πŸ‘€diodorusπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό186πŸ—¨οΈ114

(Replying to PARENT post)

You can tell "rufus" is a loan because it contains medial -f-, and native Latin words don't contain medial -f-, except after prefixes. The only Latin sources for /f/ are Proto-Indo-European bh dh *gΚ·h in initial position; elsewhere, they generally become /b d v/, in a process that probably paralleled the rhotacism.

This sound change wasn't shared by Oscan, Umbrian, or Faliscan -- compare Faliscan "carefo" to Latin "carebo", and Oscan "mefiaΓ­" to Latin "mediae".

πŸ‘€80386πŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

It’s incredible to realize how foundational the Roman Empire was to what we now commonly consider Western civilization.

Rome certainly was a highly advanced society in its time, but what a shame to think that because of vast abundance of slaves the Roman society never pushed further with technological innovations, effectively preventing the human race from having mobile phones by the year 1000, if not earlier.

Some argue that with less slaves an industrial revolution might have triggered much earlier, and Roman society was certainly ingenious enough to push the boundaries if there ever was a need to do so.

πŸ‘€foskπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Fun fact: celtic runes were created on the lakes region by the border between Switzerland and Italy, inspired by Etruscan (coming from Phoenician), probably a Roman invention to get celtic troops to write reports

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Italic_script#Alphabet_o...

πŸ‘€tomcooksπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I find it so surprising that Greek was once the language spoken by scarcely educated people in a big part of the ancient world. I am Greek and I can manage koine (I can read it, though I wouldn't be able to, you know, speak it), mostly thanks to my exposure to the new testament when I was young, but I find Latin a much easier language to learn.

I guess that's saying something about the ability of humans to learn language at any age, or about the misconceptions we have about what is an "easy" or a "hard" language to learn. Still, I can't shake this feeling that if there was one language that it made sense for so many people to learn so they could easily speak simple things to each other, that should have been Latin, not Greek- the English of the ancient world, not its German.

πŸ‘€YeGoblynQueenneπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

This weird feeling, when I try to read ancient greek words on these pictures, it feels like just a broken cyrillic. Like seeing a newspaper, just a very old one...
πŸ‘€viachπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

For those interested I would recommend J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge University Press, 2003. It is more on the linguistic side with many examples in the old languages, but a really interesting book nonetheless.
πŸ‘€tuomosipolaπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Patrick Wyman has a great podcast on the fall of Rome (among others) and spends some time talking about the impact of regional dialects and the slow process of how those became romance foundations. Really neat stuff!
πŸ‘€artificialπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

The Christian Liturgy in Rome was originally celebrated in Greek and was only later translated into the Latin language, which dominated the Church until modern times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrie#In_Western_Christianity

πŸ‘€ciceroπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

> But we cannot ignore that the majority of Italia’s coinage was bilingual, suggesting that Latin was already the lingua franca among its multilingual forces.

US coinage is bilingual but few Americans speak Latin.

πŸ‘€jcofflandπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Wow, the Oscan language had the letter "Π―". I thought it exists in cyrillic alphabets only. I know they are different letters having (perhaps) different pronunciation but still. Interesting!
πŸ‘€jerry40πŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0

(Replying to PARENT post)

They were written by the last generation of the city who could read and write Oscan: after the Social War, Latin-speaking Roman colonists were sent to settle in Pompeii and many of the other towns of Italy to prevent future rebellions.

Along with educational policies favoring the ruling language and other forms of cultural assimilation, the resettlement strategy has been effectively used in modern times, including the United States, China, and the Soviet Union.

πŸ‘€ilamontπŸ•‘7yπŸ”Ό0πŸ—¨οΈ0