How similar are Italian and Latin? - Authentic Linguistics Reaction

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]So, how similar are Italian and Latin?

[00:00:02]That's the topic of today. Glad you're here with me. Let's learn together. Two Hi everyone. Today, we will talk about two very beautiful languages, Latin and Italian.

[00:00:15]Let's start from a bit of history.

[00:00:17]The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin. Here we have the oldest inscriptions and some literature. Yep.

[00:00:24]The second stage is Classical Latin.

[00:00:27]Here we have the best Latin writers like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace.

[00:00:32]>> So, this is around like late Republic.

[00:00:36]A very special thing happens after the classical period. The written Latin fossilizes, while the spoken language keeps evolving. So, this Vulgar Latin is how we would define it today? It becomes the Proto-Romance language, which diverges into dialects and new languages. So, this becomes the Romance tree.

[00:00:58]That, you know, you get stuff like Spanish, Portuguese, uh French, etc. Today, the five most widely spoken Romance languages are Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian.

[00:01:14]Among these five languages, Italian is the most conservative and arguably closest to Latin.

[00:01:21]Alphabets.

[00:01:23]The Classical Latin alphabet contained 23 letters.

[00:01:29]Okay.

[00:01:30]So, we're we're missing three. Which ones are we missing? U We're missing U.

[00:01:36]Uh A B C D E F G H I J We're missing J.

[00:01:48]And a W. So, no W, U, or J.

[00:01:54]The letters J and >> have waited 2 seconds. and W did not exist yet. The letters I and V represented both vowels and consonants.

[00:02:06]Mm. Yeah, V is like a good use case of U. When the letter V was used as a consonant, it sounded like w.

[00:02:15]The letters Y and Z were used only in Greek loanwords.

[00:02:21]Classical Latin was written in all caps.

[00:02:24]And you can see that on any inscription ever.

[00:02:27]That doesn't mean that Romans yelled all the time. Lowercase letters were invented much later.

[00:02:34]Words were separated with interpuncts.

[00:02:38]So, these little like dots. Or lacked any spaces or a punctuation.

[00:02:44]The latter is called scriptio continua.

[00:02:49]You have to really be paying attention.

[00:02:51]This is how you write Gaius Julius Caesar with and without interpuncts.

[00:03:00]This is very hard to read. So, I'm using a modern convention in this video.

[00:03:06]Latin has five short and five long vowels. Long vowels were indicated with apex in the classical period, but modern texts use macron. Use macron.

[00:03:17]Ah.

[00:03:18]The Italian alphabet has 21 letters.

[00:03:24]Okay, so we lost two.

[00:03:27]The letters J, K, W, X, and Y appear almost exclusively in loanwords.

[00:03:34]The letter I is used for both the vowel e and the consonant y.

[00:03:40]The letter H is silent. It's mainly used in digraphs CH and GH.

[00:03:46]Italian uses the acute and grave accents to indicate the stressed vowel.

[00:03:51]Mm. I'm learning a lot already. I don't know a lot of this uh punctuation.

[00:03:58]Um and especially in foreign language punctuation and and how it assimilates to the rest of the language. Real-life texts only show stress on the word-final vowel like here.

[00:04:11]perché caffè metro ciò più Dictionaries use accents to show difference between similar sounds like e a o o.

[00:04:25]So, it just depends on the accent.

[00:04:28]pesca fishing pesca peach pesca pesca Italian >> It's so subtle, but it makes such a difference.

[00:04:39]>> has several consonant sounds that did not exist in Latin. Here are some examples.

[00:04:45]Julius Giulio Caesar Cesare Venetia Venezia scaena scena Mm. So subtle.

[00:05:01]Italian is famous for its double consonants.

[00:05:04]Un ragazzo e la sua donna ammirano le belle It stretches the consonant by itself, doesn't it?

[00:05:11]>> colline e fanno una passeggiata ogni settimana per tutto l'anno.

[00:05:17]Many of these consonants were doubled in Latin.

[00:05:20]bellius collis passus annus Mm. Okay.

[00:05:28]It just It stretches the word and gives it something else because without the stretched consonant consonant consonant I can't talk.

[00:05:41]You have a whole different word, right?

[00:05:44]But most consonants are doubled in Italian, but not in Latin.

[00:05:48]ragatius domina admirari septimana faciunt omnis doctus Vocabulary.

[00:06:02]Italian vocabulary is mostly derived from Latin. Many Italian words are even spelled in the same way as in Latin.

[00:06:10]dare dare to give vivere vivere to live venire venire to come It's just, you know, it's it's the pronunciation It's obviously the pronunciation the first part of the word.

[00:06:28]That's the biggest difference there, especially on that last one.

[00:06:31]to live venire venire W to V. to come dormire dormire to sleep luna luna moon stella It's just like it's the whole it's the dwell of the vowel in these.

[00:06:54]stella star bene bene well >> Streamlined.

[00:07:01]male male Subtle, but very streamlined. Very streamlined Italian is.

[00:07:09]badly Some words have somewhat changed, but you can still see the pattern.

[00:07:15]canis cane dog sanguis sangue blood lupus lupo wolf ventus vento wind Hm.

[00:07:33]Many everyday words are different.

[00:07:36]puer bambino child mulier donna woman avis uccello Very different right there. That A to U.

[00:07:48]bird malus cattivo Very different right there as well. I'm What Yeah, so they're all different, obviously, as you can tell.

[00:07:59]What influenced Italian?

[00:08:01]I know it's more it's closest to Latin, as he said.

[00:08:05]But what influenced Italian? Was it the migrations that came through? Was that the biggest influence? Like the like the Goths?

[00:08:16]bad Many Latin words have changed their meaning over the centuries, so now they convey something completely different in Italian.

[00:08:25]In Latin, captivus means a captive. In Italian, cattivo means bad.

[00:08:34]copia means abundance.

[00:08:37]copia means copy.

[00:08:40]negotium means business.

[00:08:43]negozio These are just similar, right?

[00:08:46]These are similar, but I guess it's like the translation of the word directly to Italian.

[00:08:54]Not translating what it means, but translating what it would mean in a similar spell. means shop.

[00:09:02]officium means duty or service. ufficio usually means office.

[00:09:10]Italian has borrowings from many languages.

[00:09:13]These words originate from Germanic languages like Frankish and Lombardic.

[00:09:19]So, there we go. So, Frankish and Lombardic from maybe the Frankish kingdom when in like 800, right?

[00:09:27]>> [clears throat] >> Or Lombardic as well.

[00:09:31]This is probably some that influence we're talking about.

[00:09:34]bianco white guardare to watch guerra war banca bank These words came from Old and Middle French.

[00:09:50]mangiare to eat giallo yellow burro butter liuto lute These words came from Spanish. Wow, so influence from Spanish.

[00:10:10]Now, that's interesting.

[00:10:13]Would this have to do >> [clears throat] >> I don't know, with like two Sicilies?

[00:10:20]I'm not sure.

[00:10:22]chocolate cacao coco apartment neat These words originate from Arabic.

[00:10:37]Yep, so does this have to do with once again, Sicily, when Sicily was invaded?

[00:10:47]customs sugar One Arabic word gave two different borrowings in Italian.

[00:10:57]zero cipher or numeral grammar Latin grammar is much more complex than Italian. Let's compare these sentences that mean Caesar sees Antonius.

[00:11:15]So, the verb comes after noun in Latin.

[00:11:25]And that's very akin to English. The usual word order in Latin is S O V, subject, object, verb.

[00:11:34]>> Okay. Italian uses a different order, S V O, subject, verb, object, like English.

[00:11:42]Latin uses the nominative case for a subject and the accusative case for an object. This is why we can reorder the words and the meaning does not change.

[00:11:58]Italian lost grammatical cases, so if we reorder the words, the meaning can change.

[00:12:08]Antonius sees Caesar.

[00:12:12]Nouns That was very complicated for me on the bottom left. I still don't get get that. in Latin belong to three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Italian has only two genders, masculine and feminine.

[00:12:27]Similar to Spanish. Most Latin neuter nouns became masculine in Italian.

[00:12:33]Latin has six grammatical cases, but Italian nouns are not inflected for cases.

[00:12:39]Latin has no articles, but Italian has definite and indefinite articles.

[00:12:46]Let's look at this Latin phrase.

[00:12:51]Here is how it sounds in Italian.

[00:12:56]So, we were talking about streamline, but now it's takes longer to say the same thing.

[00:13:02]One hand washes the other.

[00:13:06]In the Latin phrase, the word for hand is used in different cases, in the nominative and in the accusative manum.

[00:13:17]In Italian, it is the same word mano that does not change. We also need to use the articles in Italian and add the word for other.

[00:13:29]Verbs are the most complex part of grammar in both languages.

[00:13:34]Latin because of its conjugation? And Italian verbs are inflected for person and number. Here's the conjugation for the verb to love in the present tense and the forms are pretty similar between the two languages.

[00:14:00]Interesting.

[00:14:01]It's all in like ami to amate.

[00:14:05]It's on a whole different Okay, so that's where some of the Romance uh child or sorry, the Romance sister languages are very similar.

[00:14:18]Latin and Italian are pro-drop languages, which means that they omit personal pronouns. Let's compare this Latin phrase with its Italian equivalent. cogito In English, you have to use the pronoun I.

[00:14:37]I think, therefore I am.

[00:14:41]Learning Latin conjugation is a lot of fun.

[00:14:45]Italian verbs are a bit simpler. Yes, uh a bit simpler. It only takes you a day to memorize all forms.

[00:14:53]Let's see how famous Latin phrases translate to Italian.

[00:14:57]I love this one.

[00:15:05]I came, I saw, I conquered. So, is the I assumed when it's the subject isn't is it said?

[00:15:16]The Italian phrase is literally the same as Latin. All verbs are in first person single form and the pronoun I is omitted.

[00:15:26]Is it the same?

[00:15:37]Hail, emperor. Those who are about to die salute you.

[00:15:43]Streamlined, like it's is in the reverse sense for the Latin sense.

[00:15:50]But there's more structure for the Italian sense.

[00:15:55]But is the structure in the accents for the Latin sense?

[00:15:59]The Latin phrase is much shorter because it uses a special verb form morituri.

[00:16:05]It is the future active participle of the verb to die.

[00:16:09]Ah. In English, the verb to die has two participles, past, died, and present, dying.

[00:16:18]In Latin, died is mortuus and dying is moriens.

[00:16:25]But Latin also has the future participle.

[00:16:28]So, it's even more complex. moriturus, meaning about to die.

[00:16:35]So, it has the about to within that word. It is one word in Latin instead of several words in English.

[00:16:43]The English word future comes from the Latin word futurus. about to be which means about to be. It is the future active participle of the verb to be.

[00:16:57]Think stuff here.

[00:16:59]Italian has only two participles, past, morto, and present, morente. So, it needs the extra words. This is why the future participle has to be translated with a longer construction, which is similar to English. Mhm.

[00:17:23]Carthage must be destroyed. Woah now.

[00:17:26]The Latin word delenda is the future passive participle of the verb to destroy.

[00:17:32]It's crazy that that first phrase up there might have easily been said between the second and third Punic Wars.

[00:17:38]It is also called the gerundive.

[00:17:41]In this sentence, the gerundive is combined with the verb to be, which adds a meaning of obligation, must be destroyed. must be Italian lost the gerundive, so the Italian and English translations are literally the same.

[00:17:57]Carthage must be destroyed.

[00:18:02]No questions. Questions to everyone. Do you speak Italian or Latin? No. Did you learn Latin in school?

[00:18:09]>> No. To speakers of Italian, how well can you understand Latin? No. Leave your answers in the Yeah, I I really don't have any Yeah, um I'm just a American that don't know nothing about English, really.

[00:18:25]But uh yeah, this I love I love listening to these videos and understanding a little bit more of it.

[00:18:32]Um I'm very behind the um I guess not too inclined on a lot of this stuff, especially on the grammatical side. Especially when we cross paths of different languages and understanding the the similarities and the and the differences and so forth. But hey, this is, you know, why we do this.

[00:18:48]We learn together or we try to, right? Um appreciate you guys as always. Have a great rest of your day. Add me some context below.

[00:18:55]I'll see you guys next time. Peace out and bye-bye.