Hello.
Imagine this scenario. The Roman Empire with the borders of Elbe and Danube and with Mesopotamia survive intact and even colonized the Americas after about AD 1500. Now, in the North and West, Latin is the dominant language, with the Celtic and Germanic Languages extinct or dying. The religion is Catholic and Orthodoxy, but in this scenario, they are just the same religion, with the single empire preventing a major split, with five patriarchs in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem heading the Church.
Now, when I say Latin, I meant New Latin. Obviously, the Latin of the Republic and Empire won't remain static, and the spoken language is different. It diverged, of course, with Latin dialects in Spain, in Germany, in Gaul, in Britain, and Africa. But let's say that mass education in the 1700s to the present managed to impose the dialect of Italy on all the others, so despite all the different dialects, everyone could speak and understand the Italian standard, along with the local Vulgar dialect.
My question is, is it possible for the people to write and read classical Latin to write modern spoken Vulgar Latin? Could the state impose that everyone write and read only in classical Latin even if they speak the New Modern Latin? And that written Vulgar never actually develop?
My idea is that people, in order to read and write, need to know classical Latin, even if they cannot speak the language, and when they read the classical Latin, they would pronounce the words using modern pronunciation. For example, when reading the name Marcus Marius, people would think that it is pronounced Marco Mario, and that when seeing the word and month Augustus, they immediately without thinking read it as Agosto.
Is this possible? My aim is even if the language spoken in the modern time is different from the one spoken 2,000 years ago, it is perfect possible for a literate person to read something written 2,000 years ago without difficulty. Thus, the fact that the ancient Romans and the modern Romans speak different spoken languages, it won't matter that much since there is no recording device in the past where the moderns can actually listen to how the ancients actually spoke.
Imagine this scenario. The Roman Empire with the borders of Elbe and Danube and with Mesopotamia survive intact and even colonized the Americas after about AD 1500. Now, in the North and West, Latin is the dominant language, with the Celtic and Germanic Languages extinct or dying. The religion is Catholic and Orthodoxy, but in this scenario, they are just the same religion, with the single empire preventing a major split, with five patriarchs in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem heading the Church.
Now, when I say Latin, I meant New Latin. Obviously, the Latin of the Republic and Empire won't remain static, and the spoken language is different. It diverged, of course, with Latin dialects in Spain, in Germany, in Gaul, in Britain, and Africa. But let's say that mass education in the 1700s to the present managed to impose the dialect of Italy on all the others, so despite all the different dialects, everyone could speak and understand the Italian standard, along with the local Vulgar dialect.
My question is, is it possible for the people to write and read classical Latin to write modern spoken Vulgar Latin? Could the state impose that everyone write and read only in classical Latin even if they speak the New Modern Latin? And that written Vulgar never actually develop?
My idea is that people, in order to read and write, need to know classical Latin, even if they cannot speak the language, and when they read the classical Latin, they would pronounce the words using modern pronunciation. For example, when reading the name Marcus Marius, people would think that it is pronounced Marco Mario, and that when seeing the word and month Augustus, they immediately without thinking read it as Agosto.
Is this possible? My aim is even if the language spoken in the modern time is different from the one spoken 2,000 years ago, it is perfect possible for a literate person to read something written 2,000 years ago without difficulty. Thus, the fact that the ancient Romans and the modern Romans speak different spoken languages, it won't matter that much since there is no recording device in the past where the moderns can actually listen to how the ancients actually spoke.
