How did we go from latin to italian?

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How did we go from latin to italian?

Postby PepinoMattioli » 27 Jun 2006, 04:39

Recently I have been very interested in this, and things ive read or researched about history and culture, only vaugly touched on the subject.

Can anyone explain to me how/when italians/ancient rome went from speaking latin to modern italian. If you can give me a brief explanation, or recomend some books, or websites, or possibly a previous message post regarding this ( preferably in english )

thank you

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Re: How did we go from latin to italian?

Postby suanj » 27 Jun 2006, 11:37

simply: the latin was official language of Roman Empire, and after the official language of Catholic church; the latin had big difficulties for to speak and especially for the poor people, son in the time, abt VIIIÃ‚Â° century, it was a concrete necessity:
-the poor people spoke an imperfect Latin, with words of origin Latin but changed by the frequent use of illetterate people, with words of other foreign people etc...
-the nobles and the priest spoke the perfect latin
In the society the nobles and the priests don't understand the poor people! so in the time was a necessity to ask at some litterate but poor people of to make from translator; this translators was a litterate people that spoke a middle latin( no perfect) but they also understand the poor people language (volgo/lingua volgare)... So this was a big problem... in the time also the nobles for necessity they abandoned the latin and they spoke the "volgo language";( volgo mean poor people); the priests also they used the volgo language for to speak with poor people and the latin was used only for the important thing..., in the court also was a problem, because the poor people don't understand the judge!

so abt XIIÃ‚Â° century the most diffused language in Italy was the VOLGO(language of people), this language was as a latin dialect different in various parts of Italy, also if similar, it was no the same, but very similar...
abt XIIIÃ‚Â° century the poets and the litterates make the volgo writing for romances, poems etc...

after, the Volgo language become so fine and modern and was called italian language, and in the dialects of various italian regions, again is possible to find many words of ancient volgo....
however the italian become from volgo and the volgo from latin, in all words of italian, ( normally) are latin trace...
regards, suanj
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