01-17-2003, 08:31 PM
If you're interested in a thorough investigation of what we know about Latin pronunciation, check out _Vox Latina_ by W.S. Allen (Cambridge University Press). I don't consider myself an expert, but I'll have a go.<br>
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Three important things to keep in mind when talking about pronunciation and accent: location, time, and status...<br>
The speech of a 2nd century Athenian would likely be distinguishable from that of a Briton or a Gaul or a Spaniard or an Italian or, for that matter, a Corinthian or a Theban, though all were speaking Latin. So too would speech differ between an Athenian (or whatever) of the early first century and one of the third century. Cicero would have sounded different from a resident of the Subura in the mid-first century BC.<br>
So we can't ask what a Roman Latin accent would be. Well, we could, but we couldn't get a suitable answer. I suppose I'm treating this with a comb of rather fine teeth...<br>
<br>
As for Italian- Italian is a direct descendent of Latin, as are French, Spanish, Romanian, and several others (these make up the "Romance Languages"). Each of these evolved into their present form through a series of regular sound changes. Living languages are always evolving, and variations of dialect are a reflection of this fact. Given enough time, the same processes that cause regional variations bring about new languages. Very basically, once enough variations have stacked up so that two dialects are no longer mutually intelligible, they are said to be different languages.<br>
<br>
Starting with the modern day Romance languages, historical linguists can process them through the system of regular sound changes in reverse, eventually arriving at a system of sounds spoken at a certain point in history. They can keep going back, and identify what happened as Latin evolved from the early Republic to the later Republic and so on through Imperial times. A caveat -- the farther back you extrapolate, the less precise you can be about how each phoneme (sound unit) was actually sounded.<br>
It turns out that the great majority of European languages, and also some Indian languages, are descended from a common ancestor, which we call Proto-Indo-European or just Indo-European. The list of Indo-European descendants includes Latin (and thus the Romance languages), Greek, English, Dutch, German, Russian, Swedish, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Welsh, Gaelic, Polish, and Lithuanian; there are many others.<br>
I hope I've answered a few questions...<br>
<br>
Edit:<br>
Here is a much more thorough discussion of Indo-European: [url=http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html" target="top]www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html[/url] <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dannoulpius>Danno Ulpius</A> at: 1/17/03 9:56:41 pm<br></i>
<br>
Three important things to keep in mind when talking about pronunciation and accent: location, time, and status...<br>
The speech of a 2nd century Athenian would likely be distinguishable from that of a Briton or a Gaul or a Spaniard or an Italian or, for that matter, a Corinthian or a Theban, though all were speaking Latin. So too would speech differ between an Athenian (or whatever) of the early first century and one of the third century. Cicero would have sounded different from a resident of the Subura in the mid-first century BC.<br>
So we can't ask what a Roman Latin accent would be. Well, we could, but we couldn't get a suitable answer. I suppose I'm treating this with a comb of rather fine teeth...<br>
<br>
As for Italian- Italian is a direct descendent of Latin, as are French, Spanish, Romanian, and several others (these make up the "Romance Languages"). Each of these evolved into their present form through a series of regular sound changes. Living languages are always evolving, and variations of dialect are a reflection of this fact. Given enough time, the same processes that cause regional variations bring about new languages. Very basically, once enough variations have stacked up so that two dialects are no longer mutually intelligible, they are said to be different languages.<br>
<br>
Starting with the modern day Romance languages, historical linguists can process them through the system of regular sound changes in reverse, eventually arriving at a system of sounds spoken at a certain point in history. They can keep going back, and identify what happened as Latin evolved from the early Republic to the later Republic and so on through Imperial times. A caveat -- the farther back you extrapolate, the less precise you can be about how each phoneme (sound unit) was actually sounded.<br>
It turns out that the great majority of European languages, and also some Indian languages, are descended from a common ancestor, which we call Proto-Indo-European or just Indo-European. The list of Indo-European descendants includes Latin (and thus the Romance languages), Greek, English, Dutch, German, Russian, Swedish, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Welsh, Gaelic, Polish, and Lithuanian; there are many others.<br>
I hope I've answered a few questions...<br>
<br>
Edit:<br>
Here is a much more thorough discussion of Indo-European: [url=http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html" target="top]www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/PIE.html[/url] <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dannoulpius>Danno Ulpius</A> at: 1/17/03 9:56:41 pm<br></i>
Dan Diffendale
Ph.D. candidate, University of Michigan
Ph.D. candidate, University of Michigan
