Romanian is unusual amongst the Romance Languages as regards the definite article which is attached to the end of the noun whereas usually in most Romance languages it would come before the noun.
This possibly due to the fact of its location in the Balkan sprachbund the Balkan language area. We also see this feature of adding the definite article to the end of the noun in Bulgarian for example, which is a Slavic language. Here are some examples of the original word along with its borrowed Latin equivalent from Wiktionary. Here from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we can see the makeup of Romanian and how recent some of its Latin vocabulary is.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Personally, although there were definite similarities and words that I could pick out, I found it quite hard to follow. Although it would not be incredibly different from a Romance speaker to learn especially an Italian , Romanian is quite distinct. Its relationship with the Romance Languages could be compared to that of English with the other Germanic Languages, evidently a member but mutual intelligibility is not always guaranteed.
Were other Italian dialects to be consulted, particularly those of southern Italy, the similarities would likely be much higher. Personal pronouns, verb conjugations and verb tenses are clearly Latin derived and not dissimilar to the other Romance languages. Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie; et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris; et ne nos inducas in tentationem;. Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano, e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,.
The Romanian public have a lot to be proud of. Their language has stood the test of time despite the odds constantly being stacked against them and we are left with a beautiful language that tells its own very unique story and whispers to us stories from a distant Roman past.
A full-time language addict with an irrational love for minority languages and historical linguistics. Half-Peruvian, Half-Irish. I agree with you, I'd say that perhaps Romanian is the closest living language to Latin in terms of grammar, but as you mentioned, it is very far from it when it comes to vocabulary.
As for Italian I am a native speaker myself I feel like that in terms of vocab, it is for sure the closest to Latin and Sardinian, too - but I would't call it a major Romance language. I remember studying Latin in high school, and being amazed at how many words I could understand without using a dictionary, but of course things were different when faced with Latin grammar. However, I think it is strange that French is the furthest Romance language when compared to Latin, yet it is the closest to Italian when it comes to vocabulary.
Don't you think so? It's funny to me as a Spanish native speaker that I can understand far more of Italian than I can of French despite Spanish and French coming from a dialect that had already separated from the one that became Italian.
Very interesting blog. Thank you for posting. I do have a question. Is Serbian part of the Romance family? If so, how close would it be to Latin? Also, I would love to have historical references that explain the evolution of all the Romance languages.
If anyone could share some information I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks Oskey. Serbian is Slavic and isn't part of the Romance family. Latin and Serbian are related through Pro-Indo-European.
However, there are many words in Serbian and other Slavic languages of Latin origin, this is due to the use of Latin in science and technology. In that case I'd suggest that they make a decision, because if you ask them, they're of Greek descent speaking an of-shoot of Greek Or they could be of Greek descent, but speaking a Latin related language? In terms of vocabulary Italian is the closest, and French is the next closest. But French is the least like latin in terms of pronunciation.
Sorry, but that is not correct. See my post above and other's opinions. Noup,French is like the adopted child in the Latin family while the others are pure blood latin sister countries. Also from all the latins french are the most c Have been traveling to all the Latin countries including France ,very disappointed by this nation ,as they think about themselves the best country in the world which obviously it s not even in top The sardinian language is the closest.
The answer is relatively simple, each Romance language retains some things from ancient Latin that the others may not. If your native language is a Romance language, or you studied one relatively well, you can read and pick out words,phrases and passages in Latin that you can comprehend or figure out to make sense. However, without good knowledge of Latin itself, one could not read and understand it fully.
After all, it is an ancient language and has been "dead" for centuries! For the results to be less biassed, it would be interesting to compare latin to each country old language pool, before the standardization of the vocabulary which imported words from other languages. For example, in romanian there were two main periods that influenced the language. First, the use of the slavon-chirilic alphabet and second, the use of the latin alphabet. So I think that collecting the archaic words would be a better approach.
Im sure the result would be more interesting. Closest living languages to Latin are: italian language first , romanian language second , spanish language third. It is essentially vulgar latin. This is well known. Roman soldiers were isolated in mountain villages. It changed very little. I watched an entire tv show dedicated to the similarities on etymology and morphology of this now endangered language.
If I find it, I'll post it here. That is certainly not the Lords prayer in any celtic language that's for sure Funnily enough though, Welsh inherited a lot of Latin nouns for new ideas How similar your current language is to that of the invadors who conquered your ancestors is only interesting for a tourist, during its initial time in the country. What is really interesting is the quality of life most people have in that country.
The closest language to latin is vulgar latin. Nobody can prove a thing. Linguistics, history, archaeology and other sciences are at different sides on this matter.
History was written by the winners. Maybe 3 or 2 thousands years ago we were speaking various forms of one language and we were able to understand each other. These talks lead nowhere. Have a good life everyone! Vulger Italian of the Legionares that conquored and moved in on Portugal were more like Occitanian. Southern French sounds like Detroit. If we look to the other cases, we notice that the ablative and the dative cases of the second declension end exactly in -O Lupus, -i, -O dat.
And what about the thousands of Rumanian words ending in letters that the Latins did never place at the end of a word?! Latin words ending in L? There is no Rumanian neuter but just a LARGE group of ambigenous nouns that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: differently from Latin, they have not a characteristic neuter ending but just a masculine ending in the singular and a feminine ending in the plural.
Rumanian makes little use of noun-form class to differentiate the sex of animates. The Rumanian gender is completely different from the Latin, Italian and Spanish ones! A gender that is not directly related to sex reference works in a very contradictory way and of course it seriously contradicts the Latin, Italian and Spanish use of noun-form class.
A Talking about phonetic and vocabulary, there is not any Romance Language so distant from Latin as Rumanian, that contains a lot of slavicism and various balkanism, plus several Slavic words, Greek words, some word of Turkish origin, and other words of various Balkan origins many of these are shared with Albanian. Grammatical structures and phonetics have also been touched by Slavic influence. These two central vowels are one of the several Slavic borrowings that affected the phonology of several Rumanian words of Latin origin and that make the Rumanian pronunciation very Eastern and distant fom the Latin one.
See a comparison with Latin and Italian, the closest language to Latin. Even without considering the vowel borrowed from the Slavic languages, Rumanian OFTEN replaces the original vowels of its Latin derivatives with other vowels. Rumanian: Gint Etc…………………. C Contrary to Latin and other Romance Languages Italian, Spanish, Portuguese… , Rumanian does not use any syntetic form to express the absolute superlative.
Probably they do not know any Italian word. In any case, an Italian will never speak Romanian perfectly. On the other hand, many Bulgarians learn Romanian very well and speak it without accent.
Are the Romanians closer to the Italians or to the Bulgarians? Who can say? Rumanian subjunctive has only a present and a perfect tense. Besides, the rumanian perfect subjunctive is not even conjugated differently from the Latin one : Rum. Of course Italian and the other Romance languages as well as Latin have a conjugated perfect subjunctive, a conjugated pluperfect subjunctive and a conjugated imperfect subjunctive.
It appears morphologically very strange within the Romance languages. F Rumanian has several homonyms and homographs within its paradigms. Instead Italian distinguishes 6 personal endings, as well as Latin. Already in early Vulgar Latin, intervocalic [b] and [v] frequently got mixed up and both have been erased in their evolution towards Romanian. So that it is impossibile to reproduce the refined Syntax of the greatest Latin authors in a language that has not Consecutio Temporum.
Is this a jock or what? Did you ever read Cicero or Quintilianus and look to your syntax before stating such a ridicolous thing?!! Have you any idea of the importance of the Syntax within the classic Latin prose? Are you able to understand that the Rumanian syntax is the least Latin of the Romance syntaxes?
The same for the Rumanian verbal system. Are you able to understand that Rumanian phonetics sounds so eastern that should be ridicolous to think of a man reading a Latin poetry with all the Slavic inflexions even the Latin derivatives of Rumanian language have? Ask Question. Asked 2 years, 9 months ago.
Active 5 months ago. Viewed 1k times. French or Portuguese have nasal vowels for an easy example; or some other criteria. Improve this question. Michael Valentin Michael Valentin 7 7 bronze badges. Excellent question. Qua pronunciation, I think French and Portuguese are indeed good candidates. French also doesn't allow dropping subject pronouns, and its spelling is often unrecognisable, which I think applies less to Portuguese. It will surely be some language which is arguably not a Romance language, not even a full language, or intentionally modified like rhyming slang.
Maybe you should define a constraint? Haitian Creole is French evolution carried through grammaticalization. But I think Rumanian is farther away; it's borrowed many Slavic words and even more Slavic phonology.
Latin will get you a certain distance, but OCS will get you further. If Romanian has the most conservative grammar, but by far the most non-Romance borrowings, then people who find learning the words the hard part will find Romanian the hardest language, but people who have a hard time getting the knack of grammar might find it the easiest.
Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. There is no definitive answer This question is a very difficult one, since there is no clear way of measuring how much a language has changed.
Improve this answer. Ergative Man Ergative Man 1, 6 6 silver badges 19 19 bronze badges. What about en.
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