English VS Latin...?

Question

Comparing these to language to each other:

1. Which one is more robust linguistically?
2. Give a synopsis on at least two linguistic features that make English or Latin stand out as a robust language!

PS: Serious people only. Foul language will take you no where

Answer 1

Latin is way more robust than English for the simple reason that its grammatical rules, its words and linguistics in general are still in use today. German, for example, still uses declinations and most of the words in the Italian, French, Spanish, Portogues, Romanian, Slavic and even English vocabulary come from Latin. The fact is that Latin evolved into new languages and it has something that English doesn't have: a simple way of pronouncing words. What you read it's what you say. That makes everything much easier.

Answer 2

I'll have to agree with Steven there about the "robust" thing. No clue what you're getting at.

If you mean what I'm guessing you do, I'd have to go with English as the more "robust". More varied syntax, more words. That kind of thing.

I think by "inclination" Stevo might mean "inflection" (or not? I've never heard of inclination in connection with Latin, but I certainly don't know everything). Anyway, inflection did hurt Latin's ability to grow. For one thing, it makes it a bit more difficult to adapt foreign vocabulary to your own tongue.

Latin didn't really "die out", though. It changed. It became the languages we label as "Romance". English has done the same. Old English is about as recognizable to the modern English-speaker as Latin would be to a francophone. Perhaps even less so.

As for the second part of your question, I can't really answer that, since I don't really know to what qualities you're referring to by "robust".

*Ah, Stevo - I see what you were getting at. Noun/adjective declension (as well as verb conjugation) are all part of a system called inflection. It's the tendency for a language to show the relationships between words in a sentence through changes to the words (usually to their endings), as opposed to word order. Indo-European languages tend to lose inflection through time, which is why none of the Romance language are nearly as heavily inflected as Latin, and why Russian is such a strange case.

Answer 3

I believe that Latin is more robust linguistically for these reasons:

1. It is much easier to pronounce, there are no phonetic exceptions that I can think of off the top of my head. English has so many exceptions, such as the silent letters in rheumatic, mnemonic, phone.

2. As English is a modern language, it contains a vast number of idioms. Latin does not contain nearly as many 'figures of speech'

3. There are much less exceptions to the grammatical structure of Latin.

Answer 4

What do you mean by robust? I think Latin may have died out because part of the grammar (namely declensions) are quite complicated, modern descendands from latin like French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian don't have these. However Russian (to name but one) still does have quite a few, and I don't think Russians have trouble speaking their own language :-) . English is grammatically quite a simple language.

Tiger tracks: aren't you confusing Latin and Italian???? Latin words hardly ever end in vowels.

Ithyphallos : Instead of inclination I meant declensions, below for instance the declensions of the word **** in latin (from wikipedia)

* **** "[the] man" [as a subject] (e.g. **** ibi stat the man is standing there)
* hominis "of [the] man" (e.g. nomen hominis est Claudius the man's name is Claudius)
* homini "to [the] man" [as an indirect object] (e.g. homini donum dedi I gave a present to the man)
* hominem "[the] man" [as a direct object] (e.g. hominem vidi I saw the man)
* homine "[the] man" [in various uses not covered by the above] (e.g. sum altior homine I am taller than the man).

Answer 5

properly English is greater advantageous to income because of the fact its the lingua franca (langauge of finance) which skill the main elementary langauge used worldwide huge, yet its seen by skill of maximum to be the toughest langauge to %. up and "grasp". Reasoning being that there are a number of greater unique regulations interior the english langauge then the different languge. Latin is "ineffective" which skill it could no longer evolve, so once you certainly translate latin, they sound peculiar such as you're conversing verses quite than sentences. The benefit to latin is that in case you learn it, it makes discovering different langauges greater handy frequently. My advice is learn english till you plan to bypass right into a scientific profession.

Answer 6

English is more robust because of its ability to coin new forms of old or borrowed words (such as verbs from nouns). The Romans would have been amazed and perhaps more than a little confused at Anglophones' ability to create new words such as "to xerox," "to IM," "to photoshop" from proper nouns. Latin rarely makes verbs out of nouns, which makes (made) Latin less flexible and therefore less robust.

Answer 7

1. English is robust, since there are almost 1,000 to 2,000 new words added annually
2. Latin on the other hand, is more poetic language, and it is said that only 2 languages have one unique speciality. All the words, be it nouns or verbs or anything ends with a vowel. One such language is Latin and another one is Telugu (India).

Answer 8

Eighty percent of the English language is Latin in origin.