Which of the "romance" languages more closely resembles the Latin spoken by native Romans at the time of their empire?
2007-09-07 06:36:02 · 4 answers · asked by captbullshot 5 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Spanish. 'Te amo' means 'I love you' in both Latin and Spanish, and there are many other similarities. Not Romanian; compare the following:-
English: Our Father
Latin: Pater noster
Spanish: Padre nuestro
Romanian: Tatal nostru
E: who/which art in Heaven
L: qui es in Caelis
S: que estás en el Cielo
R: care esti in ceruri
E: hallowed be thy name
L: sanctificetur nomen tuum
S: santificado sea tu nombre
R: sinteasca-se numele tau
etc.
2007-09-07 10:48:21 · answer #1 · answered by yprifathro 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I would lean toward Romanian (and Eastern Romance languages generally) for the morphology, but none is really very close to Latin. Eastern Romance tends to have a lot of borrowed vocabulary from Slavic too. Some dialect of Italian is probably the most phonologically conservative. Romansh/Romanche is not at all close to Latin, but people sometimes say it is, I guess just because it's not very widely known.
2007-09-07 13:53:56 · answer #2 · answered by lastuntakenscreenname 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Hello,
Also Romanian which still has those noun declensions (nominative; dative, genetive, accusative, ablative and vocative) which French, Spanish, Italian etc dropped centuries ago.
Michael Kelly
2007-09-07 13:48:12 · answer #3 · answered by Michael Kelly 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Romansch, which is spoken only in a few remote valleys of southern Switzerland.
2007-09-07 13:42:39 · answer #4 · answered by kent_shakespear 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋