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/lit/ - Literature

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9596570 No.9596570 [Reply] [Original]

How similar is Latin grammar to French (or perhaps Italian) grammar?

My idea is that rather than learn Latin, one could instead learn French and be able to read translations into French from Latin that, while imperfect, would retain a great deal of accuracy*; such an undertaking would provide acceptable access to Latin works and also equip the learner with a command of a modern, still useful language.

*certainly far more than would be possible in a translation to English

>> No.9596598
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9596598

>>9596570
>romance languages descend from latin

NO
FUCKING
WAY
SHERLOCK

>> No.9596604

italian and spanish are closer to latin then french. french is easier for a native english speaker than latin or italian or spanish.

>> No.9596667

>>9596598
>>9596604
Yes, but my concern is if it has changed too much then translation from Latin will no longer be accurate. Much of the grammar may have been oversimplified (loss of tenses, moods, etc.).

>> No.9596669

>>9596570
i don't think that would work all too well.
the romance language, and in fact already the dialect of vulgar latin they descend from, have lost the grammatical inflection that are characteristic of classical latin grammar like the case endings etc.* you won't find the equivalent of ablativus absolutus constructions that make latin so wonderfully concise in any of the descendant languages.

what would be retained to some degree in a translation to a romance language is vocabulary but even there the differences in meaning and commonly used words are significant, and in any case english uses lots of latinate and romance words so it wouldn't be that much of a difference.

since you seem to be able to appreciate linguistic subtleties like that, my advice would be to just learn latin and enjoy the original texts, and then also to learn one or more romance languages, which would then not only give you access to their respective literatures but also be easier with you previous knowledge of latin and be more fulfilling and enjoyable because you'll be able to trace the origin of words and grammatical structures back to the source language and discover unexpected connections everywhere.

*romanian has cases but they aren't the latin ones, it secondarily acquired a slavic-style case system from neighboring languages after losing the original latin one

>> No.9597010

You have been misled in thinking that just because a romance language is a direct descendant of Latin it is a more faithful translation. That just isn't true, they are too far removed at this point.

There is nothing like Latin, it is the language of the gods. Just learn Latin and then French, Spanish, and Italian become flashcard memorization.

>> No.9597032

>>9597010
>There is nothing like Latin, it is the language of the gods.

You mean ancient Greek.

>> No.9597080

>>9596669
Got a source on Romanian case system being Slavic? I gave it a quick look but it's much too simplistic for any Slavic language except Bulgarian, for which it is rather too complex, since Bulgarian lost all declension. The "-ui" ending doesn't sound Slavic to me. Conflating the dative and the genitive is as far as I know without precedent in any Slavic language. The vocative does sound like it's been lifted directly from South Slavic, and the tendency to see vocative as uneducated speech is very Slavic too (they hate their vocatives, for some reason).

>> No.9597083
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9597083

>>9597032
You clearly can't read either pleb, Open some Cicero when you grow up kid

>> No.9597203

>>9597083
Cicero himself would find this statement preposterous. His contribution to Latin was to give it the language necessary to articulate greek philosophy to his roman audience. He never surpassed the greek masters, and neither did melodramatic Virgil or oversentimental Ovid.

>> No.9597219

French is closer to English than it is to Latin. Vocabulary is the easiest part of learning French since we share so much of it anyway, other than idiomatic constructions which are just annoying (and don't have anything to do with Latin).

Honestly, reading German is closer to reading Latin than is French, most of the time.

>> No.9597225

>>9597203
We are talking about the language not the content you fucking imbecile.

>> No.9597755

>>9596570
Would probably be a better idea to learn Italian.

>> No.9597800

>>9597219
>French is closer to English than it is to Latin

I somehow doubt this.

http://www.nativlang.com/romance-languages/romance-tables-syntax.php?tableName=syntax1

>> No.9597870

>>9597219
>reading German is closer to reading Latin than is French
t. monolingual

>> No.9597876

>>9597800
English has about 2000 words from French so it feels closer because when English speakers learn French it has all this vocab built in from the start, but the grammar is clearly Latin

this is one of the thing that makes English so dank, it has two words for common ideas one from Germanic and one from Latin languages, often split by class: House vs Mansion etc.