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How different is the modern Would a Roman understand Latin
as it is written today?
Is the way it is written today
much different from the way it
was written when it was still
the living lingua franca of
Europe?
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Romans speak Italian,though latin is taught in schools, most hardly know anything about it, besides two or three sayings. And let me remind you that Latin as today is a dead language so I don't see how latin's ortography would have changed. I am italian and i know what I am saying. |
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A Roman from the first few centuries AD or BC would have no trouble understanding modern Latin (apart from references to air-travel or contraception, obviously). The orthography hasn't changed at all: there never was such a thing as correct spelling in Latin (that is a modern idea), though some spellings are better than others. The grammar got a big rough during the Dark Ages (sometimes even other Latin speakers couldn't understand it) but since the Renaissance the language has steadily moved back to a canonical form. Catullus would find it as easy to understand Pope Benedict, as Pope Benedict finds it to understand Catullus. (Though they wouldn't agree on much). .... I doubt an educated Roman would have much trouble with the Question Mark (as another poster imagines). The Question Mark was already established in Classical Greek (which most educated Romans were familiar with) - albeit Greeks used ; as their question mark. |
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Educated Romans probably would understand modern Latin. Since the 16th century or so, we've been trying to model our Latin after Classical Latin. However, written Latin and spoken Latin were really diffferent in the Classical world. i.e. in Vulgar Latin (the language of regular people) a horse would be a caballus. In educated Latin it was equus. It might be something like how regular people would have difficulty understanding academic texts now. In short, most Romans may have had difficulty understanding modern Latin, especially if it were spoken. |
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If you look at the vindolanda letters, they are quite hard for us to read - in the first century and before that, the romans used a backward d with a curved spine for a b. Their cursive was, to our eyes, very messy. They used a long s. To us their writing looks like a mixture of capitals and lower case. I expect an ancient roman would take about five minutes to get used to reading our modern typfaces,which are largely very similar. Capitals have not changed at all, but Romans typically only used caps only for monuments, and certain types of writing, like adverts painted onto walls. http://latinum.mypodcast.com |
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Latin is still spelled as it always was--or was in its heyday. In fact, the Latin you see in inscriptions and textbooks today is spelled more "correctly" according to classical standards than was some Medieval or Renaissance Latin. Caesar Cicero, Vergil, et al., would definitely be able to read it--provided, at least, that it was printed in all caps! |
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It depends on who's writing it. I get the sense that most modern attempts at Latin composition would sound to Cicero like "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". As far as the orthography, they'd probably figure out the Us and Js eventually, but I think that lower case typeface would be largely opaque. A smart Roman might be able to work it out with a couple hours. Question marks would be a bit of a mystery too. |
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If it was all in caps, the Romans would understand. But, at least at my school, we are taught to write Latin with the letters U, W and J, which were not introduced until the middle ages, after the Romance and Germanic languages were developed. So, if a Roman from Caesar's time came to read our modern Latin, I think that he would be able to once you explained our new letters. |
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