Death to Inflections

In a surviving Latin-speaking Roman empire when could we, if we would, see the slow removal of most inflexions in both the written and spoken languages. I'm not sure to what degree that Vulgar Latin and Late (Written) Latin and converging and to what extent was the spoken vocabulary was simplified but I would think most of the inflexions had started to phase out in one way or another.

As these threads usually lock up with people requesting a scenario to work on here's one.
  1. Rome survives and holds or pushes back the Germans over the Rhine with Theodosius beating back his disease at least for a time.
  2. Arcadius and Honorius get murdered.
  3. Yadda yadda.
  4. The empire whether the migration period in the West and East.
  5. Can be two separate Empires until OTL 1300 AD.
  6. The West ends triumphant if two empires.
  7. If needed the language base is expanded through Latin language expansion into the Greek East completely or partially.
  8. Empire takes Ireland and Scotland somewhere along this timeline.
  9. Eventually in 1700 AD OTL by the latest, state-mandated public schooling starts due to an Industrial revolution or some other cause.
  10. Can have democracy 'back' by the end if needed but that really would lack much bearing on a language What-If.
 
In our time line, an incarnation of Latin that preserved the inflections of the classical version of the language survived, as a language of learning, well into the nineteenth century. Thus, would it not be likely that, in a triumphant Western Roman Empire, a similar kind of Latin would have served a similar purpose. Indeed, widespread education might have served to strengthen the position of the language, making it a language of trade, diplomacy, and "middle brow culture" as well as a means of sharing scientific knowledge? Moreover, the widespread reduction of language to writing would have a conservative influence on speech, in much the same way that Shakespeare and the King James Bible preserved features of English that would otherwise have gone the way of ð and þ.

To put things another way, in a Western Roman Empire, there would have been no need to create the standard national languages that, in our time, were spread by schools, newspapers, vernacular literature, and, more recently, broadcasting. Thus, educated people would be diglossic, speaking Romance (or, further north, Celtic or Germanic) dialects at home and proper Latin in more formal settings.
 
@Avalon

Inflexions removal, since the IIIrd century at least, was rather quick than slow, in no small part due to the switch from synthetic to analytic constructions.
And as the main causes, namely the use of Latin on a wide territory and no normative teaching and use of the language especially on lower classes, aren't going anywhere ITTL, we could assume some things.

First, neutral gender is still going out. It was already tending to do so in classical Latin due to neutral being often attributed to animated subjects from one hand, and the impossibility to really associate terminations to specific cases.
Speaking of which, cases are going to know some heavy reduction : they tended to be confused with each other already (and if post-imperial Latin is any indication, were on the verge of loosing relevance but aesthetic).
You'd end up with two cases ordonned in 3 groups.
1) -a- (stella/stellam - stellas/stellas)
2) -us/-er (lupus/lupum - lupi/lupos)
3) parasyllabs/imparasyllaps (omo/omne - omni/omnes) (navis/nevem - neves/neves)

The same goes for adjectives, of course, and demonstrative pronouns already went from 5 to 3.

As for vocabulary : I suspect that the conceptual vocabulary would hold better ITTL than IOTL (due to the continuous experience with these abstractions) and that the loss of synonyms would be somewhat limited due to better inter-regional communication.
Still, the more colorfoul vocabulary of Vulgar Latin will remain. No equus but caballus, except maybe in the maintained middle-class. Similarly, the regularity of suffix and in the appearance of neologism will remain a distinctive trait of Vulgar Latin IMO.

I must confess I'm not too sure what you search precisely : could you develop a bit?
 
I'm not really searching for anything. This was more a thinking exercise on possible development. I guess the confirmation of the number of inflexions in the language was what I needed confirmed but could you also comment on the learnability of the language over the time period?
 
I'm not really searching for anything. This was more a thinking exercise on possible development. I guess the confirmation of the number of inflexions in the language was what I needed confirmed but could you also comment on the learnability of the language over the time period?
I'm not sure about what you mean by "learnability".

I think that, eventually, a surviving Roman state would have ended with a linguistical situation close enough to Arab linguistical continuum : a series of super-dialects not all mutually intelligible by themselves and even distinct from each other, but tied up thanks to a written form and a classical language common to all. That said, giving the lack of "holiness" of Latin language, I suspect the divergence being much quicker ITTL.
 
I'm not sure about what you mean by "learnability".

I think that, eventually, a surviving Roman state would have ended with a linguistical situation close enough to Arab linguistical continuum : a series of super-dialects not all mutually intelligible by themselves and even distinct from each other, but tied up thanks to a written form and a classical language common to all. That said, giving the lack of "holiness" of Latin language, I suspect the divergence being much quicker ITTL.
You have the tridentine mass, common till the sixties.
 
You have the tridentine mass, common till the sixties.
Which incorporated more and more of vernacular language with time. Most of the evengelical texts were translated as well (this is hardly a novelty, you found translation well into Middle-Ages), to speak nothing of religious books.

It nowhere had the sheer cultural-social weight of Arab not only as a liturgical language, but as a mendatory religious/judicial language.

I would add, if we go trough a survival of a christianized Romania, that the common liturgical language in imperial Christianity would likely be either in Latin and in Greek, but like IOTL, the necessity to be understood from people in Churches would likely force a vulgarization when the differentiation becomes clear (IOTL it happened in the IXth century, but I agree it would take longer ITTL)
 
Which incorporated more and more of vernacular language with time. Most of the evengelical texts were translated as well (this is hardly a novelty, you found translation well into Middle-Ages), to speak nothing of religious books.

It nowhere had the sheer cultural-social weight of Arab not only as a liturgical language, but as a mendatory religious/judicial language.

I would add, if we go trough a survival of a christianized Romania, that the common liturgical language in imperial Christianity would likely be either in Latin and in Greek, but like IOTL, the necessity to be understood from people in Churches would likely force a vulgarization when the differentiation becomes clear (IOTL it happened in the IXth century, but I agree it would take longer ITTL)
Why would it be different from the Arab world, a comparison i thought was spot on? Latin will also remain longer the language of the state ITTL. There will be also less divergence if society remains urban-agricultural in a surviving roman empire, where cities are places of education.
 
There is no doubt that a Western Roman Empire that continued to exist would be rich in local dialects. However, the persistence of a Latin-speaking secular elite would deprive those dialects of the champions who, in our time line, converted dialects into national languages.

Consider the case of a London lawyer of the early fourteenth century. In our time line, he had to divide his linguistic attention between Latin (the language of law books), Norman French (the language of the courts), and English (the language of his clients.) Likewise, a military engineer of the late eighteenth century of our time line had to learn French (for works on siegecraft), English (for works on ballistics), and Latin (for more recent scientific works.) In a continued Western Roman Empire, both of these people would have had no need for any written language other than Latin.

The Latin of a continued Western Roman Empire would resemble the English of today. Just as the peculiarities of English cause many headaches for people who grew up speaking less idiosyncratic tongues, the inflections of Latin would have been a great trial to speakers of dialects that had lost such features. Nonetheless, the universal utility of Latin would more than compensate students for the pains involved in the mastery of conjugation, declination, and agreement.
 
Why would it be different from the Arab world, a comparison i thought was spot on?
Because you have much less of a stress keeping (or learning) classical Latin for everyday use, and even every day administrative use. You didn't have a special case for Latin as Classical Arab did, meaning being both a blessed and a profane language whom standardization was heavily based on a holy book.
Take the Council of Tours, for exemple, that in 813 pointed that if people couldn't understand the heck was said, then a part of the mass should be said in vernacular. Or that Slavonic could be used in mass in Central European regions.
Latin did had a special place as a liturgical language, would it be due only to its sheer cultural influence, and its continued use represent a good clue on the rise of Catholicism as one unified body : but it didn't prevented people to have no clue whar was said, at the exception of the learned (giving that priests were more or less mumbling their parts than in the new mass, it wasn't that of a problem you could say)

Outside the religious scope, the Latin language didn't have a specific supremacy apart from social-cultural dominance : in most of Eastern Romania, romanisation was made in Greek.

Latin will also remain longer the language of the state ITTL. There will be also less divergence if society remains urban-agricultural in a surviving roman empire, where cities are places of education.
We're talking of an ancient/early medieval state there : meaning that for the super-majority of the population, Classical Latin is not something they would hear regularly at all. Taxmen were big landowners of the locality, which would speak to them in common language, and that's approximately the main connection to the state most of the population in Western Romania would have (Eastern Romania is different on this regard, with a stronger urbanisation and para-urbanisation, but again, Greek language). Another connection, altough more limited in scope, could arguably be the military service/conscription in limitanei, but their regionalisation and the proximity with Barbarian/Barbarized elements certainly didn't helped to have a stress on Classical Latin either.

As for cities, remember that was called a city was an institutional marker, and not just a demographical one : several western Roman cities were agglomerations of 2,000 inhabitants. That"s not nothing, but not all, far from it, were learning centers (something that was quite expensive).
Furthermore, if we keep a late imperial PoD at this point elites and the services that surrounded them were importantly ruralized : while municipal/economical/political elites still made goings and comings with their cities, they really preferred to reside in countryside.

Not that the presence of a Roman state in the West wouldn't help the maintain of the diglossy Classical Latin/Vulgar Latin : as I pointed above you'd have IMO two major changes in vocabulary : more conceptual names surviving in Vulgar Latin due to cohabitation with Classical Latin and a Romans tate; and due to more inter-regional communications than IOTL a larger poll of synonyms. That Classical Latin remain an institutional language would allow (but a bit like it happened in Middle-Ages, truth to be told*) to vulgar speeches borrowing words directly. Of course, it means that Classical Latin itself wouldn't be immune to Vulgar neologisms.

*For exemple Aquitania : Guyenne/Aquitaine
 
The Latin of a continued Western Roman Empire would resemble the English of today.
We know that most of the population was less and less able to completly understand Classical Latin since the IIIrd century, tough : while the comparison is fitting for the early part, it would cease to be true quickly enough.

Nonetheless, the universal utility of Latin would more than compensate students for the pains involved in the mastery of conjugation, declination, and agreement.
Students, as long Roman civilization is concerned, represented only a faint part of the population, essentially coming from political/economical elites that already had contact with Classical Latin. I'm more focusing on the low-middle classes and low classes that essentially spoke Vulgar Latin.
 
I'm more focusing on the low-middle classes and low classes that essentially spoke Vulgar Latin.

I am reminded of the old joke, often told in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, that defined a language as a dialect that possessed an army and a navy. The absence of polities smaller than the empire, whether kingdoms or city-states, would have prevented the creation of standardized vernaculars capable of competing with Latin. As far as dialects go, additional exposure to the influence of Latin might have exercised a conservative influence, preserving a few vestiges of the case system. Nonetheless, I suspect that, on the whole, dialects would have evolved in much the same way that they did in our time line.
 
Which incorporated more and more of vernacular language with time. Most of the evengelical texts were translated as well (this is hardly a novelty, you found translation well into Middle-Ages), to speak nothing of religious books.

Religious texts were translated into the vernacular, but in the Mass itself, the only part that wasn't Latin was the sermon.
 
I am reminded of the old joke, often told in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, that defined a language as a dialect that possessed an army and a navy.
While not entirely wrong, a language always have a state behind it to being enforced administratively and culturally. Without this, a language can survive but not really thrive, except in some particular cases as proposed ITTL with a Classical/Vulgar continuum : at some point, tough, and I think we agree on this, Vulgar Latin will win administratively, when the mutual intelligibility would make maintain of classical forms unefficient.

As far as dialects go, additional exposure to the influence of Latin might have exercised a conservative influence, preserving a few vestiges of the case system.
By the IIIrd/Vth century period, before the fall of the Roman state then, cases were already reduced to Nominative and Accusative.

Nonetheless, I suspect that, on the whole, dialects would have evolved in much the same way that they did in our time line.
I beg to disagree : most romance dialects evolved from quite contingential events : Hispano-Romance is probably the most obvious case, being delimited trough Conquista/Reconquista and with an heavy Basco-Cantabrian influence due to northern retreat, for Gallo-Romance the disappearance of Rhineish and Poitou dialects were esentially tied to medieval evolution, French language as a dynamic one and Occitan as a conservative one is essentially tied to historical-social events...etc. And of course, I say nothing of the evolution of Raetho-Romance, Illyro-Romance and Danubian Romance.
Would it be only for vocabulary, a more important transmission from Classical Latin on vernacular speeches and a different (rather than lesser) Barbarisation of Vulgar is to be expected.

Frankly, I'd not try guessing dialectical separations ITTL, except maybe in a really broad sense with super-dialectal groups.
 
Religious texts were translated into the vernacular, but in the Mass itself, the only part that wasn't Latin was the sermon.
Homilies too were in vernacular. Note that the large part of parishoners didn't understood what was happening litterally (while knowing which part was about what, roughly) and the ones that could had books translating the latin sentences.
 
Homilies too were in vernacular.

Homilies and sermons are the same thing.

Note that the large part of parishoners didn't understood what was happening litterally (while knowing which part was about what, roughly) and the ones that could had books translating the latin sentences.

For most of the period in question, parishioners who could afford books would probably have read Latin anyway.
 
Homilies and sermons are the same thing.
You do have a meager difference between the commentary on evangelical lecture,and general predication that can be called sermons too. I agree that the difference is essentially about a more scholarly sermon and a more popular one, hence why most evangelization was ultimately made outside the mass. Probably a misunderstanding based on my own (possibly too board) definition of a sermon.

For most of the period in question, parishioners who could afford books would probably have read Latin anyway.
Not necessarily after the XIIth century, with the gradual vernacularisation of books, including predication books (and neither before the Xth, when written Latin was...well, not that classic without being Vulgar)
 
I beg to disagree : most romance dialects evolved from quite contingential events.

You are quite right where it comes to Iberian dialects. The continuation of the Western Roman Empire would have prevented the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula and the consequent influence of Arabic upon the Romance dialects spoken there. At the same time, the continuation of the Western Roman Empire would have had little effect upon the role played by substrate languages, neighboring languages, or phonological evolution in shaping dialects.
 
The continuation of the Western Roman Empire would have prevented the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula and the consequent influence of Arabic upon the Romance dialects spoken there.
Direct Arabic influence on Hispano-Romance is quite limited, to be honest.

At the same time, the continuation of the Western Roman Empire would have had little effect upon the role played by substrate languages, neighboring languages, or phonological evolution in shaping dialects.
It's unlikely that the Germanic adstrate in Gallo-Romance (while still likely to exist ITTL) would be important to the point influencing this much on common words, institutional vocabulary, the reintroduction of aspirated h, the switch from to [y], or the [w] ending up in [g] much more strongly than in most Romance speeches.
For Occitano-Romance, the differenciation between Occitan and Catalan is a textbook exemple of an ausbausprache formation, due to the political distinction between Catalonia and the rest of the Occitano-Romance ensemble. Or the re-Vasconisation of the region below Garonne, which would end-up with a distinctive Gascon dialect.
In fact, the division of the Gallo-Occitano-Romance super-group is not a given ITTL, at the very least not as IOTL

IMO, the one dialectal super-group with the more chances to both turn out relatively like IOTL and to stay close enough from Classical Latin would be Italian (in its medieval form, of course). Arguably, Occitano-Romance could serve as a rough base to imaginate how Gallo-Romance could look like, but it's still going to be noticeably different, I think.
 
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