Talk:Le français ne vient pas du latin/Archive1

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So he's wrong

But why would anyone care? What's his goal? Herr FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 17:27, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

What his goal is, I don't know, but he's big among Protochronists who are desperate to prove that Romanian isn't descended from Latin.--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 20:42, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Use of translated title

As far as I know, the book has never been translated into English; the title French is not descended from Latin is my own translation. It seems strange to have the title of a wiki article about a published book not available in English be an English title that exists literally nowhere other than here.--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 20:40, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Might be worth mentioning....

... that French is a specifically Western Romance language. It shares common innovations with Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc., including the lenition or voicing of stops between vowels, which are often weakened out of existence in French itself; and a standard plural derived from the accusatives in -s as opposed to Italian's vowel changes based on Latin nominatives (cf. Spanish vida, vidas, French vie, vies, but Italian vita, vite "life, lives"). Also, the reason for the obliteration of the masculine/neuter distinction in Western Romance was on account of the loss of both final -s and -m, rendering the forms identical. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 15:36, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

And also, the fact that spoken Latin and literary Latin differed profoundly is not at all an unusual situation. Spoken Romance languages continue vulgar Latin and not literary Latin. When I look for a contemporary language whose written norm is markedly dissimilar from the spoken language, the most salient example is.... French! Literary French preserves all sorts of grammatical distinctions that make no difference in spoken French. Literary French has an entire verb tense and set of inflections that no longer exists in spoken Metropolitan French. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 15:43, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

It just so happens that a few days ago I wrote a paragraph which argues that one of the etymologies claimed by Cortez to be ridiculous is actually very reasonable, and references Latin-Romance intervocalic lenition to do so. I haven't incorporated it into the article yet, but I will when I reach that part of the book.--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 01:33, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've not read the book, and am not in any particular hurry to seek it out. May need to be careful about words like litoralis, in the Spanish litoral, Italian littorale, and French littoral. Many of these may be late borrowings direct from Latin. Romance languages are full of reborrowings of this sort. The clue is whether they underwent predicted sound changes. French has native foi, from fides, "faith"; but fidèle "faithful" has not undergone them so it's a late borrowing. There is a bit of truth to the theory. Romance languages are not descended from classical Latin, but from vernacular Latin. Vernacular Latin was not "Italian" by any stretch, however. Educated people who learned to write learned that Latin, written on classical models, was simply the written form of their Romance language. This worked well enough for a long time, just as English spelling has been good enough to get by, for well after the fall of the western Empire. It was around 800 CE that Alcuin first called attention to the fact that written Latin was so different from spoken language that people's pronunciations differed markedly by region. He suggested that Latin ought to be treated as a foreign language, and it wasn't until a couple centuries after that when Romance vernaculars started to get written down. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 02:42, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Interesting

Lots of {{ctransquote}} + linguistics = 99% sure this was written by Krej.--JorisEnter (talk) 18:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Only 99%? Which articles are part of the 1%? (99% of the linguistics edits go to 1% of the editors! Vote against oppression of the editariate and elect Comrade Кřěĵ 2016!)--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 20:00, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm helping as much as I can; it's probably hard not having read the book. I could geek out on the phonology of 'Vulgar Latin' but I doubt that would improve the readibility. French also is an outlier in the difference in syntax between the vernacular and the written standard. Even English doesn't have that problem. Krej might enjoy Vandalic, my romance conlang. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 04:28, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean you didn't edit much; it was just a joke prompted by the use of the percentage 99% (and also by the fact that I am pretty sure there are no other articles on RW that meet those two criteria that were not written by me).--Кřěĵ (ṫåɬк) 04:32, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

I didn't even know about that template, so no, those aren't mine ;). Didn't take it personally. The two of us probably are the main editors of pretty much all our material about pseudolinguistics. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 04:53, 2 July 2016 (UTC)