by Audrey-Anastasia Alleyne

Created on: January 31, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2009

Latin and the Romance Languages

The Romance languages are said to include 47 languages according to The Ethnologue which is, the Summer Institute for Linguistic's guide to world language. Many of us are only familiar with the ones we have studied at school such as French, Spanish, and Italian; and of course Latin, the language of the Romans, from which this family known as the Indo-European family is said to have descended.

Latin was the language of ancient Rome; and although it appears to be an extinct language, having knowledge of it certainly helps in learning the Romance languages. It helps enormously also in learning English. The Romans left their mark on Italian, which is so close to Latin, that one would think of it as being modernized Latin. This national language, Italian, developed out of the speech of the people; what is called vernacular. Out of this Vulgar Latin, which was the speech of the soldiers and the common people, arose the Romance languages French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

With the expansion of the Roman Empire between 350 BC and 150 AD, Latin became the dominant language in continental Western Europe and eventually exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa and part of the Balkans.

French was the first of the daughters of Latin to be clearly identified with this family. It was designated by Charlemagne around the ninth century as the new language. The beginnings of Spanish and Italian are placed later, in the middle of the tenth century.

Spanish also developed out of Vulgar Latin . A quick look at the vocabulary of the Romance languages shows a resemblance which is very close. You probably are already familiar with some of these words without realizing the connection. Those of us who have studied at least one of the languages, find it rather easy to study another, especially if we have a foundation of Latin in our studies. Let's look at the English word for all. Think of the word "total". Now let's examine the Latin root which is "totus". From this comes, "tout" in French, "todo" in Spanish and Portuguese, "tutto" in Italian and "to" in Rumanian.

Let's look at another. The Latin word for the English word, life is "vita." In French it is "vie"; it's "vida" in both Spanish and Portuguese, "vita" in Italian and "viata" in Rumanian.

So, the so-called dead language of Latin has given life to our modern Romance languages. If you studied Latin, it's a good idea to hold on to your Latin books like I do; and a little review now and then will help you immensely in learning the Romance languages, and also in improving your English.
LINK: To read this article in Spanish go to: http://www.helium.com/zone/1366-Espaol

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