Latin

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Woods
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Latin

Postby Woods » 2019-05-17, 10:02

Why do they call Latin the father of all languages? Is it also the predecessor of something else beside the Romance languages?

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Dormouse559
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Re: Latin

Postby Dormouse559 » 2019-05-17, 16:33

Who calls Latin "the father of all languages"?
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Woods
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Re: Latin

Postby Woods » 2019-05-17, 18:28

Dormouse559 wrote:Who calls Latin "the father of all languages"?

I have no idea - but I've heard it from somewhere for sure. Maybe some false intellectual's pretence to know more about languages than he/she does?

Wanted to check if I've missed some essential piece of information regarding the history of languages.

But so, Latin in all its forms was the only language in the Italic sub-branch of the Indo-European languages and it hasn't influenced the Germanic/Slavic/Celtic/Hellenic or Iranian sub-branch in any extremely important kind of way?

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Re: Latin

Postby Dormouse559 » 2019-05-17, 20:57

Woods wrote:But so, Latin in all its forms was the only language in the Italic sub-branch of the Indo-European languages

Far from it. There were several other Italic languages, but Latin is the only one with descendants in the modern day.

Woods wrote:and it hasn't influenced the Germanic/Slavic/Celtic/Hellenic or Iranian sub-branch in any extremely important kind of way?

I guess it depends on your definition of "extremely important". Latin certainly provided significant vocabulary to various members of the Germanic, Slavic and Celtic families. The Romance languages make up a big chunk of the SAE sprachbund, so there's some mutual influence there, on levels like grammar and phonology. At the same time, none of that would justify treating Latin as a parent language to anything other than the Romance languages.
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