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Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages
In Latin Alive, Joseph Solodow tells the story of how Latin developed into modern French, Spanish, and Italian, and deeply affected English as well. Offering a gripping narrative of language change, Solodow charts Latin’s course from classical times to the modern era, with focus on the first millennium of the Common Era. Though the Romance languages evolved directly from Latin, Solodow shows how every important feature of Latin’s evolution is also reflected in English. His story includes scores of intriguing etymologies, along with many concrete examples of texts, studies, scholars, anecdotes, and historical events; observations on language; and more. Written with crystalline clarity, this is the first book to tell the story of the Romance languages for the general reader and to illustrate so amply Latin’s many-sided survival in English as well.
370 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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April 19, 2013
A great book to get an overview of the history of Latin and its influence on French, Spanish, Italian and English.
The prose is informal and sometimes funny. Some parts get technical but they are easy to skip.
Here are my reading notes.
## Romance languages
Here are the main ones:
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
- Catalan
- Portuguese
- Gallician
- Provencal
- Franco-provencal
- Aragonese
- Sardinian
- Friulan
- Romanian
- Cajun
# Quick History
Roman languages stem from the Latin spoken in the Roman Empire.
Why was the empire so successful at spreading its language? Its settlers and administrators not only traded in ports but actually settled inland. They occupied entire regions. Latin spread through (p.37):
- military service
- incorporation of the conquered into the government
- Christianity, a religion with texts and rites in Latin that would become the religion of the empire
- native languages other than Latin lacked a written form
- learning Latin was a good way to better a career
These points try to explain why Latin was so successful in the Western Empire. In the east, Greek had always been the language of literature and law, and Latin could never really compete with it. Latin never spread in the east, except in the case of Romanian. Romanian stands as an exception and historians and linguists still do not know how such a large population came to speak a Roman language.
Once the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the provinces were conquered by Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Franks, Alemanni, etc). These tribes did not speak a Roman language, rather they spoke mostly Germanic or Celtic languages, so why didn't their language prevail over Latin? (p.38)
- the barbarians were few (2 to 5% of the population)
- the barbarians were eager to preserve the Latin heritage
- the barbarians were looking for acceptance, not dominance
- Arianism, the Christian religion of the barbarians was defeated and eaten by the Catholics and so the sense of identity of the barbarians weakened. They then accepted more readily the Roman Church and its Latin language.
## Spain
As the Empire was falling, the Visigoths and Suebi invaded Spain and settled there until the Arabs conquered the peninsula, winning an important victory at Jerez de la Frontera in 711. As the Arabs were masters on the peninsula, two regions remained out of their reach: Asturias in the northwest, and a small region in the northeast, whence would begin the reconquest.
## France
The Gauls were the more ancient Celtic people settled in modern-day France but France was quickly colonized by Burgundians, and later Franks—both Germanic tribes. The Franks ended up controlling most of modern France though their influence was strong only in the north. The southern part developed its own language from Latin: provencal (also called occitan or langue d'oc [oc = oui]).
In the 9th century, the Scandinavian Normans began raiding the northern coast of France and settled in modern-day Normandy. They became a duchy, recognized by the French king. In the 11th century, the Normans would turn to Britain and bring French influences to the English language.
The dialect of the Normans was a bit different from the one in Paris, Francien. Some words that were introduced by the Normans were reintroduced later from Francien so English ended up with two words for the same concept (e.g. warranty [Norman] and guarantee [Francien] or ward [Norman] and guard [Francien]).
The Norman w, a Frankish influence, came to be pronounced as g in Francien. A similar thing happened with c and g, pronounced hard in Norman, but softened in Francien. Therefore, English obtained catch (Norman) and chase (Francien), caress (Norman) and charity (Francien).
Over time, French began weakening and dropping the final vowel. Most words end up ending in a consonant or at least not in a clear vowel. This is in contrast to Italian or Spanish and is probably an influence from the Frankish tribes.
Some interesting early French can be read in the [Strasbourg Oaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_o...).
## Italy
After the collapse of the Western Empire, the Eastern Empire tried to reconquer Italy and managed to re-establish its rule, at least for some time. The last Germanic tribe to invade Italy was the Lombards who conquered most of the Po Valley and much of the south.
Later, Charlemagne would wage war against the Lombards, capturing Pavia in 774. The lands conquered were donated to the pope Leo III and in 800 CE, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West. Charlemagne spoke his native Frankish (a Germanic language) but also very good Latin.
Italy has a history of being politically divided. Therefore Italy has many dialects, more so than in France or Spain. When political unity began pressing for an official conventional Italian language, the dialect of Tuscany was chosen. It had been the language of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
# The Latin Language
Latin has these particular features:
- declensions of nouns, adjectives, and verbs
- word order does not matter to main meaning of a sentence
- no letter w
- letters y and z only found in words of greek origin (y known as Greek i in French and Spanish)
- the alphabet fitted the language well: each letter had a distinct and constant pronounciation
- words had stresses according to simple rules (e.g. 2-syllable words always stressed on the first syllable)
- all five vowels could be long or short
- pronounciation of the letter h was weak and later dropped (this drop is kept in most Roman languages)
- the last syllable of a word ending in a vowel + m was nasalized and the m was dropped (this wreaked havoc on the declension system, which relied on these distinctions)
- three common diphthongs: ae, oe, au
- a half-dozen irregular verbs
- varied conjugation system with a strong presence of subjunctive mood (mood comes from French mode)
- no articles, definite or indefinite
We know how Latin was pronounced from:
- meter and rhymes in poetry
- writings about pronounciation
- puns and such
## Vulgar Latin
The Classical Latin, as exemplified in the writings of Cicero, is not the real ancestor or the Roman Languages. That award goes to the Vulgar Latin, the language spoken by the people.
From ancient texts, we can surmise that the following were common variations within Vulgar Latin:
- b and v were sometimes interchanged
- r and l were sometimes interchanged
- the last m of a word was sometimes dropped
- short vowels were sometimes dropped
- sometimes a vowel would be added before a word beginning in s + consonant
- the declension system simplified (groups were merged and ablative case disappeared)
- the neuter gender vanished
## Word Stocks
So the vulgar latin gave way to the Roman languages. But in early modern times, peoples started going back to written (or learned) Latin to enrich their languages. Hence we have French oeil for eye, but oculiste for optometrist. The two come from latin but the stem is different. Same goes with mortal and lethal, humorous and sarcastic. Thus Roman languages have two word stocks. And English has three with the Germanic word stock (e.g. love [germanic], amorous [popular latin], erotic [learned Greek]).
## Shifts
### In Meaning
How do words change from one meaning to another? Every word is different but there are patterns:
- general to/from specific: e.g. deer (from Germanic Tier = animal now stands for the one animal)
- abstract to/from concrete: e.g. city (from Latin civitatem used to mean state, now means only the city)
- technical to/from popular: e.g. to arrive comes from Latin ad- and rip- which stands for coming to and the bank of a river (arriving by boat)
- part to/from whole
### In Forms
- Some words have gone from adjectives to nouns (fundamentals, capital, finals, cheese, liver)
- Some words reflect older diminutives and other suffixes (particle [icle makes it a small part], muscle [a small mouse that resembles biceps])
The main storyline is that the Roman languages have undergone massive simplification. Early on, the five declension groups became 2 or 3 and the three genders became 2. The Romance languages then did away with the declension system (the last holdouts were nominative and accusative) and finally only kept one of the two forms for the nouns. French and Spanish kept the accusative and Italian kept the nominative. In Latin, most accusative plurals ended in -s, which explains why French and Spanish (and English!) form plurals with the suffix -s.
Prepositions and word order replaced the distinctions made clear by the case system.
#### Diminutives
Diminutives in Latin often included the l sound (e.g. particle)
English, French, Italian, and Spanish all have diminutives (mademoiselle, señorita, signorina) but French and English hardly use them except for already-formed words.
#### Augmentatives
Besides diminutives, we also have augmentatives like -on (carton or violon in French and cartone or violone in Italian [also paredon or callejon in Spanish]) or -ado in Spanish (e.g. bocado, pulgada).
In Spanish, the suffix -azo signifies a blow given by something (e.g. plumazo or dedazo). The suffix -al signifies the place a plant was grown.
#### Frequentatives
Latin also had frequentatives that took verbs and gave them the meaning of frequently repeated action (habere [to have] → habitare [to inhabit] or haerere [to cling] → haesitare [to hesitate]). These frequentatives were formed from the perfect passive participle, which often ends in t.
Diminutives and frequentatives changed the declension group of the noun or verb to an easier group—which might explain some of their appeal.
## Reasons Why Words Change
Words evolve and change over time. When speakers of a language have to choose between two synonyms, various factors come into play. When one word of a pair of words begins supplanting the other, that other word disappears and we are left with the first option. Here are some ideas of why peoples chose one word over another:
- convenience in declension (diminutive or frequentative verbs replaced some of their parents because they were more easily declinable)
- some words were chosen over others because they were clearly of one gender
- a word that is easily confused with another will change more easily (abeille comes from latin ape + diminutive. Only the diminutive remains because the original word apem could be confused with avem or avum)
- lots of 1-syllable words were replaced with polysyllabic versions (e.g. choosing vadere in lieu of ire). In comparison, English is the only language treated here that is hospitable to monosyllabic words.
- colorful words were sometimes preferred to a neutral synonym
- colloquial words were sometimes preferred to a higher-register synonym—especially for normal everyday things
## Substrates
A substrate is the base language upon which Latin settled.
In the Iberian peninsula, the Latins encountered Celtic settlers, but there also existed an Iberian people before those Celts who left behind a few linguistic traces. The Spanish words cama and izquierda are thought to be derived from that previous Iberian language.
In Gaul, the homeland of the Celts, there were many Celts and they were only fully conquered later under Caesar. Therefore French contains many words of Celtic origin (e.g. carrum → char, carpentum → charpentier, caminum → chemin or cambiare → changer).
## Superstrates
A superstrate is the language that is being imposed top-down. Latin was the superstrate until the Germanic tribes conquered the Western half of the Empire and then Germanic languages became the superstrate on top of Latin.
From the Germanic languages, Roman languages obtained lots of words related to warfare (e.g. werra → guerre/a or triuwa → trève/tregua). Same with the words for white (blanc), brown (brun) or grey (gris).
On the whole though, Latin has been much better at surviving the onslaught of the Germanic languages. Much better than Celtic had been against Latin.
Because of the total domination of the Franks in Gaul, French ended up with many more Germanic words than Spanish or Italian.
Through the invasion of the Iberian peninsula or through trade in the Mediterranean, the Romance languages borrowed words from Arabic (e.g. algodon or azucar or limon). Of the Romance languages, Spanish contains the most words from Arabic. Other examples include azul, azucar or azar (all these words have a French and English cognate too).
Romance languages also obtained words through borrowing one from the other, and through colonial ventures.
As for English, about half the vocabulary is Latinate. Writing English without using words from the Latin stock is possible, though hard. The opposite is not, as the basic words like the prepositions are of Germanic origin.
The prose is informal and sometimes funny. Some parts get technical but they are easy to skip.
Here are my reading notes.
## Romance languages
Here are the main ones:
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
- Catalan
- Portuguese
- Gallician
- Provencal
- Franco-provencal
- Aragonese
- Sardinian
- Friulan
- Romanian
- Cajun
# Quick History
Roman languages stem from the Latin spoken in the Roman Empire.
Why was the empire so successful at spreading its language? Its settlers and administrators not only traded in ports but actually settled inland. They occupied entire regions. Latin spread through (p.37):
- military service
- incorporation of the conquered into the government
- Christianity, a religion with texts and rites in Latin that would become the religion of the empire
- native languages other than Latin lacked a written form
- learning Latin was a good way to better a career
These points try to explain why Latin was so successful in the Western Empire. In the east, Greek had always been the language of literature and law, and Latin could never really compete with it. Latin never spread in the east, except in the case of Romanian. Romanian stands as an exception and historians and linguists still do not know how such a large population came to speak a Roman language.
Once the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the provinces were conquered by Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Franks, Alemanni, etc). These tribes did not speak a Roman language, rather they spoke mostly Germanic or Celtic languages, so why didn't their language prevail over Latin? (p.38)
- the barbarians were few (2 to 5% of the population)
- the barbarians were eager to preserve the Latin heritage
- the barbarians were looking for acceptance, not dominance
- Arianism, the Christian religion of the barbarians was defeated and eaten by the Catholics and so the sense of identity of the barbarians weakened. They then accepted more readily the Roman Church and its Latin language.
## Spain
As the Empire was falling, the Visigoths and Suebi invaded Spain and settled there until the Arabs conquered the peninsula, winning an important victory at Jerez de la Frontera in 711. As the Arabs were masters on the peninsula, two regions remained out of their reach: Asturias in the northwest, and a small region in the northeast, whence would begin the reconquest.
## France
The Gauls were the more ancient Celtic people settled in modern-day France but France was quickly colonized by Burgundians, and later Franks—both Germanic tribes. The Franks ended up controlling most of modern France though their influence was strong only in the north. The southern part developed its own language from Latin: provencal (also called occitan or langue d'oc [oc = oui]).
In the 9th century, the Scandinavian Normans began raiding the northern coast of France and settled in modern-day Normandy. They became a duchy, recognized by the French king. In the 11th century, the Normans would turn to Britain and bring French influences to the English language.
The dialect of the Normans was a bit different from the one in Paris, Francien. Some words that were introduced by the Normans were reintroduced later from Francien so English ended up with two words for the same concept (e.g. warranty [Norman] and guarantee [Francien] or ward [Norman] and guard [Francien]).
The Norman w, a Frankish influence, came to be pronounced as g in Francien. A similar thing happened with c and g, pronounced hard in Norman, but softened in Francien. Therefore, English obtained catch (Norman) and chase (Francien), caress (Norman) and charity (Francien).
Over time, French began weakening and dropping the final vowel. Most words end up ending in a consonant or at least not in a clear vowel. This is in contrast to Italian or Spanish and is probably an influence from the Frankish tribes.
Some interesting early French can be read in the [Strasbourg Oaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_o...).
## Italy
After the collapse of the Western Empire, the Eastern Empire tried to reconquer Italy and managed to re-establish its rule, at least for some time. The last Germanic tribe to invade Italy was the Lombards who conquered most of the Po Valley and much of the south.
Later, Charlemagne would wage war against the Lombards, capturing Pavia in 774. The lands conquered were donated to the pope Leo III and in 800 CE, Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West. Charlemagne spoke his native Frankish (a Germanic language) but also very good Latin.
Italy has a history of being politically divided. Therefore Italy has many dialects, more so than in France or Spain. When political unity began pressing for an official conventional Italian language, the dialect of Tuscany was chosen. It had been the language of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
# The Latin Language
The reducing of inflections is the single most prominent feature in the entire history of the Indo-European languages.
Latin has these particular features:
- declensions of nouns, adjectives, and verbs
- word order does not matter to main meaning of a sentence
- no letter w
- letters y and z only found in words of greek origin (y known as Greek i in French and Spanish)
- the alphabet fitted the language well: each letter had a distinct and constant pronounciation
- words had stresses according to simple rules (e.g. 2-syllable words always stressed on the first syllable)
- all five vowels could be long or short
- pronounciation of the letter h was weak and later dropped (this drop is kept in most Roman languages)
- the last syllable of a word ending in a vowel + m was nasalized and the m was dropped (this wreaked havoc on the declension system, which relied on these distinctions)
- three common diphthongs: ae, oe, au
- a half-dozen irregular verbs
- varied conjugation system with a strong presence of subjunctive mood (mood comes from French mode)
- no articles, definite or indefinite
We know how Latin was pronounced from:
- meter and rhymes in poetry
- writings about pronounciation
- puns and such
## Vulgar Latin
The Classical Latin, as exemplified in the writings of Cicero, is not the real ancestor or the Roman Languages. That award goes to the Vulgar Latin, the language spoken by the people.
From ancient texts, we can surmise that the following were common variations within Vulgar Latin:
- b and v were sometimes interchanged
- r and l were sometimes interchanged
- the last m of a word was sometimes dropped
- short vowels were sometimes dropped
- sometimes a vowel would be added before a word beginning in s + consonant
- the declension system simplified (groups were merged and ablative case disappeared)
- the neuter gender vanished
## Word Stocks
French cognates to Spanish and Italian are typically farther from their Latin origins.
So the vulgar latin gave way to the Roman languages. But in early modern times, peoples started going back to written (or learned) Latin to enrich their languages. Hence we have French oeil for eye, but oculiste for optometrist. The two come from latin but the stem is different. Same goes with mortal and lethal, humorous and sarcastic. Thus Roman languages have two word stocks. And English has three with the Germanic word stock (e.g. love [germanic], amorous [popular latin], erotic [learned Greek]).
## Shifts
### In Meaning
The circumflex accent in French is almost always the remnant of an "s" that has been lost (e.g. île instead of isle)
How do words change from one meaning to another? Every word is different but there are patterns:
- general to/from specific: e.g. deer (from Germanic Tier = animal now stands for the one animal)
- abstract to/from concrete: e.g. city (from Latin civitatem used to mean state, now means only the city)
- technical to/from popular: e.g. to arrive comes from Latin ad- and rip- which stands for coming to and the bank of a river (arriving by boat)
- part to/from whole
### In Forms
- Some words have gone from adjectives to nouns (fundamentals, capital, finals, cheese, liver)
- Some words reflect older diminutives and other suffixes (particle [icle makes it a small part], muscle [a small mouse that resembles biceps])
The main storyline is that the Roman languages have undergone massive simplification. Early on, the five declension groups became 2 or 3 and the three genders became 2. The Romance languages then did away with the declension system (the last holdouts were nominative and accusative) and finally only kept one of the two forms for the nouns. French and Spanish kept the accusative and Italian kept the nominative. In Latin, most accusative plurals ended in -s, which explains why French and Spanish (and English!) form plurals with the suffix -s.
Prepositions and word order replaced the distinctions made clear by the case system.
#### Diminutives
Diminutives in Latin often included the l sound (e.g. particle)
English, French, Italian, and Spanish all have diminutives (mademoiselle, señorita, signorina) but French and English hardly use them except for already-formed words.
#### Augmentatives
Besides diminutives, we also have augmentatives like -on (carton or violon in French and cartone or violone in Italian [also paredon or callejon in Spanish]) or -ado in Spanish (e.g. bocado, pulgada).
In Spanish, the suffix -azo signifies a blow given by something (e.g. plumazo or dedazo). The suffix -al signifies the place a plant was grown.
#### Frequentatives
Latin also had frequentatives that took verbs and gave them the meaning of frequently repeated action (habere [to have] → habitare [to inhabit] or haerere [to cling] → haesitare [to hesitate]). These frequentatives were formed from the perfect passive participle, which often ends in t.
Diminutives and frequentatives changed the declension group of the noun or verb to an easier group—which might explain some of their appeal.
## Reasons Why Words Change
The weakening and dropping of the final vowel in French nouns made it harder to distinguish gender based on the last syllable as in Spanish or Italian
Words evolve and change over time. When speakers of a language have to choose between two synonyms, various factors come into play. When one word of a pair of words begins supplanting the other, that other word disappears and we are left with the first option. Here are some ideas of why peoples chose one word over another:
- convenience in declension (diminutive or frequentative verbs replaced some of their parents because they were more easily declinable)
- some words were chosen over others because they were clearly of one gender
- a word that is easily confused with another will change more easily (abeille comes from latin ape + diminutive. Only the diminutive remains because the original word apem could be confused with avem or avum)
- lots of 1-syllable words were replaced with polysyllabic versions (e.g. choosing vadere in lieu of ire). In comparison, English is the only language treated here that is hospitable to monosyllabic words.
- colorful words were sometimes preferred to a neutral synonym
- colloquial words were sometimes preferred to a higher-register synonym—especially for normal everyday things
## Substrates
A substrate is the base language upon which Latin settled.
In the Iberian peninsula, the Latins encountered Celtic settlers, but there also existed an Iberian people before those Celts who left behind a few linguistic traces. The Spanish words cama and izquierda are thought to be derived from that previous Iberian language.
In Gaul, the homeland of the Celts, there were many Celts and they were only fully conquered later under Caesar. Therefore French contains many words of Celtic origin (e.g. carrum → char, carpentum → charpentier, caminum → chemin or cambiare → changer).
## Superstrates
A superstrate is the language that is being imposed top-down. Latin was the superstrate until the Germanic tribes conquered the Western half of the Empire and then Germanic languages became the superstrate on top of Latin.
From the Germanic languages, Roman languages obtained lots of words related to warfare (e.g. werra → guerre/a or triuwa → trève/tregua). Same with the words for white (blanc), brown (brun) or grey (gris).
On the whole though, Latin has been much better at surviving the onslaught of the Germanic languages. Much better than Celtic had been against Latin.
Because of the total domination of the Franks in Gaul, French ended up with many more Germanic words than Spanish or Italian.
Through the invasion of the Iberian peninsula or through trade in the Mediterranean, the Romance languages borrowed words from Arabic (e.g. algodon or azucar or limon). Of the Romance languages, Spanish contains the most words from Arabic. Other examples include azul, azucar or azar (all these words have a French and English cognate too).
Romance languages also obtained words through borrowing one from the other, and through colonial ventures.
As for English, about half the vocabulary is Latinate. Writing English without using words from the Latin stock is possible, though hard. The opposite is not, as the basic words like the prepositions are of Germanic origin.
July 8, 2010
Warning: for etymology geeks only! This book is an absolute tour-de-force, because it provides far more than a "hey, would you look at that?" It's a coherent and systematic exploration of language change as applied to Latin, touching on every single aspect of syntax, morphology, and phonology, as well as tracing the historical peculiarities that explain where it was that French became French, and Spanish became Spanish. Also brilliant are the illustrations of the concept of a linguistic "matrix," where commonly used phrases might become stand-ins for shorter concepts, morphing into new words completely different from the original Latin. These situations also provide an engaging window into cultural practices and their often zany impact on language. If you care why "liver" is "iecur" in classical Latin, and "foie" in French, this book is for you.
Also nice but not even necessary is the exposition on English. Though the story of English grammar is more a Germanic one, we learn how the unbelievable richness of the word stock came from English's unique exposure to three or four waves of Romance influence, leaving us with the never-ending pleasure of scratching our heads at curiosities of spelling and vocabulary.
Also nice but not even necessary is the exposition on English. Though the story of English grammar is more a Germanic one, we learn how the unbelievable richness of the word stock came from English's unique exposure to three or four waves of Romance influence, leaving us with the never-ending pleasure of scratching our heads at curiosities of spelling and vocabulary.
December 17, 2013
This book is perfect for native English speakers with little Latin knowledge. Since I've got a couple years of Latin under my belt now and have read other similar books, I didn't get a whole lot out of it. However, it is ideal as a survey text for folks studying Italian, French, Spanish, or Latin and want some historical context behind their practical study.
February 4, 2022
I love how this book is structured, as it explains the evolution of Latin into the Romance languages from phonology to syntax and provides examples of texts in early French, Italian, and Spanish to exemplify what is explained at the beginning.
I also learned a lot about etymology and even about my own mother tongue.
I also learned a lot about etymology and even about my own mother tongue.
April 13, 2025
This is a book, written for a general audience that has some basic knowledge of linguistics, that explains the evolution of the Romance languages out of a Vulgar Latin that differed from the Classical Latin one would learn in school, and showing how the Latin influence on English is often from this popular speech as found in early French (or Italian or Spanish) instead of Classical Latin. Unfortunately, this book suffers from one major oversight that is rather appalling for a 2010 publication, really.
Nowhere does author Solodow show an awareness of Balkan Latin. There is only a single, vague mention of Romanian in this entire book, and no mention whatsoever of Aromanian or Dalmatian. Why does this matter? Because Solodow dedicates the second half of the book to trying to “reconstruct Proto-Romance”, but several of the changes he claims are pan-Romance are not actually found in Balkan Romance.
After doing some research into the author, I found that he was a professor of Classics who was only a dilettante in Romance linguistics, and clearly not familiar with the literature that experts in the latter are supposed to know. Why did an august publisher like Cambridge University Press not confront the author about this before publication? If Solodow wished to focus only on Western Romance – in fact only a few selected languages from there (and those languages’ influence on English) – he ought to have arranged and presented this material in a much more honest and rigorous way. Moreover, even some of the claims made for the history of French–Spanish–Italian are presented in a way that is oversimplified and potentially misleading.
Due especially to that oversight, Latin Alive is no better than the various similar books on Latin-to-Romance that were published in English throughout the twentieth century, which as a rule tended to ignore Romanian.
Nowhere does author Solodow show an awareness of Balkan Latin. There is only a single, vague mention of Romanian in this entire book, and no mention whatsoever of Aromanian or Dalmatian. Why does this matter? Because Solodow dedicates the second half of the book to trying to “reconstruct Proto-Romance”, but several of the changes he claims are pan-Romance are not actually found in Balkan Romance.
After doing some research into the author, I found that he was a professor of Classics who was only a dilettante in Romance linguistics, and clearly not familiar with the literature that experts in the latter are supposed to know. Why did an august publisher like Cambridge University Press not confront the author about this before publication? If Solodow wished to focus only on Western Romance – in fact only a few selected languages from there (and those languages’ influence on English) – he ought to have arranged and presented this material in a much more honest and rigorous way. Moreover, even some of the claims made for the history of French–Spanish–Italian are presented in a way that is oversimplified and potentially misleading.
Due especially to that oversight, Latin Alive is no better than the various similar books on Latin-to-Romance that were published in English throughout the twentieth century, which as a rule tended to ignore Romanian.
October 7, 2023
Rather good book but aimed more at people with an understanding of linguistics, may be a little bit difficult for some as it doesn't use super approachable language. I did appreciate the brief historical rundowns and the way that certain words were analysed and compared.
Read
March 15, 2023As far as textbooks go it doesn’t make my brain smoke after 2 pages. The fact that I had to read it front to back however, does make my brain smoke.
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