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How much written Latin would an Italian speaker understand?

  • 17-04-2011 2:18am
    #1
    candlegrease
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 475 ✭✭


    Nearly all? Most of it? The gist?


Comments

  • #2
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    Depends on which Latin. Classical Latin, which was already being replaced at the time of Christ, would be quite difficult to follow for an Italian speaker. Vulgar and Medieval Latin is a lot closer to modern Italian, and thus easier to comprehend. There's a big jump between Classical and Vulgar Latin, IMO.

    Personally, as with most romance languages, I find it easy enough to 'get the gist' of Vulgar and Medieval Latin.

    By the 14th century, Italian began to be popularized, and so if a fluent Italian speaker read the Divina Commedia it would be similar to a fluent English speaker reading Shakespeare, in terms of deviation from the modern form.

    What Classical Latin I have was learned in school, so while one would pick up a basic idea of what's said in Classical Latin, if they had fluent Italian, a non-Italian speaker with one year of Latin in School would probably do better than them.


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