Which modern language is closest to latin

De vulgari eloquentia I. I think the best argument for Sardinian is the vocabulary, whereas I'd say the phonological system has developed much more than the Italian one, even though again it's the question how vowel and consonant system should be evaluated each and if the Sardinian transformation of vowels, maintaining the qualities, is closer to Latin than the Italian one, which, partially, illustrates the quantity.

And I also think one can't say the closest language to Latin is one which lost the simple perfect, whose forms in Italian are extremely conservative.

By the way, Sardinian also shows interesting innovations, such as «personal infinitive». In my eyes it's Italian. I can say about the vowel system that it's very different from northern to southern Sardinian; southern Sardinian has a very complex phonetics, quite similar to Portuguese, with different pronounces for every vowel according to the situations and a lot of nasal pronounces; instead northern Sardinian has a very simple vowel system, only one pronounce for vowels and no nasal sounds, also the northern variant is more conservative if compared to the southern.

Principally this conservativism is due to the geographic isolation of the island, and the further geographic isolation of the central and northern areas of Sardinia.

Ricordo, quando eravamo ragazzi, che le nostre mamme ci mandavano da soli a fare il bagno. Quando faceva buio noi ragazzi ci mandavano a fare granchi, con la luce, che serviva per mettere l'esca agli ami per pescare. Last edited: Mar 7, Below two examples of the same text in Italian and Sardinian central-northern Sardinian.

Riverplatense said:. More information and resource list :. Comparative grammar of the Romance languages - Nativlang. Vulgar Latin - Wikipedia. Romanian grammar - Wikipedia. Classification of Romance languages - Wikipedia. Romance languages - Wikipedia. Posted by Jesse Dass at Arthur 9 March at Unknown 23 November at Jesse Dass 26 November at Unknown 7 February at Daniel Brockert Actor 31 March at Mariscos 4 December at Unknown 8 July at GeorgeNyb 10 July at Unknown 29 June at Jesse Dass 24 October at Val de merd 4 September at Unknown 24 October at Bashar 17 January at Jesse Dass 13 February at Unknown 19 March at Brutus 30 August at Iustin 29 October at GeorgeNyb 30 October at Unknown 27 March at Mika Kaakinen 27 March at Unknown 14 May at Unknown 5 September at Unknown 3 June at Unknown 17 February at Unknown 16 September at Jesse Dass 7 February at Mom and Dad 6 October at ProfBris 11 January at Carulli 19 January at Annie 25 January at Octavian 11 March at GeorgeNyb 6 September at Grand soleil 22 April at Unknown 6 October at Unknown 7 October at Unknown 27 June at Dougie T.

King 16 March at George Adrian 30 March at Maggie 18 April at Octavian 4 September at Unknown 3 November at Snowdonia Botanical 10 September at Unknown 30 March at Silva 21 April at Unknown 20 May at Unknown 19 August at Newer Post Older Post Home. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. In the Latin alphabet, b is near the beginning, and v is down at the end. If you think about it, b and v are related in terms of how they are pronounced in the mouth.

Just as a t will often become a d , you can feel a d as a version of t in pronunciation, just with a little bit more belly in it. For those who know Spanish, think about the pronunciation of b as v in many Spanish dialects.

The Spanish hierba in Portuguese is erva. Spanish and Romanian use unusual manipulations with the vowels. What is that? All of this goes back to herba.

This type of lingual shift happens to every word in the language. Very few words in any of these languages trace back to Latin in anything like an unbroken form. A Latin speaker who listened to any of them would be baffled. If they could get any of it, they would think that something had gone terribly wrong. None of the people who speak these five languages could make their way in Latin. These are brand-new languages. Latin evolved from the Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician alphabets. It was widely spoken throughout the Roman Empire.

This myth is especially promoted by Romanians. However, these claims cannot be further from the truth, since the only criteria where Romanian would qualify is in terms of grammar. In other aspects such as phonology, vocabulary, discourse, and intonation, Italian trounces Romanian in being the closest to Latin, since Romanian is heavily influenced by Slavic languages.

The closest to Latin overall is Sardinian. So, why is the myth of Romanian being the closest living language to Latin so heavily promoted? I haven't heard the "myth" in a long time, but I know that Romanian has retained Latin style declensions while no other Romance language has. That makes Romanian grammatically very close to Latin and it also means that when one speaks Romanian they are following speech patterns and inflections that are most similar to Latin; at least as far as I understand it.

There are also a handful of original Latin derived words that are preserved in Romanian that are not evident in other Romance languages. So, which is "most similar" would seem to come down to what we are measuring it against. There are certainly "Latin uniquenesses" present in Romanian, but while that perhaps makes it "special" it doesn't necessarily make it "most similar" as you have pointed out. Just curious, why is this something you're passionate about? Originally Posted by Pink Jazz.

Location: near bears but at least no snakes. Originally Posted by kevxu. The reason the myth worked and got circulated was because most people did not know that Romanian was a Latin-root language, so the myth was simply used as an exaggerated form of "Did you know Romanian evolved from Latin?