giacomet@haley.ecn.purdue.edu ( ) (05/03/91)
In article <1277@ign.UUCP> eh@ign.UUCP (eh@phenix pour news) writes: >Same discussion as about the closest language to English : >What is, among the present latin languages, the most latin ? > >I've heard about two: Catalan (north-east of Spain) and Occitan (south of >France), which have by the way many similar things. Pourquoi pas plutot l'italien ou meme mieux, quelques dialectes locaux dans les regions centrales ? --
giua@ecse.rpi.edu (Alessandro Giua) (05/04/91)
In article <1991May3.150917.6451@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> giacomet@haley.ecn.purdue.edu ( ) writes: >In article <1277@ign.UUCP> eh@ign.UUCP (eh@phenix pour news) writes: >>Same discussion as about the closest language to English : >>What is, among the present latin languages, the most latin ? >> >>I've heard about two: Catalan (north-east of Spain) and Occitan (south of >>France), which have by the way many similar things. > >Pourquoi pas plutot l'italien ou meme mieux, quelques dialectes locaux dans les >regions centrales ? It's widespread folklore in Sardinia (my home region) that the closest language to Latin is the "lingua barbaricina", i.e., the dialect of Sardinian spoken in Barbagia. The name Barbagia was given by Romans to a small area around the Gennargentu mountain. In fact the local people resisted so fiercely to the Roman invasion that they were considered "barbari" (sounds like Asterix's village, hehehe). Eventually the region became part of the Roman latin-speaking empire. However, the same tendency to isolationism that resisted the Roman cultural integration, was the key factor in the preservation of the language. I have again by folklore that the verb "to be" is practically identical Latin. Alessandro PS: Just in case someone does not know: Sardinia is an Italian island, south of Corse, a little larger that Massachusetts. ----------------------------------- Alessandro Giua (giua@ecse.rpi.edu) Electrical, Computer, & Sys. Eng. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY, USA