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markjeffr... markjeffr...
 
M$10 December 17, 2008 05:29 PM

Could a person who learned to speak Latin in a modern school converse fluently with an ancient Roman (100 AD)?

I'm wondering with someone who learned to speak Latin in the present day could easily communicate with someone from the Roman Empire. Or, was that flavor of Latin -- back when it was a living language -- materially different, or archaic, or contain slang that a modern speaker would not comprehend?

In a nutshell, imagine a Latin-speaker from our time, suddenly transported back in time to the Roman Empire. Could they realistically communicate and function?
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carriep carriep
 
 December 17, 2008 05:44 PM
From what I can gather from Wikipedia, the Romans spoke Vulgar Latin, but we currently teach Classical Latin so that ancient texts can be read. So there are definitely some roadblocks there.

Also, even if the current scholars got as close as they could to knowing what they spoke back then, there's no way to be 100% accurate without hearing it spoken. So there's probably some mistakes in how to pronounce things. Not to mention regional variations.

My friend who studied Latin has told me that no one really knows how it was pronounced back then.

But, since Latin is the foundation of all other Romance languages, my educated guess is that a classical Latin speaker who was fluent in another Romance language would have a good shot at picking it up quickly.

They could probably do fairly well after a short while but there would almost certainly be a learning curve.
Source(s):
http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/languages/languages-offered/classical-latin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Latin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Latin

Asker's Rating:
• Lots of good info in other answers, but this informed me the most. Tough call, though, admittedly.


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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 05:52 PM
Besides classical Latin, you can also study medieval and vulgar if you are really interested. There are some masters in Europe and the US (I know it because I wanted to study a master in vulgar Latin: http://www.aic.lv/rec/HE_2002/HE_LV/Progr/LU/lu_bac1.htm
http://www.unc.edu/depts/medstud/courses/fall05.html
http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/2303.php
http://www.ceebd.co.uk/ceeed/un/la/la001001.htm

This is also a reply to the answer below. On the other hand, they are right about not knowing the exact pronunciation back then. Researchers have reconstructed the pronunciation, which might be good enough if you lay your hands on a time machine.

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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 06:28 PM
I forgot. Not all Romans spoke vulgar Latin because it was... Vulgar!

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metrodorus metrodorus
 
December 19, 2008 02:01 AM
We actually have a very good idea of how intellectuals spoke Latin, as the formal Latin used on the Palatine Hill (i.e. by the aristocracy) is very well described. Keil contains over 6 volumes of grammatical writings by the Romans themselves, and in their writings they described how their language was pronounced in considerable detail. George Alder wrote a complete conversational course for Latin, treating it as he treated German in a textbook he had written 12 years before his work on Latin, this remains the best text around for learning how to speak the language colloquially. To add to that, we have transliterations from Latin into Greek, we have contemporary documents that contain very instructive spelling errors, and finally, we can deduce a certain amount from the modern Romance languages, when taken into consideration with the written evidence. Thus, the reconstructed Latin pronunciation now used in universities has a very good foundation. Some things we are a little shaky on, like the elisions that might have occurred when words were strung together, but these are really minor details, and if a speaker of restored Classical pronunciation were to be thrown back in time, it would probably only take them a few hours to adjust their pronunciation accordingly.
Incidentally, the book George Adler wrote - "A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language for Speaking and Writing Latin", is in the process of being put into audio, which can be accessed for free via podcast:
http://latinum.mypodcast.com

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akuta akuta
 
December 17, 2008 05:38 PM
As far as linguistics is concerned, I would probably akin it to a person from Mexico speaking to a person from Spain. You'd likely be able to speak with each other; however, it'd likely be pronunciation variances and "slang" that would have been used in ancient Rome that would set the two apart.

Fluently, that's subjective. Someone may seem fluent to a person who doesn't speak the language natively whereas to someone who DOES speak it natively they can tell a difference. Make sense?

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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 05:46 PM
Actually, the Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish comparison isn't so accurate. There are little dialectical differences and we live in the same era. (ALATORRE, Antonio, Los 1001 años de la lengua española, Mexico, FCE, 2004, more about Alatorre here, in Spanish: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Alatorre) The dialectical differences between romans living in, lets say, Spain and Rome were way apart. Only highly educated people communicated well between them.

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akuta akuta
 
December 17, 2008 05:52 PM
I was simply using it as a reference between two languages where you would assume they would be very similar (being the "same language") but whereas they are different.

And actually, there are many, many different dialects of "Spanish" in Mexico and all of Central America. Many of them cannot even speak with one another because the dialects have drifted so far apart though starting with the "same language."

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dumblonde dumblonde
 
December 17, 2008 06:04 PM
Ok as a Spanish speaker I think I need to interject here.
Pretty much everyone that speaks Spanish all over the world understands each other. I can watch TV from Spain, Colombia, Mexico, etc and understand it. Spanish is a very unified and standardized language thanks to the Real Academia Espanola (The Royal Academy) that regulates the language. The Real Academia has subsidiaries in many countries in Latin America.
I assume the dialects you are referring to are Native languages that have been mixed with Spanish in some way or another.
But I can go to Spain, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and I will understand everybody perfectly well except for 1 or 2 words but you pick up slang very quickly.

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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 06:07 PM
By "dialect" I mean social and regional differences of ONE language, not native LANGUAGES (erroneously called dialects sometimes) that mixed with Spanish.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AuczmXOUN.LYbhUhX7OZz7Xty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080116135507AABH9V1&show=7#profile-info-0ea6a6367ea28ecaa9032ab3854c2f39aa
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenguas_de_M%C3%A9xico

I also speak Spanish as my first language and have no problem at all talking with any other Spanish speaker from any country.

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akuta akuta
 
December 17, 2008 06:17 PM
dumblonde,
There was no debate that the majority of Spanish speaking people can communicate with eachother. This was my primary mention of the comparison where the two may have mild differences but they would be able to communicate with each other. My response regarding the dialects of Spanish were in rebuttal to the statement that "the Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish comparison isn't so accurate" as the "dialectical differences between romans living in, lets say, Spain and Rome were way different." Again, just using logic and supporting information in rebuttal. No attempt to skew the facts.

Thank you for the additional input. :)

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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 06:23 PM
No problem at all, Akuta. Hard differences in dialects in the Roman Empire is what led to different versions of vulgar Latin and, later, to the birth of modern Romance languages. We don't have that problem with Spanish, but I think it does happen with Portuguese (I know Saramago doesn't allow his books being "translated" from Portuguese Portuguese to Brazilian Portuguese). Any Brazilians here?

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pescina pescina
 
December 17, 2008 05:38 PM
Not at all (perfectly). First, they had different pronunciations (Italian, Spanish, classical) and the syntax might be different. You could communicate, though. You'd have a weird accent and, most important of it all, you'd have different concepts and a way too different worldview.
Source(s):
Studied Latin myself.


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dumblonde dumblonde
 
December 17, 2008 05:44 PM
Depends on what you mean by ancient Roman. You could've possibly been able to speak to someone of noble status or a clergy member but definitely not a peasant.
The Latin we learn now is the Latin we have acquired from texts (Classical Latin). The Latin people spoke was vulgar Latin and, as the Roman Empire spread and Latin mixed with other dialects, it's what developed into the 7 Romance Languages we know today.
I don't even know if you could've been able to communicate at all with the peasants as the difference could be as great as between French and Creole.
With nobility, because they knew how to read and write, possibly through writing and maybe orally too assuming they know how to pronounce the things that were written.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin


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peconi peconi
 
December 17, 2008 05:55 PM
Unlikely we'll ever know :)

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fireawayph... fireawayph...
 
December 17, 2008 06:38 PM
Yes, although there would be a few dialect issues.
Source(s):
Dr. Laura DeLozier, Professor at the University of Wyoming.


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hashim hashim
 
December 17, 2008 06:53 PM
The main problem confronted by language speakers of different eras and locations is the differing use of idioms.

From Wikipedia:
"An idiom is generally a colloquial metaphor — a term which requires some foundational knowledge, iion, or experience, to use only within a culture where parties must have common reference. not considered a part of the language, but rather a part of the culture. As cultures are typically localized, idioms are often not useful outside of that local context.

Without an understanding of Ancient Roman idioms, the modern Latin speaker would not be able to understand innuendo or the jokes of that time.

The modern Latin speaker would be like Data from Star Trek, trying to understand a joke!


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