How did Latin give origin to the different romance languages?

[twgamer20197]

Is it because the Latin language the Romans brought to Spain, Portugal, France, Romania ( Of course I know those nations weren't known by those names. I'm just referring to the territories that are currently part of those nations ), etc when they conquered them was learned by the local conquered people at their own way ( for example being influenced by their native language or mixing it with Latin )

[Diamat]

Yes, and because languages change naturally over time, which is exacerbated by war, migrations, and cultural exchanges.

[Vladyvid]

Evolution of languages continues all the time. Main factors that contribute to development of new languages are separation and time.

When the roman empire existed, it enforced in countries like todays Romania and Portugal, the use of standard latin. When the empire collapsed, there was no central authority to keep this one standard and the languages diverged, being influenced by different neighbours over the centuries. Thats why todays Romanian has some slavic influences, while in Spanish or Portugese you can find arabic influences for example.

[Cookiegod]

All Romance languages still being the same would be like making three martial arts threads and expect the exact same conversation to happen.

[Vladyvid]

That was clever, im surprised. +rep

[Roma_Victrix]

I'll tell you how! One day Latin sat down with its coffee, reading the biblical passages about the Tower of Babel and how a bunch of idiots started babbling at each other and it was a huge cluster that was massively entertaining. Therefore Latin decided that it would confuse the world with an array of Romance languages and would give a big middle finger to everybody by creating French, the stuffiest language on Earth, and Italian, the rudest, and Spanish, the tackiest, and Portuguese, the most unintelligible, and Romanian, the most unbearable. Together they assemble to form a mighty soul-crushing destroyer of Germanic heathens who think they have a right to speak their hideous "bar bar" nonsense.

[Akar]

If they didn't want that whole snafu to happen they shouldn't have named the tower "babel" that's kind of getting what you asked for, isn't it?

[twgamer20197]

Let me tell you what romance languages I can understand:

- Spanish ( my native language )
- Portuguese ( at least Brazilian Portuguese. In theory, every native Spanish speaker should understand at leat about 50 % of what he reads or listens to. I never studied Portuguese but I got used to both listening and reading things in Portuguese. So, I can get from 50 to 70 % of what I listen or read )
- Gallician ( another very close to Spanish ). So a bit easier than Portuguese.
- Italian: I didn't study it but I found out a little about it. Maybe I'd be able to understand about 40 % of a conversation or text )

Now I shoud aim to achieve at least an intermediate level of the other romance languages such as French ( I can't understand almost nothing when listening ), Romanian, etc. It would be interesting to know all the Romance languages.

[Akar]

French is so much easier to read than it is to listen to, at least for me. Motherers speak so damn fast.

[Cookiegod]

You'd love the French part of Valais then.

[Akar]

I feel like I could probably converse with a slow witted french child, but that's about it.

[twgamer20197]

French is so much easier to read than it is to listen to, at least for me. Motherers speak so damn fast.

French is far from Spanish, Portuguese and Gallician in terms of mutual intelligibility when listening

[Akar]

I'm sure all the Franco-Spanish wars didn't help with anything.

[twgamer20197]

Well, maybe the reason why French is far from Spanish is because when the Romans brought Latin to Gaul, the local people maybe mixed it with their Gallic languages

[Derc]

Excuse my bold language (no pun intended), but what kind of dumb question is this?
It was the same back then as it is today. People came, heard the language and thought "Hey, they can articulate themselves pretty well. The number system makes sense too. And it seems like this language was adopted by almost the whole world. Let's make use of it!"
Seriously, the 21th century with English might best resemble the same stuff that has happened back then. Of course the language was butchered then. There's a reason why there is something called 'vulgar Latin'.

[Akar]

Was that Vulgar English?

[Derc]

Yes. You get it.

[Akar]

I heard that they used to read the bible in pig latin in church

[Septentrionalis]

It never ceases to amaze me that French speakers consider Occitan somehow inherently inferior to French and did everything they could to suppress the language. Occitan is a fairly normal Romance language, whereas French reminds me of something you get when you take the least refined hill folks out of a language community and elevate their way of speaking into a norm. As if a person saying git, critter, ain't, feller, Injun, drownded, and purdy would look down upon someone saying get, creature, isn't, fellow, Indian, drowned, and pretty.

[Vladyvid]

Occitan, what do you mean? Westron?