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As much as I find the premise of the thread ridiculous, Latin is indeed an impossibly difficult language to learn. I have studied it for 6 years and I am positive that I couldn't translate a single sentence from a random Seneca text now, even with the aid of a dictionary. The antique grammar is at fault. German, not a language known for its straightforward grammar, is much easier to learn for a native Romance language speaker. After a couple weeks one can maintain a simple conversation - of course including lots of grammatical mistakes such as wrong case endings. After several years of studying Latin, it still takes a lot of work and head-scratching to form an intelligible sentence; actually the brunt of the classes consisted in translating Latin texts into French, and not the reverse. All of this of course with the aid of a dictionary.
I'm well aware that no untrained speaker of a Romance language can pick up a Latin text and translate it. Latin grammar is awful to learn and it's assumed that conversational Latin wasn't much like the scholarly texts that survive. It's no surprise that the languages that evolved from Latin abandoned so much of the grammar!
What I disagree with is this statement:
Quote:
Grab any text written in Latin, and a romance language speaker won't have a clue about the topic.
A reasonably well-educated Romance language speaker could certainly tell if a random Latin text was about history, law, medicine, geography, astrology, or zoology, to name only a few topics.
It was pointed out that Beatles and stones were English
And played music
Yes they were great but they did the pied piper thing and led millions of Americans into the drug world
Dean Martin just sung love songs and drank a bit
Latin is good
I'm well aware that no untrained speaker of a Romance language can pick up a Latin text and translate it. Latin grammar is awful to learn and it's assumed that conversational Latin wasn't much like the scholarly texts that survive. It's no surprise that the languages that evolved from Latin abandoned so much of the grammar!
What I disagree with is this statement:
A reasonably well-educated Romance language speaker could certainly tell if a random Latin text was about history, law, medicine, geography, astrology, or zoology, to name only a few topics.
Whoa, wait! You're forgetting Romanian, which has the same grammar, and some of the vocabulary is the closest to Latin of any of the Romance langs.
I see your point but your examples are not all valid. Table, yes. Night, no. "Night" is a cognate to the German "Nacht" (notice the -ght and -cht components). These words resemble the Romance words for "night" not because they came through Latin but because they came from a far older common root, the ancestor of both Latinate and Germanic languages, proto-Indo-European.
Your not recognizing this tells me that you really have not studied historical linguistics or the origins of the English language, and are not qualified to debate them.
Yes, English has more similarities, mostly in vocabulary, to the Romance languages, than German does. No, English is not a Romance language.
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Are you a native speaker of a Romance language?
English is not a romance language (whatever that means), it isn't purely a Germanic language either. The Foreign Service Institute came up with a language learning difficulty ranking for an English native speaker
As you see, Romance languages, which English isn't considered a part of, as close to English as Germanic languages. The irony of it all is that say Italian or Romanian is easier for an English speaker to pick than German due to closeness. This really tell you unequivocally that English while English isn't a Romance language, it isn't a solid Germanic language either.
Whoa, wait! You're forgetting Romanian, which has the same grammar, and some of the vocabulary is the closest to Latin of any of the Romance langs.
Hey, my Romanian sister-in-law (born and raised in Sibiu) flew in last night and is at my house at the moment, so I just asked her if she and other Romanians can read Latin. She said, Yes. Then she added, "We can get the idea, but not every word, just what it's about."
You're quite right that the grammar is fairly close (not the same, but more similar than other Romance languages to Latin.) I would expect that a Romanian-speaker can get more from Latin than, say, a French-speaker could. But I stand by the statement that Romanians can't actually translate Latin texts without specifically studying Latin.
English is not a romance language (whatever that means), it isn't purely a Germanic language either. The Foreign Service Institute came up with a language learning difficulty ranking for an English native speaker
As you see, Romance languages, which English isn't considered a part of, as close to English as Germanic languages. The irony of it all is that say Italian or Romanian is easier for an English speaker to pick than German due to closeness. This really tell you unequivocally that English while English isn't a Romance language, it isn't a solid Germanic language either.
English vocabulary and grammar have diverged a lot from its origins, that's true. However, German is harder than Romance languages for most English-speakers mainly because of the grammar (with three nonintuitive genders, case endings, etc.), which is much more complex than English grammar. We've simplified, they haven't (much).
Notice that a number of languages which are at least distantly related to English but have very complex grammars (Icelandic, Russian, etc.) are considered more difficult to learn than Indonesian, Malaysian, and Swahili, which are not related to English at all!
Anyway, now you're preaching to the choir, because I know that Romance languages are easier for most English-speakers than German, and one of the reasons for that (besides the easier grammar) is that technical English vocabulary is more likely to have been borrowed through Latin and French. Pick up a German and a Spanish biology textbook, and assuming you speak neither, you're going to recognize more words from the Spanish text than the German.
It was pointed out that Beatles and stones were English
And played music
Yes they were great but they did the pied piper thing and led millions of Americans into the drug world
Dean Martin just sung love songs and drank a bit
Latin is good
Not just the Beatles and stones though eh? I doubt any country in the world apart from the US comes even close to providing as much of the world's popular music as the British have over the last 60 years! By the way the Stones - not were British, I believe they still are!
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