2nd question.
How do we know the dialect latin was spoken in ancient Rome ?
2006-11-13 20:55:52 · 15 answers · asked by Martin the baby 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Just look around here and tell me how many participants at Y!A use proper English. With that survey you may get to the conclusion that it is almost impossible to master!
2006-11-14 00:37:59 · answer #1 · answered by kamelåså 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
English is no more difficult and no easier than any other language in the world. All languages are equally complex, but their complexity lies in different places, making some languages seem easier or more difficult at first. It also depends on how closely related the languages a person already knows are to English.
English is NOT derived from Latin as "student of philology" above said. Perhaps she should study harder or turn in her Master's degree. English is a Germanic language, period. It has many Latin loanwords, but all languages have loanwords. English grammar is 100% Germanic in its origin. And there is no such thing as "Romano-German" languages.
Well, it is quite easy to know what language was spoken in Ancient Rome because we have written records of the language spoken in Ancient Rome dating back to about 700 BCE, when Rome was just a sleepy little village along the Tiber.
2006-11-14 00:40:00 · answer #2 · answered by Taivo 7 · 3⤊ 1⤋
Well English is fairly simple to learn, although our phonological rules are a bit convoluted. Having studied other languages, I am glad that I learned English natively though, compared to other European languages I would say that English is a bit more difficult.
How do we know Latin was spoken is Rome? That's an idiotic question. I am sure they didn't speak Japanese there. Just because there were no audio devices available at that time doesn't mean that existing records dint give us more than a few clues to spoken languages in ancient civilizations.
2006-11-13 23:51:58 · answer #3 · answered by shaggyboy2442 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
English is not the simplest language in the world, nor the most widely spoken. People need to check on their figures before answering.
English has however, become the lingua franca in international business - less because of it being easy to learn, but more because english is the language that you can speak poorly the best, other languages are more exact and don't tolerate (or understand) the slang. All you have to do is read some of the Q&A here tosee that.
2006-11-13 21:16:06 · answer #4 · answered by Sanmigsean 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
No, English is not the simplest language, it is one of the most difficult to learn. Every natural language has it's own idiosyncrasies, but in general what makes a language difficult to learn is the number of inconsistencies. Have you ever heard a child say "I goed to school". That is an example of the inconsistencies in the English language. 'Go' is and irregular verb in English. Irregular verbs are not the only inconsistency, though. There is also irregular pluralization of nouns. For example, the noun, sheep. Sheep is the same in it's singular and plural form. You don't have to add an 's' to signify many sheep, you still just say "sheep". English has the most inconsistencies, but I've heard that French has the most irregular verbs of any language.
The only languages which have few or no inconsistencies are constructed languages (conlangs). Languages that were made up by linguists . Look at Esperanto as an example (there are many, Volapuk, Interlingua, and Klingon for example, but Esperanto has the largest community of speakers and the largest body of literature) it has only 16 grammatical rules, and no exceptions to the rules. That makes it much simpler to learn than English or any other natural language.
As for the question about Latin, we have hundreds of years worth of documentation in the form of books, letters, diaries, original bible manuscripts, business ledgers, etc. all written in the language that convince us that the language was spoken there.
2006-11-14 00:38:01 · answer #5 · answered by rbwtexan 6 · 1⤊ 2⤋
perhaps we are misinterpreting the question about latin. if you are asking what dialect of latin was spoken during the roman occupation of italy then that is a little more difficult to say. the oldest latin writing is an archaic script which is very short and not understood well by classicists. like most langauges, there probably was more than one dialect of latin when the latin tribes migrated into italy.
2006-11-14 00:48:12 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
No, I think it's not the simplest, and not the hardest.
But I want to add: The easier the language is, the shallower it is. I mean it's not an advantage of a language to be the simplest.
2006-11-13 21:13:30 · answer #7 · answered by Tamer A 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Learning the basics in English is relatively simple because the verbs don't conjugate very often. Apart from that, it's as difficult as any other Indo-European language.
Sorry, I don't know the answer to your second question.
2006-11-13 21:04:36 · answer #8 · answered by custers_nemesis 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
it is a derivative of Latin and of all Romano-German languages it is the simplest - it started as complicated as french and spanish and german but with years it lost all the complications, so it is the simplest and easiest and most developed at the time
2006-11-13 21:08:07 · answer #9 · answered by jacky 6 · 2⤊ 4⤋
yes, not only that it is the simplest language but it is also the widely used language in the world.
2006-11-13 21:05:10 · answer #10 · answered by azeem 1 · 1⤊ 5⤋