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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The people living in and around Rome, before there was a Rome, spoke Italian -- |
Presumably these are the Vulgar Latin speakers supposed by the language specialists and evidenced in the glosses of the various pre 10th century Romance bibles.
However I'm still struggling to see how writing out one of these in Italy during the the late Iron Age produced Roman Latin, unless its just that - a written language only.
Judging by the chateau, and castro places near Roman forts in France, Iberia and Italy, these Vulgar Latin speakers seemingly moved in the wake of the Roman advances into 'celtic' territory, and as everywhere else the 'celts' disappeared.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Presumably these are the Vulgar Latin speakers supposed by the language specialists and evidenced in the glosses of the various pre 10th century Romance bibles. |
The problem here is that there are (at least) two Vulgar Latins. One is what we would call Italian (ono), the other is a simplified Latin that was used by people, mainly soldiers and their dependents, who found themselves living somewhere where Latin was the only feasible means of communication.
| However I'm still struggling to see how writing out one of these in Italy during the the late Iron Age produced Roman Latin, unless its just that - a written language only. |
An artifical language is just as good as a natural one. If I sent you to an Esperanto-only colony you'd soon pick it up and of course your children would 'speak it as a native'. Hundreds of years later, would anyone in the colony know it was an artificial language? But again Hebrew is our guide. Everybody arriving in Israel spoke a language other than Hebrew. They all chatter away now like a bunch of schtarlings.
And let's not forget that all their archaeologists and historians are busy assuring us that Hebrew was the original language of Palestine! What a familiar tale.
| Judging by the chateau, and castro places near Roman forts in France, Iberia and Italy, these Vulgar Latin speakers seemingly moved in the wake of the Roman advances into 'celtic' territory, and as everywhere else the 'celts' disappeared. |
Frank, you're surely not going to tell us you've done statistical analyses in these places too?
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Frank, you're surely not going to tell us you've done statistical analyses in these places too? |
Not as thoroughly as for Britain yet (only 16 miles to inch road map), but for the data so far on Roman forts and towns, many seem to have chateau/chattel, castro/campo, burg/bourg and grad/grod nearby depending on the country.
I'll comment ongoing on this investigation.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The problem here is that there are (at least) two Vulgar Latins. |
Could various Romance dialects have been spoken around the NW Med area, including the Latins you mentioned previously, and differed as do German and Scandinavian languages. If so this might account for Spanish, French etc plus some inevitable changes, spreading in to the 'celtic' lands as the Romans broke up their dominance?
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Ah Michael you are a bit of a comedian, aren't you? What you are not, clearly, is either an historian or a language scholar.
The answer to Frank's question is that they spoke then, as they do today, dialetto romano. It may have been an "early form" (whatever that means) of il dialetto but that is what it was.
To repeat what I have said before in another thread at unification in 1861 less than 10% of the population of the new Kingdom of Italy spoke l'italiano as a first language and even today about 20% of all italians speak il dialetto as their preferred language at home.
The ancient romans actually called their roman dialect "Latinum" because that was the name of the district in which they all lived i.e. modern-day Lazio.
What MJH continues to be befuddled about wasn't at all a new and artificial language but merely the written version of the local idiom in about 300BC when they started. Over a period of about 300 years it gradually got tarted up into a "posh" version.
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I wrote the above before seeing Frank's latest.
It would indeed probably simplify matters if we could get some other terms established. The development and use of Latin was, as a process, remarkably similar to what happened with both Greek earlier and Arabic later.
Stage one there are a multiplicity of dialects
Stage two one dialect prevails because of the intellectual/military/spiritual domination of that particular group.
Stage three the prevailing dialect gets poshed up
Stage four we have a "clasical" form with literature, poetry, drama and learned texts which is in use throughout the educated elite.
Stage five a simplified lingua franca develops for military/administrative/commercial reasons which is widely spoken as a second language.
Stage six the lingua franca transmutes into the modern language(s)
The timing of these stages and some related events varies. Writing seems to have entered the Greek and Arabic world at stage one but in the Roman world not till stage two. Stages four and five seem to have taken place in near contemporaneity in the Greek and Roman worlds whereas stage was significantly delayed in the Arabic World.
Final comment: it is entirely speculative as to the extent that the modern languages/dialects derive from the Stage 5 lingua franca and the extent that they derive from the Stage 1 original district/tribal level dialects. For example, modern Palestinian Arabic probably is more of a Stage 1revenant whereas Iraqui Arabic is almost certainly a Stage 5 derivation. Draw your own parallels with modern Romance languages a choix.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Bernie describes a process which is completely familiar and observable in the historical record in many places eg Germany, Britain, Italy etc. The 'standard' dialect, the one that gets adopted, is of course always broadly similar to all the other dialects. It is a matter of accident and politics which dialects disappear as the standard form spreads and which (eg Lallan Scots, Occitan, Schwyz) struggle on.
What we await from him is an explanation as to why Latin, specifically, has a completely aberrant grammar and syntax from all the 'Romance' languages, whether mainstream now or dialects. Unless of course he can provide a similar example from a historical case.
Either Bernie or Frank can explain why people with access to Latin would go to all the trouble of changing its grammar and syntax and then, having done this, how they managed to persuade the entire inhabitants of Italy, France and Iberia to adopt this new, strange language. The explanation must include the sub-explanation as to why they didn't manage to persuade anyone else anywhere else in the Empire.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | The explanation must include the sub-explanation as to why they didn't manage to persuade anyone else anywhere else in the Empire. |
Notably Spanish/Portuguese look reasonably close and so presumably stemmed from roughly the same area of dialect with French changing somewhat as a result of Frankish influences?. A process which is hardly convincing for a gradual and common change from Latin.
I imagine the Romance languages spread throughout France, Iberia, Romania and the Balkans in a similar fashion to north German and Slavic speakers over former 'celtic' territory by being encouraged or brought in by the Romans, seen in the chateau, burg and grad place-names near Roman towns and forts. They may then have become the 'top dogs' when Rome faded.
I guess Latin as written probably was not much involved in this process, otherwise the bibles would not have needed early glosses - evidence of this in an Italian bible would clinch the argument I suppose.
The question of what is Latin and its unique origin still remains to be answered to my mind.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I imagine the Romance languages spread throughout France, Iberia, Romania and the Balkans in a similar fashion to north German and Slavic speakers |
Yup, and just like every normal language group, changing slightly over the centuries and differentiating over the millennia. Why linguists are forever looking for 'special cases' beats the hell out of me.
| over former 'celtic' territory |
Oh, a special case! A language that dominated the whole of Europe but has now practically disappeared! Fancy! There was no such thing as Celtic territory in the language sense, except that the western margins of Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, France and Spain spoke languages in a group that, in the eighteenth centry, were claimed to be this 'Celtic'.
| by being encouraged or brought in by the Romans, seen in the chateau, burg and grad place-names near Roman towns and forts. They may then have become the 'top dogs' when Rome faded. |
But, Frank, the Romans had a perfectly good language of their own called Latin. Why bring in colonists that refused to speak it but insisted on making up languages that the Romans couldn't understand? And why did they do this very odd thing only in one small quadrant of the Roman Empire?
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | And why did they do this very odd thing only in one small quadrant of the Roman Empire? |
They did not, it happened all over the Roman world where there was Hill forts, as can be seen in the 'dun' place names even to the naming of many Roman forts. The 'celts' were smashed by the Romans and as cattle herders not of much use to lead in producing the vast quantities of grain farming required, probably the 'celts' acted as the labour force though.
In Britain this process can be seen in Scotland with the Gaelic settlers' dun place names (and some English in the fertile lowlands), the Hill forts still being active there. Wales was shut off as too uneconomical (except along the south coast which has many English place names), probably by 'Offa's dyke' and so got few immigrants.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I was referring to your statement
| I imagine the Romance languages spread throughout France, Iberia, Romania and the Balkans .... by being encouraged or brought in by the Romans |
This is a general problem with the History-is Civilisation historians (ie all of them). Any time something happens in the Roman Empire they claim it was because of the Romans. And when you ask how come this 'thing' didn't happen everywhere in the Empire, they...um....come up with perfectly rational explanation that satisfies undergraduate students.
| The 'celts' were smashed by the Romans and as cattle herders not of much use to lead in producing the vast quantities of grain farming required, probably the 'celts' acted as the labour force though. |
So you are admitting that Britain (a major cereal exporter to the Empire according to Classical writers) was not Celtic? That's a start anyway.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | So you are admitting that Britain (a major cereal exporter to the Empire according to Classical writers) was not Celtic? That's a start anyway. |
The Hill forts of England, Cornwall, Wales and Scotland look all of one piece probably occupied by 'celts'. The English and other settlers seemingly called them 'dun' as represented in modern village names e.g. Swindon, Wimbledon etc, and were solidly in eastern/southern England when the Romans arrived, if my Hill forts model can be trusted, although not completely - some oppida and Hill forts were still in use according to the archaeology.
It's the term the Welsh, Gaels Irish and Cornish use today as 'fort', but like English 'bury' it's also picked up the modern notion of township or borough.
Incidentally in idly searching the web I've come across Cnut's charter of AD 1020 in its original form and conversion to the modern alphabet. It looks like English to me rather than the Anglo-Saxon of the AS Chronicle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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If you actually read the charter (the sentiments not the language) it sounds for all the world like something a canon lawyer of the thirteenth century would come up with. How much such a scribe would bother getting the Anglo-Saxon right--as opposed to passing muster--is another matter.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | If you actually read the charter (the sentiments not the language) it sounds for all the world like something a canon lawyer of the thirteenth century would come up with. |
It looks similar to the English of the 1121AD Peterborough Chronicle to me. Have the two been compared to check for a common forgery?
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | What we await from him [Bernie] is an explanation as to why Latin, specifically, has a completely aberrant grammar and syntax from all the 'Romance' languages, whether mainstream now or dialects. Unless of course he can provide a similar example from a historical case. |
The syntax of all members of this group of languages is in fact remarkably similar. Firstly, allow for the inevitable effects induced by the degeneration over time of case endings (a phenomenon that is observable in, I believe, nearly all inflected languages). Then it becomes apparent how similar they all are (including Latin).
I suggest that we proceed in this way. You produce a series of matching pairs of Latin & Italian, Latin & Spanish, Latin & French (au choix) of semantically identical statements which you claim to have markedly different grammar and syntax. Then it will be up to me to show that in fact the grammar and syntax is either the same or else that there is perfectly sensible explanation for the difference. If I can, you lose. If I can't, you win.
Okay? Your time starts now.
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