"How well did the Romans speak Latin?" Topic

Or, the Greeks speak Greek?

I think that today's experience is relevant. Even with "universal" education among English speaking nations, we still hear "I could of went to the store."
With the level of literacy in Ancient times, I wonder.

I once asked a wargaming archaeologist how often heiroglyphics or cuneiform were "misspelled", and I got a big grin in response.

I think that if a Judaean had told a Roman "Romanes ite domum", he would have been perfectly understood. Would the average legionaire have been able to read the graffiti in any case?

Quo scirem?

Hi

There is actually a decent body of work on the subject.

Just a point, most of us who did latin as lads read Caeser's commentaries. In the day, his language was considered "Vulgar" which was the same as "low brow" being in "soldier's language" and not considered literate!

A couple hundred years later, you have the catholic church struggling with the differences between "vulgate" latin and proper latin.

Actually, one of the plot points in the current Robin Hood movie involves a Robin as a yeoman passing as a noble. Even speaking french, if he did, it wouldn't be proper knigttly language.

Sort of the difference today between modern proper britsh theater english, and the stuff our favorite racers speak.

Rocky

Actually, one of the plot points in the current Robin Hood movie involves a Robin as a yeoman passing as a noble. Even speaking french, if he did, it wouldn't be proper knigttly language.

If you're trying to tell us that Latin was a 'knightly' language rather than French, you're totally wrong.

The (spoken*) language at court and of the higher echelons was French. Latin was the language of religion.

Sort of the difference today between modern proper britsh theater english, and the stuff our favorite racers speak.

Have I mentioned how much I love irony?

* Most toffs couldn't read or write. That's what scribes were for.

John,

They seemed to do alright when I was there. The Greeks, anyway. I crewed with Odysseus on his trip home. The true story is actually much better than the cover story commonly found in print, but even back then the more crafty/devious folks new the importance of controlling the message.

He wasn't called "Polytropon" because of his good looks!

JJ

If you're trying to tell us that Latin was a 'knightly' language rather than French, you're totally wrong.

The (spoken*) language at court and of the higher echelons was French. Latin was the language of religion.

I think what he is saying here is that the French Robin Hood the-yeoman-cum-knight was speaking was the kind liberally laced with slang and f-bombs, rather than the "proper" French spoken by the English aristocracy.

Damon.

I believe they spoke it quite fluently; as if it were their native tongue.

Couldn't tell you. However, if some of the historical writings are any indication, then they probably did not speak very well in terms of "proper" Latin. Most historians were not very consistent in their writing, be it grammar or spelling.

Connard, Rocky was making a comparison to the court language of Robin's time being "proper" French vs. the English (what happened when Norman soldiers chatted up Saxon bar maids) that the common people would've spoken (likely in addition to Saxon, Welsh, etc. depending on region).

I'm not sure how much of a difference there'd be between vulgate and proper Latin but I suspect the difference would be greater the farther you went from Rome. Maybe at least as much as the difference between what is called English on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Wyatt

My daughter was quite a Latin scholar, she loved the language because it was so precise -- almost mathematical.

Then she came home one day -- fairly upset -- she had discovered that the Romans used 'slang' just like we do. Just destroyed her perfectly ordered Latin world.

mjc

I liked the latin graffiti on "Rome."

ATIA FELLAT needs no translation.

I figured they spoke Latin about as well as we speak English… or American … or with a bit of a southern slant

Badly. At least after citizenship moved beyond the wealthy.

This really sounds like the power of vocabulary and word usage. That is where I fid the largest difference in "Class" within a spoken (or written) language.

Yes, this was the point I was trying to make
when you and your buddies came down so hard
on me for using the wrong Latin word for shields.

Coabeous

What they said. My understanding from reading is that the "vulgate" Latin spoken by the ordinary people and in the army, and no doubt deliberately employed by Caesar to demonstrate his plebian allegiances, was noticeably different in accent and intonation and vocabulary from "high", classical Latin like Cicero wrote in and presumably spoke. Church Latin descends from vulgate Latin, certainly in pronunciation (more like modern Italian).

Romanes eunt domus

Pete

Hi

Connard, I am unclear how you got to the idea I was suggesting latin in the french court from the post. As others observed, I was discussing how the language in the french court for knights would not have been "yeoman" french or yeoman saxon or, god save me, that trade polyglot called "english".

The basic plot point in "my fair lady" of course is that Harry Higgins can listen to anyone speak and identify the specific neighborhood they are from…in ENGLISH.

Today, in the US, we have "TV Newscaster" english, or on the BEEB, "british newsreader english". In our daily lives we can usually identify regions and educational levels of whomever we encounter.

But not in the movies!

Partly this is identified in anthropology that populations develop their own "insider" language as a regular feature. Physicians do not chose words as historians do.

That is the only point I am making. Patrician Latin, properly written in the first century BC was expected to have literary allusions and a lot of greek loan words neither of which would be available to the plebeian population.

And that "latin" would also vary regionally, and by trade.

Rocky

Steady, folks, steady. First, let's set aside the term "vulgate"; it has nothing to do with types of Latin, but to a specific common version of the Bible--revised in the c.5th CE.

Spoken Latin would have been a good deal more consistent across socioeconomic strata in Rome than you might think. Basic education was universal for free males (and often was provided for certian slaves), up to a point; it could even include an introduction to Greek.

Government was conducted in a very public way; even sessions of the Senate were reported (and written down) for the benefit of the masses. But much of the most important business involved swaying public opinion; so when not accomplished by graft, force, or threat of viiolence, this was done in the open. Contios appealed to the general public. Court cases often were addressed as much to the public as to the jury. Orators like Cicero spoke to a wide range of audiences at once, whether ocnducting a pprosecution or defence, or in an official capacity, taking an issue to the people. (One of Cicero's written orations would seem stiffer, perhaps, because it would be "polished"--politus--after its presentation. "Spin" is not new.)

Yes, different personalities had different styles, some carefully structured to appeal to a broader base. But it was all understood: by the nobility, the business class, the everyday worker, and even the slaves.

Basic education included exposure to literature, especially poetry, and the common language included allusions drawn from the theater, mythology, religion, poetry, including Greek and other foreign sources.

All classes appreciated Latinitas--"good" or "proper" language. It was the governing classes that learned how to use it most effectively, when they went on to a more advanced education under a grammaticus, and then studied abroad; but everyone understood it.

As far as the governing classes, by the c.1st BCE, "patrician" and "plebeian" had much less meaning than previously, except as they still generated specific restrictions for office-holding (which could be circumvented by a timely adoption).

What was far more important now was sheer economic power. The plutocrats had it: they could finance a candidate's course of honor; they tended to control supplies of goods and services; and certainly controlled the money supply.

These weren't all equites, the traditional producers and money men. Despite traditional strictures against "dirtying" their hands in trade or finance, the senatorial class controlled a great deal of wealth, directly or through "shells". Freedmen could be nearly as wealthy as any born citizen. The nobles--those of consular families--provided a social veneer, but were not necessarily the wealthiest. By that time, when literature was in its Golden Age, the most powerful and influential men were parvenus: frequently "outsiders", not from the old Roman families. Cicero hmself was of neither patrician nor noble origins; he became a noble by becoming a consul: rank by virtue of political achievement.

If this is all new to you, you might want to dust off some books (Romans knew what those were, you see), and look up such subjects as Latinitas, or sermo familiaris; the ludus litterarius, grammaticus, and rhetor; the nobiles, the liberti, and the census; the cursus honorum; actiones and quaestiones--as a start.

Allen

Everyone speaks "Slurvian" as their native language, with the exception of the elocutionists in their midst….

just remember OFM if you have a gladuis or two to back you up, you can miss pronounce a few words too.

Pompey: "Stop quoting laws, we carry swords!"

Hey
I've seen the movies, Romans spoke English with a British accent.

Caeser adsum iam forte.

(apparently it was quite tasty)

One of the first things you are (or should be) taught in an English law degree, is that all those "Norman-French" words and terms in your legal dictionary – such as autrefois acquit – were spoken in the style of an Essex schoolboy deliberately trying to annoy his French teacher. So none of this Oh-tre-fwuz-ah-kee nonsense – Ow-tree-foyz-ak-wit is how it should be said.

Where do you think Italian came from?

Poorly pronounced & spoken Latin.

Hi

throw in some arabic and you have spanish!

Grin.

Rocky