How intelligible is Latin with Spanish and other modern Romance languages?

samcster94

Banned
My boyfriend took Classical Latin in high school, and between that and casual exposure to Spanish having grown up in California is able to read Spanish fairly well, albeit slowly. It often involves him having to think of synonyms for what would be the word most commonly used in Latin in order to understand a word in Spanish. Spoken Spanish, on the other hand is harder to understand. Of course, Latin education rarely emphasizes listening comprehension, but the sound changes are also easier to reverse-engineer in writing than in speech.


I would argue that the resemblance between Old Chinese and modern Tibetan is more of an artifact of the Wylie system of romanization and it's fidelity to Tibetan orthography, which is insanely conservative. The modern spoken language has gone through a somewhat similar process of consonant cluster simplification and tonogenesis as modern Chinese languages.
Interesting observation.
 
I have studied both Italian and some latin and Italian seemed closer to Spanish than Latin.I can barely understand any latin as a Spanish native speaker while I can understand most of the time written Italian.
 
A lot of the words that start with "al-" "Ojala" is an extremely obvious one. I found a list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language_influence_on_the_Spanish_language
Most arabic words have been drop from modern Spanish and their use is mostly anacronic.For example alcoba which means bed was dropped by cama.Arab influence in Spanish is not so obvious because arab words have been for the most part droped for germanic or latin based words.Most Spanish speaking people wouldn't be able to define most words from that list.
 
Very difficult the intelligibility

Differences that I think of the moment
a) Declension or inflexion that in Spanish is keep extensively in verbs (mostly here and difficult for non Romance language speakers) and less in adjectives and articles. In brief Spanish is moderately inflexive compared to Latin.
b) Subject–verb–object (SVO) as the basic and main a sentence structure in Spanish. Latin with the help of being higly inflexive was more free form.
c) grammatical articles (el, la, lo, los, las, un, una, unos, unas) that has gender and number agreement with the noun. Latin lacks definite articles.
d) Less complex or reduced number of grammar case compared to Latin.
 
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Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
Almost impossible the intelligibility

Differences that I think of the moment
a) Declension or inflexion that in Spanish is keep extensively in verbs (mostly here and difficult for non Romance language speakers) and less in adjectives and articles. In brief Spanish is moderately inflexive compared to Latin.
b) Subject–verb–object (SVO) as the basic and main a sentence structure in Spanish. Latin with the help of being higly inflexive was more free form.
c) grammatical articles (el, la, lo, los, las, un, una, unos, unas) that has gender and number agreement with the noun. Latin lacks definite articles.
d) Less complex or reduced number of grammar case compared to Latin.

I would agree mostly, but I wouldn't class Spanish as SVO, although SVO is a possible order. Certainly in intransitive sentences VS is more common "han llegado los libros", and VSO, SOV and OVS are all possible. The main difference between Latin and Spanish is, as you touch on, the case declension, and this is why Spaniards don't understand Latin texts. Spanish, like English does not differentiate between subjects and objects, and uses prepositions to indicate relationships of possession, movement etc. Latin did that with noun case, and so, unless you've learnt your declensions, it is difficult for speakers of Romance languages to understand. I suspect Vulgar Latin of around 300AD might actually have been a lot easier, but it's hard to say.
 
Drop a Spanish speaker in the ancient Roman world around 100-500 AD and they'd get a lot further than some people assume. Especially in Iberia, as common words were already recognizable by late antiquity, and the divergence in how Romance speakers make plurals - -i/-e vs -os/-as was already present in Vulgar Latin.

Here's the Vulgar Latin of 400s Gaul, so not even Iberia:
"Por Deo amore et por chrestyano pob(o)lo et nostro comune salvamento de esto die en avante en quanto Deos sabere et podere me donat, sic salvarayo eo eccesto meon fradre Karlo, et en ayuda et en caduna causa, sic quomo omo per drecto son fradre salvare devet, en o qued illi me altrosic fatsyat, et ab Ludero nullo plag(i)do nonqua prendrayo, qui meon volo eccesto meon fradre Karlo en damno seat."

For example, "ayuda" means exactly what our Spanish speakers think it does. The grammatical structure here has much more in common with modern Romance than anything you'd read in Virgil. I doubt even in 100 that the common man would have understood much of Classical Latin. So Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/Romanian intelligibility with the Roman aristocracy or the Latins of centuries BC would be pretty much zero, but it wouldn't take you THAT long to adjust to the speech of the vast majority of society.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
Drop a Spanish speaker in the ancient Roman world around 100-500 AD and they'd get a lot further than some people assume. Especially in Iberia, as common words were already recognizable by late antiquity, and the divergence in how Romance speakers make plurals - -i/-e vs -os/-as was already present in Vulgar Latin.

Here's the Vulgar Latin of 400s Gaul, so not even Iberia:


For example, "ayuda" means exactly what our Spanish speakers think it does. The grammatical structure here has much more in common with modern Romance than anything you'd read in Virgil. I doubt even in 100 that the common man would have understood much of Classical Latin. So Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/Romanian intelligibility with the Roman aristocracy or the Latins of centuries BC would be pretty much zero, but it wouldn't take you THAT long to adjust to the speech of the vast majority of society.

That's actually a bit later, Strasburg Oaths, 850 odd. The version I've seen is a bit more Gallic:

Your actual Charles the Bald! said:
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di en auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon uol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.

Though I agree with your point about VL.
 
Which Arabic vocabulary does Spanish even have within itself? I do not notice much when I look at Spanish.
The deal with that is that it would have been heavily Romanized phonetically at this point or probably also has taken some Maghrebi phonetic innovations or quirks along the way or possibly some words are considered Arabic even if they were and are considered loanwords from another language in arabic themselves and Arabic acted like the middle men between the 2, some times even acting as a middle men for latin words finding new or reinnovate use in Romance languages, plus of course you have all the words that are shared universally by core European languages, like algebra, alchemy, sugar, saffron etc.

And also it's possible Arabic itself moved out from some of those words while they stayed in Spanish and other languages.
 
Most arabic words have been drop from modern Spanish and their use is mostly anacronic.For example alcoba which means bed was dropped by cama.Arab influence in Spanish is not so obvious because arab words have been for the most part droped for germanic or latin based words.Most Spanish speaking people wouldn't be able to define most words from that list.

Yes, most of those words are pretty rare. But not all! Rincon, for example, extremely common.
 
I can tell you that with French, definitely not. From Cogito ergo sum (Latin) to Je pense, donc je suis (French) is a long distance.

I don't think any of the Romance languages are close to Classical Latin from a grammatical standpoint, but some have kept closer to Latin in terms of vocabulary.

Drop a Spanish speaker in the ancient Roman world around 100-500 AD and they'd get a lot further than some people assume. Especially in Iberia, as common words were already recognizable by late antiquity, and the divergence in how Romance speakers make plurals - -i/-e vs -os/-as was already present in Vulgar Latin.

Here's the Vulgar Latin of 400s Gaul, so not even Iberia:
.

That's not from ancient times but from the Oaths of Strasbourg (842).
 
I can tell you that with French, definitely not. From Cogito ergo sum (Latin) to Je pense, donc je suis (French) is a long distance.

I don't think any of the Romance languages are close to Classical Latin from a grammatical standpoint, but some have kept closer to Latin in terms of vocabulary.



That's not from ancient times but from the Oaths of Strasbourg (842).

Galician seems to be closer to Latin than say Spanish perhaps. Even Portuguese or perhaps d’Òc.
 
That's actually a bit later, Strasburg Oaths, 850 odd. The version I've seen is a bit more Gallic:



Though I agree with your point about VL.

I know what it's from; the version I quoted is a translation into the language of the same region 400 years earlier. Hence the difference with Brunaburh's quote.
 
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Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
I know what it's from; the version I quoted is a translation into the language of the same region 400 years earlier. Hence the difference with Brunaburh's quote.
Ok, fair enough. It's probably good form to state something is a reconstruction when it is though.
 
Galician seems to be closer to Latin than say Spanish perhaps. Even Portuguese or perhaps d’Òc.

I see where you're coming from. Occitan and Portuguese ortographies do look less divergent from Latin ortography if compared with all the other Romance languages (probably even more than Sardinian IMHO). Still, ortography is determined by a number of different factors, it's not a reliable way to compare languages.
 
I see where you're coming from. Occitan and Portuguese ortographies do look less divergent from Latin ortography if compared with all the other Romance languages (probably even more than Sardinian IMHO). Still, ortography is determined by a number of different factors, it's not a reliable way to compare languages.

Sure, but we are scratching the surface and that is the beginning of finding answers.
 

samcster94

Banned
Drop a Spanish speaker in the ancient Roman world around 100-500 AD and they'd get a lot further than some people assume. Especially in Iberia, as common words were already recognizable by late antiquity, and the divergence in how Romance speakers make plurals - -i/-e vs -os/-as was already present in Vulgar Latin.

Here's the Vulgar Latin of 400s Gaul, so not even Iberia:


For example, "ayuda" means exactly what our Spanish speakers think it does. The grammatical structure here has much more in common with modern Romance than anything you'd read in Virgil. I doubt even in 100 that the common man would have understood much of Classical Latin. So Spanish/Portuguese/Italian/Romanian intelligibility with the Roman aristocracy or the Latins of centuries BC would be pretty much zero, but it wouldn't take you THAT long to adjust to the speech of the vast majority of society.
I can see that already. Words common in modern romance languages appear in an archaic form.
 
The mutual intelligibility, as others have touched on, varies depending on the Romance language in question. Sardinian would be the most comprehensible to a Latin speaker, after which there would be varying levels of comprehensibility for the other major Romance languages, of which French would be the least comprehensible (around 40%). There would be pretty much zero comprehensibility for some of the more divergent Romance languages such as Antillean Creole or Palenque. I imagine that Ladino would fall somewhere in between those two categories, but I'm not familiar enough with it to tell.
 
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