If I lived in the city-state Florence in 1503, what language would I speak? Italian? Latin?
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M$11 Answers
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M$
So unless your parents were from elsewhere, you'd be speaking Toscano Dialetto. And if you were lucky enough to have been educated, you could probably read Latin and could probably even make some sense of Mass, but you wouldn't be using it every day unless you were a lawyer or a priest.
My degree in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
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M$
"With the formal unification of Italy in 1861, the Tuscan dialect of the Italian tongue became the official language of the Italian nation. The appearance of a collective Italian dialect signified the unification that took place among Italians at this time, which was also evident in Italy's political scene, educational system, and economy. " (3)
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M$You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
mss is shorthand for manuscript, sorry about that: librarians use it all the time.
hey you learn something new everyday ;o)
Did you mean to say mass?
Yep, it is the pleasure of this site; we all learn something! You can check "manuscript" on wikipedia, they mention the use of ms and mss
The bottom line is, even if the lingua franca in the cancellaries was still latin, we know that the masses were speaking very different dialects in different geographical areas. Due to the lack of written documents, it is hard to find exactly what it was, but most likely it was very differnt from both what we know as Latin and what we know as Italian.
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M$
I think the best answer would be, what was the "Official language" of the upper classes in 16th Century Florence, like the Medici Family, the answer is "Florantine" which basically became Italian.
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M$
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M$
The 1500s and 1600s saw a renewal of the Italian language. While Latin survived in the Universities and in medicine, the smaller, more specialized academies, (which taught things such as poetry and mathematics), used the vernacular. Great works began to be formally translated and published in Italian. It was a time of relative political stability, although trade, travel, and migration were rampant, obviously taking their toll on the 'purity' of a single dialect. It was also a period of widespread bilingualism. Many knew Spanish, as it was a superpower of the time. New products from the New World called for new words. People began to write dictionaries of the 'new' language. "
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M$You'd definitely be speaking some form of Italian over Latin.
As far as I can tell, Latin pretty quickly became a "dead" language, and wasn't really spoken as the lingua-franca much past the Roman Empire.
1. "Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. " (Wikipedia)
2. This was smack dab in the middle of Machiavelli's time too. 3.Getting a book of his, which provides the original latin as well as translation, would give you a decent starting point to what they were really speaking in Florence at that time.
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M$
Please take into account as well the french revolutions (not to be confused with the "french revolution") at the time as well as Christopher Columbus's treks and french traders that where scattered threw out that part of the world at that time.
French speaking conquistadors, friars, traders, and more over wealthy people all lived in what we now know as Italy at the time.
And people off the mainland spoke Sicilian.
This was about the time of the Italian Renaissance and france was branching back out tword western Europe .
Source: National Geographic magazine Volume XXXIV
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M$
Columbus helped spread Spanish all over the Western Hemisphere, not French. The French weren't even allowed to enter Spanish territory, which was literally half of the Earth by then. That's way they became pirates and had hard time gaining territory in the Americas.
I meant textually citing, as when you add text without altering it and then adding the reference, not just citing the reference alone.
I completely agree with you , however we have to take into account the shear wealth of france and the revolutions and treks of Christopher Columbus stretched all over the globe.
People from france where also scattered all over that immediate area.
And i completely agree that latin was mostly utilized for writing and due process proceedings .
Very surprising answer. Yes, I too would like a source link.
Done , Check source.
"No image available". ¿Could you textually cite the reference, please?
Sure you're not making a national geographical mistake? Flemish was spoken in Belgium and some parts of France I think. Dante had already written his Comedy by 1503, so Tuscan was on the rise (it was already the proto-Italian). The French did invade that part of Italy but I doubt many people spoke French (maybe traitors did).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish
I'll agree to disagree here , this was at the time of Machiavelli and the end of christopher columbus and i still think allot of people spoke french and italian moreover than latin.
EDIT:
And I stand by this final verdict in the matter.
http://www.gjenvick.com/Periodicals/1918-08-NationalGeographicMagazine.html
Only gives titles and summaries of the Volume. Cannot determine which article the citation is from.
"Protestant and all spoke Flemish or Frisian. The southern provinces were industrial and Roman Catholic and a large majority of the people spoke french."
Not sure why that link doesn't work for you guys.
It's straight from google labs reader.
Indeed, Latin was more studied than spoken by then. Although some people, like Montaigne, DID speak Latin.
Perhaps you'd be "multi-lingual" in a Salvatore kind of way, like in "The Name of the Rose", with a barely intelligible mixture of Latin, vulgar Latin and newborn Romance languages. But I bet it would be Tuscan. If you lived in the city-state of Florence in 1503, would you be rich, poor, a monk, a soldier or what?
No, it would depend on your social class. Most likely, you'd speak lingua toscana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscan_dialect
So I'd be multi-lingual?
If you went to school past primary, you would speak Latin. Pupils were caned for speaking anything other than Latin in the school premises. This was common right across Europe until the mid 1700's. If you went to University, all the lectures and conversations would have been in Latin. Galileo lectured in Latin, for example. There is a free online audio course, aimed at providing a 'facsimile' of such an immersive Latin education, so if you, too, want to actually learn how to speak Latin as well as a renaissance intellectual, you can do it, using Latinum http://latinum.mypodcast.com The project would take you about 4 - 5 years of intensive effort - no longer than to learn any 'modern' language.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with Lingua_Toscana.