From: Christophe Grandsire (christophe.grandsire@free.fr)
Date: Wed Mar 12 2003 - 02:15:53 EST
En réponse à James Campbell <james@zolid.com>:
>
> I heard recently (on TV I think) that Sardinian is considered 'closest
> to'
> Vulgar Latin. Can you tell me if that statement was right?
>
The person you heard saying that must have had mental health problems. The main
characteristic of Sardinian is to be the only Romance language *not* descending
from Vulgar Latin!!! It descends from an earlier form of Latin which was pretty
close to Classical Latin. For this reason Classical Latin 'c' stayed /k/ in
Sardinian *even* in front of front vowels (unlike any other Romance language)
and the ending -us became -u instead of -o. Also, Sardinian keeps the -t of the
3rd person singular. And the vocabulary is definitely closer to Classical Latin
than to Vulgar Latin, with for instance "iskire" for "to know", obviously
coming from SCIRE instead of SAPERE, and "mannu" for "big", coming from MAGNUS
instead of GRANDIS. See
http://www.lingrom.fu-berlin.de/sardu/innere2.html for a bit on the Sardinian
language.
Note though that it has some peculiarities that make it look sometimes quite
alien, like the article su/sa derived from IPSUM: "the same" rather than ILLE,
or some sound changes that produces "limba": langage or "abba": water, from
LINGUA and AQUA ;))) .
> I once met an old chap who would read Romanian publications. He said
> he
> could easily understand it because it was so similar to the VL he'd
> learnt
> (for religious reasons, liturgies or something, I don't recall).
>
> Is this making any sort of sense?
>
Not to me. But there are more than one form of Vulgar Latin, and he may have
learned an Eastern form, which indeed would have given birth to Rumanian. But
with its sound changes like [kw] -> [p] (hence patru: four from QUATTUOR) and
its postfixed article, I can't see a resemblance between the Vulgar Latin I
know and Rumanian.
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.
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