was a Latin teacher. (I probably still have some of her Latin textbooks stored somewhere around the house.) It was still being taught and used in scholarship, and church services when I was a child. That was only fifty years ago. And then somehow it mostly disappeared from use in schools and churches in America - almost as if an order had been sent out (like with Imperial measurements).
Are you Canadian?
@@perceivedvelocity9914 No. Originally from Colorado. She taught public school in a small southern Colorado mining town.
@@DeanStephen
Here in Europe,
only kids attending either the Ateneum or Gymnasium learn Classical languages.
~These are elite state schools~
@@ariebrons7976 My grandmother taught some of the poorest kids in the state, but that little town had a high achievement rate for sure.
It was Vatican 2 oh Vatican 2, do whatever you want to do, that’s the spirit of Vatican 2 - do whatever you want to do.
Your channel always brings content of interest, but damn this is one of your top tier pontifications about our beloved predecessors. Keep swing for the fences with these big brain essays you legend 🙏
The map showing where Latin was mostly spoken explains why the Eastern Roman Empire continued using Latin as the military language until the late 7th century. Most soldiers came from the Danube region where Latin was mostly spoken. When the Slavs overran the Balkans, the Romans looked for military man power in Hellenized Anatolia.
I’m gonna watch this during study hall
Mans out here asking the real burning questions!
Thank you for yet another fascinating, informative, well researched video dealing with the late Roman Empire!
There is is a Romance Creole language in Mindanao Philippines. In Zamboanga City in the southwest of Mindanao, people speak Chavacano. The language combines 17th Century Castellano with Cebuano. Having studied Latin at high school and university, I can understand it well. Living in Mindanao, I've learned to speak and understand Cebuano as well. Chavacano is the only Spanish Creole in Asia. I also recently saw a TH-cam video that showed a Roman coin bearing the image of Marcus Aurelius, which was in a museum in Vietnam. It's hard to tell if it was brought there in the time of the Roman Empire or if it arrived much later.
By the 2nd Century AD the vocative case disappeared and the accusative and ablative Latin case merged together. Then by the late 4th and by the 5th century spoken Latin had the genitive and dative merge together leaving just a 3-case system but as that was happening prepositions were beginning to be used more alongside this reduced case system. This 3-case system survived into Romanian today and lasted elsewhere probably until the late 6th century AD and early 7th century AD. Then we have a binary nominative and oblique case that survived in Medieval Gallo-Romance in the literary period but was lost by the time Romance was written in Spain and Italy. Apparently and according to linguist Roger Wright literary Late Latin was read aloud with Romance pronunciation in the very early Middle Ages up until the Carolingian Renaissance in 800 not unlike how French today is pronounced very differently from how it's written. A Late Latin sentence in the late 8th century such as Populus in illis montibus would have been read aloud as very early French Pobles en les montz. Words like Viridiarium would have been read aloud as Vergier in Frankia. Then they went back to reading Latin letter for letter as it was written down and this severed Romance and Latin from each other as sermons and texts read aloud were not understood anymore.
I need to go look up linguistic termanology. The technical words got me, not my area of knowledge. Vocative, accusative, ablative, genative, dative ect, I have a vague understanding of them. But it seemed interesting and I followed the second half of what you said. Languages can change in strange ways. It is not surprising that when words are regularly misused or pronounced differently that the meaning drifts to something else. There are some strange instances where mishearings of words are taken to be other words and written as such.
In English a common recent change I see online is the mishearing is 'have' being shortend to 'av' and being heard and written by others as 'of'. I wonder how long it will be before that becomes the accepted term of use. Languages do seem to be constantly drifting and never in a crystalised form for the most part.
@@gm2407 Pretty much yeah.
Super interesting, thanks for explaining that in depth 👍
I love this channel and when life inevitably turns around, this will be the place I support. Thank you for giving me something to look forward to for so long!
I’ve been looking forward to this, Dominus.
One of the biggest ironies in history is Heraclius’ reign. There’s lots but I’m focusing on Maurice (before Phocas’ usurpation) who was the first native Greek-speaking Emperor but he learned Latin for the sake of administration, then Heraclius who spoke Latin being raised in Africa changed the administrative language to Greek for sake of practicality.
Why did former emperor Marcus Aurelius, a native of the city of Rome, write his own personal diary in Greek 400 years before Maurice? His diary wasn't intended for publication so this is pretty strong evidence that Greek was his preferred language and most likely his mother tongue.
@@savvageorgeMarcus Aurelius was a stoic philosopher emperor. He was born in Rome so the odds that he spoke Greek first is beyond slim. If that were true he’d had been raised by a Greek teacher and everyone around him would be ok with him learning Latin as a second language (rather than prioritize it for a proper Roman education).
He revered the ancient Greeks and probably hoped to lead by example but he learned Greek whether young or old. It’s possible he viewed it as the Civilized Language rather than Latin considering its predominance and continuing legacy through late antiquity.
But I’d bet money he spoke Latin first and learned Greek over time. Then with a proper education for speaking and writing it he made his own diary. Perhaps he wrote it in Greek so Latin-speakers-only couldn’t read what he wrote but only the highest educated.
Edit: a closer comparison to Marcus Aurelius is Emperor Julian rather than Maurice.
@@LordWyatt Hard to know for certain what his first language was. The teacher of Marcus Aurelus in Rome was a Greek called Apollonius of Chalcedon so if it wasn't his mother tongue I think at the very least he learnt Greek from a young age.
@@savvageorgeI agree.
I'm from the Philippines, I speak Bisaya as a first language, Tagalog as second but I prefer to write in English.
For context, Bisaya would be the local language. Tagalog is the language of administration. English is the language of Science and the Arts.
I very much imagine this is exactly how it also went if you were say a local berber in Africa.
It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage video about Latin language from early, classic, and late Latin influenced by Greek language...thanks for sharing
Happy to talk germanic. Influenced, never conquered by the Roman empire. But still SPQR!!! Thank you for your video
Don't forget the Philippines. There is a small minority of Spanish speakers here, but they still exist. I retired here in 2018 from Texas and as part of my residency requirement, I needed a clearance from the NBI (Philippines version of FBI). The interviewer saw on my form that I also spoke Spanish. He asked me if this was true. I told him it was. He then chose to conduct the entire interview in flawless, but heavily accented Spanish. I liked him immediately.
Best channel on youtube.
Clarifying and enjoyable video, thank you 😊
Great work!
This was an awesome narrative. Thanks for showing the evolution and connection between late antiquity and the early Medieval period. Fascinating as always!
Super interesting. I've been wanting to learn about this for a while
That was entertaining and informative. Thank you!
Once again, Maiorianus delivers a fascinating and informative video. Thank you!
Even today's English, while officially classified as a "Germanic" language, contains a significant proportion (up to 60%) of words of Latin origin. Most of which came from Norman French.
Thanks a lot :)
Excellent observation with the English, indeed, the influence of Latin is always fascinating, and astounding. The Romans really live on in our language as well.
Just waiting for a Greek person to show up and protest that stat.
I’ve heard English described as the “most Latinized Germanic language” and French as the “most Germanized Latin/Romance language”.
Modern English contains more Greek than Germanic words, too. What a mishmash English is!
This Greek person won’t contest that stat., but I did add something about Greek in Modern English🙂@@DrRomaioi
Thanks To This Magnificent Vídeo.
Interesting thanks
My school had optional Latin classes and they were full
Does Maiorianus speak Latin?
Hi, I am learning a bit from time to time, from the book "Linguana per se Illustrata". But my level is really embarrassing XD
I’m learning Latin at the University of Michigan, I’m also using Per Illustrata, and I would highly recommend Introduction to Latin by Susan C. Shelmerdine. It’s not very fun like Per Illustrata, but it’s straight to the point and has lots of examples
you're not Italian? what the@@Maiorianus_Sebastian
Thank you so much for the video.
I have always enjoyed your vids, your information and your presentations. In whatever form you continue I will be here to learn.
Peaceful Skies.
I think the map shown 6:11 is underestimating the Greek language influential zone. Many words in English are Greek in origin so this is evidence that the Greek language influence went all across the empire. Some people estimate that up to 30% of English words are derived from Greek. Also many of the Roman upper classes spoke Greek as a first language. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, a native of the city of Rome, wrote his own personal diary in Greek, a diary never intended for publication so clearly his preferred language was Greek. The red areas on your map would have most likely been bi-lingual areas.
Yes, but a lot of Greek in Modern English didn’t come from Roman times, but in the Renaissance.🙂
Fascinating, thank you
If you want to experience Latin in use today, attend a Traditional Latin Mass. The pronunciation will be ecclesiastical, of course, but it will be actual usage.
Great video Maioranus. One thing though, I wouldn't describe "vulgar" (i.e. common) Latin as more simple than classical Latin, I would describe it as just simply the vernacular Latin spoken by everyone (including the ruling class). Latin continued to change throughout the centuries (as you say), like every language does and did. Classical Latin is a snapshot in time to when Latin was codified in writing at an apex of Roman civilization during the Republic. Roman civilization would continue to grow even more during the imperial age, but the written high register language was enshrined and kept from changing a along with the spoken language bc it is written. This happens in many cultures. The eastern Roman empire switched to Greek and they knew how to read classical Latin, although they wrote in Koine (common) Greek. Written Arabic of the Kora is not what is spoken in the Arabian peninsula today. Parallels also exist in Slavic languages where the church/written language has remained static and unchanged compared to the spoken language.
"Caecilius est in horto" - ah, fond memories.
Y porqué hay que que traducir al anglosajón? 😢el anglosajón no tiene nada de la gracia necesaria para hacer traducciones, en cambio el LATÍN es completamente válido para hacerse entender mundialmente 😅
I am currently learning Latin at the same time as I am reviving my Spanish.
It's a great motivational symbiosis, practicing both at the same time, learning the Spanish etymologies and seeing how similar they are, but also learning how Spanish changed. While Latin isn't spoken natively by children anymore, in a way it actually is, if you think Spanish is just New Iberian Latin.
It'a even more similiar if you compare Spanish to vulgar Latin.
Excellent video!
I think there should had been huge regional differences with the Latin spoken among the provinces of the Empire even early on due the lack of the printing press, mass communications systems and the influence of previous local languages. I wouldn't be surprised if a person from Lusitania couldn't communicate well with another person from Britannia
It's not so simple.
If command of standard Latin talked to status and earnings ...
Also, English speaking countries today understand each other very well despite regional variations and not seeming to stop.
Imagine the pedagogus yelling to be heard over countless plagues, bagaudae revolts, barbarian invasions, civil wars etc
I find it fascinating that the pre Roman language survived in Wales but not in Gaul although both spent many hundred years under Roman rule.
That probably has to do with the geography considering Wales and the highlands of Scotland are very mountainous and thus were more stubborn in being assimilated by peoples like the Anglo-Saxons, Romans and the later English. Whereas modern France is flatter and thus easier to control and assimilate.
Fascinating indeed! There are some evidence pointing to Gaulish still being spoken in some remote areas up until the 1000’s. But it barely left any trace in the French language.
On the other hand, why isn’t there a Romance language from Brittano Romans? Latin was well established there, and yet…
Because late invaders came from the east, and didn't reached Wales.
@@PurpleFogMusicThere was a Britano-Roman Latin dialect as well as a North African Latin dialect, but the Anglo-Saxons as well as remaining Celts in Britain ended this language. The North African Latin was completely replaced by Arabic during the Muslim expansion.
@@n00b5lay3rRight. But those Celts were Latinized during the Roman days, weren't they? What made them revive their Celtic language after the Roman withdrawal, when in the mainland it just wasn't a thing? Or had they been less Romanized all along?
I was interested to learn that Latin is thought to come from the same region of Europe as the Celtic languages, and then moved into Italy. In a way, Latins were an early Celtic migration into Italy, except not really, as they were far earlier and adopted local practices becoming the Latins that gave rise to Roma.
No😂
Thank you!
Thanks a lot Charles, for your kind and generous donation for Maiorianus, I really appreciate it very much
amazing video as usual! i wonder if u can also make videos about the history of ancient greece!?
No Vatican those days, but the Holy See.
Vatican we do have since 1870 A D
It would be interesting if you made a video on what happened to the Latin speakers in the Eastern Roman Empire. The people in Moesia and Dalmatia, Im pretty sure both Justinian and Belisarius were from Moesia which explains them being native Latin speakers, as well as how Italian specifically diverged from Latin
I've always found French, Italian, and Castilian to be the most fascinating Latin languages.
damn good to see the person behind all this for the first time. good looking fella you are. Salve!
Can you do a video about education in Rome?
Just found you channel and already a fan! Are you using gen AI for your illustrations?
You know, I've always wondered what happened to greek in, say Alexandria and the border regions of Byzantium Turkey. I wouldn't put it past some form of greko-arabic existed. We see a form of this this as Cyprus Arabic. Another example is centuries later of a vulgar Turkish being written in Greek.
Well for Alexandria, the Greek alphabet survived in a form when it fused with the Coptic script. That's why it looks so familiar yet so simultaneously different. Probably something similar happened in many of the regions of the Levant, where the script and loan words of Greek were incorporated into the native language. Naturally, the Islamic conquests brought the assimilation (both forced and voluntary) of the languages to Arabic.
As for why the Turks didn't adopt the Greek script, well that's a rather interesting question.
Don't forget that many surrounding tribes and villages around ancient Rome spoke related but distinct languages. Some of the differences between French and Spanish is thought to have originated from Pompey (conquerer of Spain) recruiting his soldiers from one part of Italy while Caesar (conquerer of France) took soldiers from another region, each soldier understanding formal Latin, but speaking dialects among themselves. These regional differences ended up flavoring the varying Romance languages.
Spanish is my second language, and I understand that Spanish is the most Latin-like of the four Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese). When I saw the movie The Passion of the Christ many years ago, the Roman soldiers spoke Latin in the movie; and I felt a connection to them, because I could understand what they were saying.
Spanish is not even close to being the most Latin-like of the five main Romance language. Spain was ruled by the Arabs for nearly 800 years, before the reconquista in 1492. Because of this, Spanish now has a lot of Arabic influence on the language, with many words borrowed altogether (any word that begins with “al” in Spanish is likely an Arabic loan word.)
Italian is the most Latin-like of the five main Romance languages. Italy is where Rome began, and subsequently where Latin saw its roots. Put into numbers, Italian is like 90% Latin, while Spanish is 75%.
@@randomteaguy Spanish is close. Really close.
@@jamesMartinelli-x2t Yeah, it is. And that’s just stating the obvious. However, it is NOT the closest Romance language to Latin - and is not mutually intelligible with Latin. Also, we have to recognize that the Romance languages DO NOT directly descend from Classical Latin (language spoken by Caesar), but are instead descendants of Vulgar Latin, which were regional dialects of Classical Latin. Even Italian, the closest language to Latin.
Stating that Spanish is the closest language to Latin is like stating that Dutch is the closest language to Proto-Germanic.
@@randomteaguy I never said that. Sardinian is the closest.
@@jamesMartinelli-x2t Sardinian has about an 85% lexical similarity to Latin, while Italian has about 90%. Italian is considered the closest by a long shot.
Mate have you thought of doing one on The Barbarian Conspiracy in 367 in Britain. I like the Irish impact and would enjoy it cheers
Yes, in the era of migrations, the various areas where a language of Latin origin was spoken became somewhat isolated and each had a different influence. Therefore they evolved separately. Even if we do not take into account the external factors, in areas that could not communicate it is normal to evolve differently.
Thanks!
Thanks a lot Rick, for your kind and very generous donation, I really appreciate your kind support
@@Maiorianus_Sebastian You're welcome, Sebastian. I'm a big fan of ancient Roman history and really enjoy all your great work! Best....Rick
Well, when you said that Romans spread latin language throughout the Roman Empire you must understand that there were no public education, media etc. (E.g. russian languages only supressed Belarus language in rural Belarus when the television appeared) So latin used to be a language of official documentation and roman army and a secondary language of the local elites. Nobody tought latin to locals.
The second point, those territories which are now Roman speaking countries were already Celtic speaking and even though celto-italic hypothesis isn't 100% accepted but the fact that the languages were close enough so that those people were a lot more suseptable to appropreate some latin than e.g. Germania Interior or north Africa or Greece, Asia Minor and Syria.
Have you read The Geography of Urbanism in Roman Asia Minor? or An Urban Geography of the Roman World, 100 BC to AD 300 ? Ive done some research on Asia minor, i pieced together what i could see from all the cities and saw that the urban centers seemed to be very roman until they were raided by persians, arbabs or turks. If you look at the sites they had forums, baths and theatres in good shape perhaps in some cases even until Timur wrecked the cities. There are so many decently sized urban towns in Anatolia and asia minor with little to no written sources. I found Knidos and Philadelphia interesting , both great even late in the empire. Would be cool if you looked more into it
A town rarely mentioned is Rhodes, we know where the walls was and there are structures all within, its a massive area. Larger than some cities with huge population estimates, we also know Rhodes was powerful with a strong navy. Yet some claim they maybe had 50k people, I think at its hight likely 3-4 times more. There is such a lack of description about some of the large cities in the agean and asia minor. Ephesus and Smyrna is mentioned a lot but there was likely a bunch of towns just as large, and perhaps all the way until the arab raids. Ive been to many greek island and found remains of towns, where its suggested they all were abandoned in the arab raids. Couldnt live along the coast anymore in Greece and anatolia after Egypt and the middle east fell. This is so underrated for the further decline of Eastern Rome, where these coastal large cities where replaced with smaller fortified settlements inland. This must have disturbed trade and roman life. I wish we knew more of this period, a lot of romans were prob killed and enslaved sadly. I wonder where eastern Rome would have gone.. Just imagine, Rhodes town went from being a large metro to a small fort. prob 250k to 20k peoples. And this same across most islands and towns in the regions, massive impact.
I like these channel. It delves into the gap left by school in history lessons, where it divides between antiquity and middle ages basically stopping at the fall of rome and jumping straight into feudalism leaving centuries unexplained. I'm, however not a big fan of the AI generated images. They're becoming so ubiquitous lately, it's like a death to artist work.
Seriously, in the modern English vocabulary, there are three times more words of Latin origin than in actual Latin. For example, just look at the Latin word for fire "ignis" and the English words; ignite, igneous rocks, and ignition switch, etc.....
Latin always had a certain snob value.
If you know Spanish you can easily learn Latin since it's not so different and there are a lot of words and grammar used that it's the same, even people that knows Spanish and doesn't know Latin can understand most of the inscriptions made by the Romans
Is this not true of Italian, French, Occitan, or Romania?
@@WinterascentI don't know, I don't know how to speak Occitan or Romanian but I can understand some Italian and Portuguese just by knowing Spanish. As a Spanish speaker French is completely twisted, I cannot understand it at all
@@Winterascent yes this is true, we can also understand a lot from other romance languages for example Spanish speakers will easily be able to speak with Italian or Portuguese speakers but not with French or Romanian ones although if we see a written text in those languages we will pick up quite a few words and the context of what's being said
All romance language speakers share the Latin root hence why we are able to read and understand quite a bit of Latin or another romance language
The intresting about romance language and western Roman Empire is that they all share similar language, religion like thr Roman catholic church and share similar diet of bread cheese butter and wine. Compared to germanic Europe based on beer barely and protestantism
Butter😂
Latin might've become the dominant language of Europe for centuries, but it wasn't dominant in Europe during the Roman Kingdom as stated @0:10
Latin wasn't even the dominant language in *Italy* back then.
That quibble aside, great vid. Best insight I've come across re the mechanism by which Latin diverged into various Romance languages.
Languages change over time. People come up with slang and even new words for things they have never seen before. English of the Anglo Saxons is miles away from modern English but it's the same language. We are an odd species.
Same with German. In school, I had lessons on Medieval German, the teacher presented some Medieval texts and songs.
It was a totally different language, unrecognizeable even to native German speakers.
In Hispania more languages than "proto-Spanish" (proto-Castilian) and "proto-Portuguese", especially and more importantly "proto-Catalan" followed by "proto-Aragonese", "proto-Leonese", "proto-Asturian"...
And whether we want it to or not, the same thing will happen to English, and is in fact already starting to happen.
English is heavily influenced by Latin. Over 60% of all cognates evolved from a Latin root. The main spoken vocabulary is German, but most legal, scientific, philosophical, or educational terms are derived from Latin roots.
Thats true and its probably because of the Church and the Normans, though it can't be ruled out that the Latin speakers in the Romano-British cities might have contributed some of the words to Old English, though this is hard to prove.
Also the Norman invasion brought the French spoken by William the conqueror. About 1/3 of English is the indirect Latin from this French infusion.
Or Greek!
When you like the channel but your finances look like the ones of the WRE in 400AD and inflation is hitting harder than under Dioclectian : (
No worries brother, thank you for your kind donation, I appreciate it even more, knowing that your finances are like WRE's finances after 400 AD XD
In ecclesiastical latin Cicero/Keekeroh is pronounced Tchitcheroh and not Tsitseroh. The late is a germanic promounciation.
So was the vulgate primarily late Latin with little sophisticated words and simple structures? Woud Aquinas' written Latin be unintelligible to people like Cicero?
I don’t buy the whole “Latin became more simple because it needed to be due to Christianity” seems kind of like a cop out. Do you have a source on that? If you do then I’d be happy to be corrected.
I saw this myself on television but can't be fact-checked cuz I can't remember how long ago. A Texan female evangelist said that if English was good enough for Jesus, it was good enough for her
Great video
After the Isaurian dynasty was firmly established, why no attempts were made to revive Latin in the Roman Empire whatsoever?
Because there were no Latin speaking people left
Balkan was overrun and Asia minor was mostly greek speaking area
@@lilestojkovicii6618 Thank you for the answer!
Is Learning Latin Easier Than Learning Greek And I Learned Ancient Greek.
Koine Greek But Specifically Spoken In The Hellenistic Period Until The Crises of Third Century.
Wonder if spoken Latin was anything like the brutal economy of words imposed on written Latin? Latin's changing over time is no susprise given the cultural collisions that accelerated evolution of English.
I was looking for something about Alfonso el Sabio
After the Western Empire fall...
Greek: Look at me, I'm the lingua franca now!
Latin: ROMA CAPVT MVNDI
Thanks
And tank you SIr, for this kind donation, I really appreciate it very much :)
Great video. Question: Wasn't Boethius writing about Christianity? (Nevertheless in classic Latin?)
I know this is a modern perspective, but I never understood how the Byzantines justified calling themselves Roman when 1. they didn’t control the city of Rome and 2. Didn’t speak Latin. It seems like such a crucial component of the Roman identity
The Roman elite were heavily Hellenised. Senators spoke Greek to each other like how English aristocrats spoke medieval Anglo-Norman French (until 1400 in parliament). Many Roman senators were encouraged to move to 'Nova Roma' to participate in its equivalent council. The 'Byzantine' senate continued until the 1300s. Constantinople was similar in character e.g. it's own hippodrome like the Circus Maximus. Furthermore all free born were legally Roman after the expansion of citizenship under Emperor Caracalla in 212.
Lastly much of this fused cultural character produced the modern greek identity today, throw in greek orthodox Christianity for good measure too. Greeks (especially those from Asia minor ) identified as 'Rhomoi' until the late 19th century. To paraphrase a quote by Horace, 'Greece captured the heart of its captor.'
Actually Rome was part of the Eastern Empire for several hundred years when Justinian reconquered Italy. They only lost it later. There was a time when Rome wasn't even the Capital of the any incarnation of the Empire, before the East and West split Constantinople at one time was the only capital. Even when the East--West split occurred the West had Ravenna as their capital not Rome. The Eastern Empire at it's largest ruled over North Africa, the Balkans, Italy, parts of Spain, which all had Latin speaking subjects. You do know that also the Roman elite in the late Roman Republic times spoke Greek to as an elite language amongst themselves and spoke Latin when dealing with the general public right?
Also, you need to understand that as the empire evolved, the idea that all things resolved around Rome the city diminished. Caracalla made every free man in the empire a citizen, which diminished the need to physically affiliate with the city like Roman citizens of old. Also many emperors spent a huge chunk of their administration on campaign and only really went to Rome as an act of formality. By the time the crisis of the third century ended, the capital was where the emperor was. This becomes apparent with Diocletian, who I think only visited Rome once and chose to spend most of his reign in his villa in modern day Croatia.
We also use Latin in law. Many legal terms are latin: ex post facto, certiorari, exequator, nullum Pena, habeus corpus (release the body). Maybe you could do an episode talking about how Roman Law influenced modern law, both European Civil and Anglo Common Law
I've read that Latin was the official language of Portugal until the 13th century and of Poland until the 16th century.
That’s why those two languages are so similar😊😊
@@gordonpi8674 No, it's that their laws were in Latin.
@@fantasia55 they sound similar
The empire strikes back.
im not sure if youve covered this but id be intrested to know what happened to the roman populations in north africa after they fell out of romes orbit, i assume they would have just assimilated with the islamic conquests but what was that process like and what were they doing before that were there any who say themsleves as roman still right before muhammad.
always curious why Rome didn't take over the various Greek colonies around the Black Sea
I love your (Classical Latin) pronunciations of Cicero and Vergil! English pronunciation of Latin is pretty awful, mostly because we picked up so much middle French in this language and also because of the “Great Vowel Shift” in (Early Modern) English. Even if one just pronounces C properly, as K, in their attempts at Classical Latin and Greek, I’m happier. The shift from some Cs from the K to the S sound happened in Late Latin, so it affected the later Romance languages, too. Why this shift is applied also to Greek mystifies me, this change never occurred in any form of Greek, including modern Greek. I know Greek areas were under Roman rule for some time, but there’s no need to Latinize Greek spellings and pronunciation, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Latin died out and yet it did not die out.
I am always impressed by the depth of this channel, but there are some problematic assertions and concept on languages in this video.
Latin is apparently also used in Vatican?
It's the official language of the Church.
The English language is an interesting case in all of this. The Germanic tribes that conquered what is today called England used languages or dialects that were not at all influenced by Latin. And yet, in these modern times, you can often hear it being claimed that English is a mixture of Germanic languages and Latin.
This is not surprising since, by some estimates, about a third of the words used in English have a Latin or French origin.
It wasn't early admixture with the Romano-British Celts that caused this but the much later arrival of the Norman French. English did not really deviate from its Germanic roots until the middle and late medieval period, much later than what had been going on linguistically on the European continent.
Add to all of this the use of Latin by the Catholic church in England, and the situation was heavily reinforced
However the truth is that despite this history, English is a Germanic language, not a weird version of Latin.
Interesting also that Latin was still required learning in the schools of what had become strictly Protestant England well into modern times.
On a completely different point, I'm surely not the only one who scratches his head trying to understand why the Frankish kingdom (truly Germanic) did not settle on a common language at some point. This would/should have resulted in some commonality between what is today spoken in east of the Frankish empire (German) and the west (French). Instead the linguistic border is very hard. This is partially explained in the video, the core issue remains; why didn't the Franks develop a common language?
English had some Latin loanwords already before the Anglo-Saxons left the continent.
Wine (vinum), mint (as in ‘minting coins’, from moneta), mill (molina), cheese (caseum).
Compare with vineyard and money, which are loans from Old French.
With christianisation, more Latin loanwords entered Old English: altar, candle, just to name two which still exist today.
The same happened in the Old High German language: Wein, Münze, Mühle, Käse, and later, Altar.
Those who consider English to be a Romance language have no idea.
I took Latin as my foreign language choice in the 1980's. Didn't retain a single word, though I can still recall about a dozen conjugations of "amo". Moved after my sophomore year and it wasn't offered. Of course, I'd probably have had to retake Latin I about three or four times to have actually been ready for my second year, which I barely passed. I have a complete inability to learn languages, as my attempt at Italian in college proved.