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Thread: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

  1. #221

    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Hi all! I'm back ;-)
    I hope this thread is still active, because the topic about the pronunciation of Latin is awesome!

    I've been wondering about the word "EGO": was the pronunciation maybe something like "EO", without the sound of "G" ? From that would derived the word "IO" in italian (indeed the ancient word in italian is "EO")
    What are your opinions about ?

  2. #222
    Diocle's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by Montefortino View Post
    Hi all! I'm back ;-)
    I hope this thread is still active, because the topic about the pronunciation of Latin is awesome!

    I've been wondering about the word "EGO": was the pronunciation maybe something like "EO", without the sound of "G" ? From that would derived the word "IO" in italian (indeed the ancient word in italian is "EO")
    What are your opinions about ?
    Happy to see you back here, Montefortino, in this forgotten and shady (umbrosus) place, known by few, appreciated by even fewer, and attended in practice by nobody!

    What I can say it's just that the Latin pronoun 'ego' corresponds to the Vulgar Latin 'eo', and in modern Romance Languages we have: Portuguese 'eu', Spanish 'yo', Occitan 'ieu', French 'je', Romansh 'jau', Sardinian 'jeo', Italian 'io', and all mean I.

    The phenomena which have caused the fall of the Latin 'G' are for me unknown, because sadly my knowledge of Late Latin is small, slim and totally inadequate. I've opened this thread to stimulate a discussion about the transformations of the Latin into Vulgar Latin, and from this into the national vulgar languages we still proudly speak today. Of course I've failed, actually this place is not dead just because I refuse to accept the concept of its death, but .. actually there is not a lot of life here, around these ruins, where time is slowly doing its damn job of memories' killer.

    So, I think we should just hope Pseudo Romanus listen us when we call for his help! PR, if you're still around, maybe hidden in some place amid the great Harmony of the Spheres, please, give us your help in the name of the Old King, once soundtrack of a triumphant empire and today shattered memory of a dying civilization.

  3. #223

    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Hello Montefortino, Diocle, and everybody else . Just like Diocle said it is good to see people interested in the linguistic evolution of Latin (or any other languages, for that matter).
    To the point. EO certainly is a derivative form of EGO from 'classical' latin, as you and Diocle rightly pointed it out. The evolution of sounds is a regular phenomenon observed in human languages whether ancient or modern, and naturally Latin is part of that process. Obviously nobody can tell for sure when the erosion of g sound was complete (bear in mind that 'complete' is not quite an accurate word in this context as languages never reach a completion point. They always keep evolving), but it must have taken place for several centuries until (I'd guess) the fourth century as evidence shows that speech went from 'magister' to 'maister' (maestro, maître in Spanish/Italian and French), or from 'viginti' to 'vinti' (veinte, vente, vingt in Spanish, Italian, and French). As I said before this process is still going on. In Spanish for instance a lot of native speakers (I must include myself in that group) are dropping the g sound from the word "agua" (water) and instead of saying 'ah-gooah' we are pronouncing 'ah-wooah' or something like that.

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  4. #224
    Renatus's Avatar Decanus
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    That seems a bit like the glottal stop in English, whereby words like 'butter' and 'matter' become 'bu'er' and 'ma'er'.

  5. #225

    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by Renatus View Post
    That seems a bit like the glottal stop in English, whereby words like 'butter' and 'matter' become 'bu'er' and 'ma'er'.
    Well, based on the phonetic transcription I provided your reasoning makes sense, but your conclusion is mistaken. However it is mistaken because of my own mistake and not yours. For this I apologize. The issue lies on my poor English phonetic transcription for 'agua' as 'ah-wooah' that gives us two different syllables forming a hiatus, which is similar to the glottal stop phenomenon in English that you mention. That transcription is totally inaccurate as what we actually see in the case of the Spanish word 'agua', and the late Latin/proto Romance 'maister' is the formation of a diphthong (rather a triphthong in the case of agua). I'll try to write a correct phonetic transcription this time. May Mercury (he was the god of languages among other things, wasn't he? ) help me in this endeavor!
    Maister = ˌMice-tair
    Agua = ˌowah (Perhaps very similar to the way the English word 'hour' is pronounced, but without the 'r').
    I hope this will rectify my mistake and clarify what I was trying to say

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  6. #226
    Renatus's Avatar Decanus
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    At risk of flogging what may be a dead horse, I wonder whether the glottal stop or something similar may have had a transitional role in the process you describe. 'Magister' could then become 'ma'ister' and from that one can see, if you say it aloud, that it could easily develop into 'mice-tair'. A similar process could apply to 'ego/eo'.

    Interestingly, Diocle cites the French 'je'. This seems to demonstrate a different process whereby the 'g' is retained but softened to a 'j'-sound, the 'o' is shortened to an 'uh'-sound and the 'e' is eliminated. This may serve to illustrate how Latin changed in different parts of the Roman empire, under the influence of local accents and dialects.

  7. #227
    Diocle's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by Renatus View Post
    At risk of flogging what may be a dead horse, I wonder whether the glottal stop or something similar may have had a transitional role in the process you describe. 'Magister' could then become 'ma'ister' and from that one can see, if you say it aloud, that it could easily develop into 'mice-tair'. A similar process could apply to 'ego/eo'.

    Interestingly, Diocle cites the French 'je'. This seems to demonstrate a different process whereby the 'g' is retained but softened to a 'j'-sound, the 'o' is shortened to an 'uh'-sound and the 'e' is eliminated. This may serve to illustrate how Latin changed in different parts of the Roman empire, under the influence of local accents and dialects.
    That is a very interesting point, because even though what we call "Romanization" was a successful and brutal process of 'globalization' and 'internationalization' of the Latin, imposed "manu militari" worldwide as official language, during the Late Antiquity we see the resurgence of the local, pre-Roman identities, mainly the Celtic, Iberic and Italic languages (now maybe in disguise of Latin dialects?), this lead us to the interesting conclusion that under the ashes of the lost tribal identities, those ancient sounds were not dead, those ancient identities were still alive and, in the moment of crisis of the Roman state, just those defeated and forgotten identities, rise again, indeed becoming one of the key factors of the resistence of the Romanitas against the Germanic invaders. Arthur was not alone in his fight against the Germanic invaders, all over Europe, the pre-Roman substrate was not dead, it was still alive and it was still fighting back, to survive and to defend a world the Roman state was no more able to defend.

    Late Antiquity, seen as some sort of double telescope pointing in opposite directions, through which we can perceive and understand phenomena, as the survival of regional cultural substrates under the thin blanket of Romanization, impossible to fully understand on the basis of Classical Antiquity, is one of the key factors making the study of Late Antiquity so interesting and essential in the understanding not only the III, IV, V and VI centuries and the incoming Middle Age, but even the previuos history of the Classical Ancient World.

    .. Let me close, coming back to the contents of my frist posts on this ancient and venerable thread, saying that if my professors of Latin were right saying that you have no hope to speak a good Italian without studying Latin, I think we can't hope to fully understand the Latin world and language without watching them also from a .. Vulgar perspective.

  8. #228

    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by Renatus View Post
    At risk of flogging what may be a dead horse, I wonder whether the glottal stop or something similar may have had a transitional role in the process you describe. 'Magister' could then become 'ma'ister' and from that one can see, if you say it aloud, that it could easily develop into 'mice-tair'. A similar process could apply to 'ego/eo'.

    Interestingly, Diocle cites the French 'je'. This seems to demonstrate a different process whereby the 'g' is retained but softened to a 'j'-sound, the 'o' is shortened to an 'uh'-sound and the 'e' is eliminated. This may serve to illustrate how Latin changed in different parts of the Roman empire, under the influence of local accents and dialects.
    The hypothesis you propose could certainly be valid. At this moment, I can't think of any evidence that contradicts it. But just to be sure I'll start looking.
    However, a phenomenon similar to the glottal stop would better explain the evolution from 'magister' to 'maestro' (Italian/Spanish) than that from 'magister' to 'maister'. The reason being that just like the glottal stop requires the presence of a hiatus to occur, the combination 'ae' in the word 'maestro' (in both languages) is considered to be a hiatus, too. But I already said this. Interestingly though, the French word 'maître' that conserved the diphthong in writing went through a phonological process that reduced said diphthong to just one vocalic sound. I wonder if 'magister' gave birth to more than one coexisting new words (such as a hypothetical "ma'ester" among others ).

    Regarding the history of the pronoun "je", it is a very convoluted one, but that is what makes it interesting. My understanding is that there was a diversity of ways to say 'eo' in 'old-French'. Two examples: 1. The text of 'Les serments de Strasbourg', written in the 9th century AD resorts to the familiar late Latin form 'eo'. 2. A text from the 12th century AD (found in a book written by French linguist Michèle Perret), 'ge' is the new 'eo'. Other forms existed of course such as gié and jo (which is the first-person pronoun in Catalan). All of them existed as a consequence of the phonetic treatment applied to 'eo' by the speakers who stressed one or the other syllable. Eventually, however, 'jo' became to dominant version, and through a vocalic weakening process very common to languages, especiallly in French, 'jo' became 'je'.

    Quote Originally Posted by Diocle View Post
    That is a very interesting point, because even though what we call "Romanization" was a successful and brutal process of 'globalization' and 'internationalization' of the Latin, imposed "manu militari" worldwide as official language, during the Late Antiquity we see the resurgence of the local, pre-Roman identities, mainly the Celtic, Iberic and Italic languages (now maybe in disguise of Latin dialects?), this lead us to the interesting conclusion that under the ashes of the lost tribal identities, those ancient sounds were not dead, those ancient identities were still alive and, in the moment of crisis of the Roman state, just those defeated and forgotten identities, rise again, indeed becoming one of the key factors of the resistence of the Romanitas against the Germanic invaders. Arthur was not alone in his fight against the Germanic invaders, all over Europe, the pre-Roman substrate was not dead, it was still alive and it was still fighting back, to survive and to defend a world the Roman state was no more able to defend.

    Late Antiquity, seen as some sort of double telescope pointing in opposite directions, through which we can perceive and understand phenomena, as the survival of regional cultural substrates under the thin blanket of Romanization, impossible to fully understand on the basis of Classical Antiquity, is one of the key factors making the study of Late Antiquity so interesting and essential in the understanding not only the III, IV, V and VI centuries and the incoming Middle Age, but even the previuos history of the Classical Ancient World.

    .. Let me close, coming back to the contents of my frist posts on this ancient and venerable thread, saying that if my professors of Latin were right saying that you have no hope to speak a good Italian without studying Latin, I think we can't hope to fully understand the Latin world and language without watching them also from a .. Vulgar perspective.
    I enjoy your passion on this topic!

    Art by Joar

  9. #229
    Renatus's Avatar Decanus
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    For what it is worth, my dictionary gives the etymology of 'master' as partly from Old English 'maegester' and partly from Old French 'maistre', both derived from 'magister'.

  10. #230

    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by Renatus View Post
    For what it is worth, my dictionary gives the etymology of 'master' as partly from Old English 'maegester' and partly from Old French 'maistre', both derived from 'magister'.
    There you go! You just helped me to answer my question. I'll do a deep research on this topic though. Thank you.

    Art by Joar

  11. #231
    Diocle's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Latin Language during and after the Late Antiquity. Originally: Pronounciation of Aetius

    Quote Originally Posted by PSEUDO ROMANUS View Post
    .. I enjoy your passion on this topic!
    Thanks my dear! But I confess that you make me feel like one of those old ladies about whom nobody can anymore say "What a pretty woman!", so that you just say: "What a lively spirit does that woman have!"

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