Closer to Latin - Spanish or Italian

    


Italian is closer to Latin than Spanish, but Romanian and Sardinian are closest to Latin:


t is often said that Portuguese and French are the most innovative of the Romance languages, each in different ways, that Sardinian and Romanian are the most isolated and conservative variants, and that the languages of Italy other than Sardinian (including Italian) occupy a middle ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages

Serge, the article in Wikipedia is not singular.

Check these:


The Latin language is the bedrock of the language of Western Civilisation. The Romance Languages of Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, and Romania developed from a hybrid version of spoken Latin and native tongues. Each would also be influenced in turn by other tongues, such as Slavic, Norse and many Germanic dialects. Of these modern languages, Romanian, not Italian, remains the closest living language to the original. Without Latin, a very few of the tongues we speak today would be possible or recognizable in their current forms.
http://www.unrv.com/culture/latin-language.php



Because of its geographical location, Romanian has developed differently from the other Romance languages. Slavic and Hungarian influences on Romanian are particularly apparent. Despite this foreign influence, it is the closest to Latin, in a grammatical sense, of all the Romance languages.
http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/romanian/overview.htm






Also, you can see such internet forum discussions:


    http://www.infohub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5242
http://forum.wordreference.com/archive/ind...hp?t-36989.html
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t2129-0.htmhttp://www.infohub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5242
http://home.unilang.org/main/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6171


What you copied from Wikipedia says that proto-Romanian gived to other Balkan languages those features: the vestigial case system and the placement of articles as suffixes of the nouns are from vulgar Latin.

so I woould not consider it among the closest descendents of Latin.

have you studied Romanian language?

    

Edited by cattus - 19-Aug-2006 at 23:42

egarding the romanian language, didnt it change somehow in the XIX century? Many slavic, hungarian and germanic words were replaced with italian and french, and new expressions were added, borrowed from those languages. So probably romanian wouldnt so near to the latin in terms of vocabulary if this "cleansing" wouldnt take place.

   

In XIX century it was a try of 'Latinization'of the Romanian language, due to the naive enthuziasm of discovering the Latin nature of the Romanian language.

This latinizing activity was manifested especialy by the Transylvanian intelectuals, they made some artificial modifications in Romanian language. Also, the Kirillic alphabet was replaced with the Latin one in the decades in the middle of the 19th century. However, the latinists leave not important changes in Romanian language. Their artificial creations were used in books and newspapers but later were abandoned.

Having heard both sardinian (sardu) and romanian (romaneshti), speaking italian as a second language, and french fluently, I have to say that I understand both (sarde and romanian) languages, when I see them written (less when I hear them). But they look very different.

We have to understand that by "Romanian" the today linguists understand all the Eastern Romance languages, considering variants of it the Daco-Romanian (the language spoken in Romania), Aromanian (the largest group of Romance speaking in Balkans), Megleno-Romanian (a Balkanic group resembling with Daco-Romanian) and Istro-Romanian (another group speaking a close to Daco-Romanian language, in the Istria peninsula.

Actually, between Daco-Romanian and Aromanian (named also Macedo-Romanian) there is a signifiant difference. What is sayed in Wikipedia and other refferences, that Romanian and Sardinian are the closest to original Latin, are reffered to Daco-Romanian, being less apliable to Aromanian, as mr. Brian Joseph, a reputed linguist, states:

In this way, therefore, some perspective is gained on the characterization of Daco-Romanian as a Romance language as opposed to a Balkan language.
...
Affinities that Daco-Romanian may show with the Balkan languages in this regard have not been such as to give all parts of its perfect and preterite system an overall Balkan character.

http://ling.ohio-state.edu/~bjoseph/publications/1999roma.pdf

    
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Something about Thracian language.

    

Could it be that you make your judgement mostly considering grammar, while I give more weight on lexicon? That would be consistent with most things posted on this thread and also with the content of some websited yourself linked here.

Yes, considering grammar. In vocabulary Romanian is perhaps on the last place among Romance.

And probably Catalan is closer than Spanish.