Italian is surprisingly understandable if you already know Latin.

[athenian200]

I know that's probably true of most Romance languages to some extent, but it seems to be especially true of Italian. There are some things that really stood out to me about Italian when compared to other languages in the same family.

The first one is that the basic word for water is "acqua," and seems to be pronounced very close to Latin "aqua." I would know, because my class required me to repeat and listen to a lot of reconstructed classical pronunciation, and I heard more of it later. That's basically not the case in any other major Romance language.

The same pattern recurred with the word for friend. In Italian, you have "amico" and "amica" which is very close to Latin "amicus" and "amica," especially when you consider that some declensions of the masculine form did turn it into "amico" anyway.

What really threw me was listening to someone speaking Italian on a video to get an idea of what it sounds like. I heard them say "vita," and sure enough... it means life. They didn't even turn "vita" into "vida," and it was once again, pretty much the same word I learned in Latin class with the same meaning.

The one that really had me in disbelief, though... was finding out that "salve" can be used as a greeting in Italian. That means one of the first Latin words I ever learned in class, has a potential use in Italian.

What's really interesting is that despite never having studied Italian, I can already follow conversations more easily in Italian than in Spanish. I've always been able to read Spanish with a little bit of effort, but I could never make sense of spoken Spanish in real time, and I thought I was just bad at oral comprehension. It turns out that for whatever reason, I don't have to slow down recordings of spoken Italian to make sense of it like I do with Spanish. I don't know if it's just because a lot of the core vocabulary words are pronounced closer to Latin or what, but it's easier for me to recognize individual words (and even whole phrases) in real time.

So I guess the moral of the story is... if you for whatever reason are in the same situation, and are struggling to acquire most modern Romance languages after filling your head with Latin and its reconstructed pronunciation... and maybe have trouble going much further than just being able to understand medieval Latin. Italian seems to be the solution for that obscure problem. By some weird chance, it turns out that modern Italian is a good path back into the realm of modern Romance languages if you confused yourself by learning Latin first. I can basically describe what three of them sound like to the ear of someone who studied Latin first:

French: "This doesn't sound very much like Latin. My English is probably more help here because of all the French loanwords, but even that really doesn't help much. I have no idea what anyone is saying."

Spanish: "This sounds somewhat familiar. I can pick out a few phrases here and there, but having studied Latin makes Spanish sound as if people are speaking too fast and slurring their words. I feel like I could almost understand if they would just slow down and enunciate a bit more."

Italian: "Now there's no mistaking it, this definitely sounds like Latin with simplified grammar and a lot of elisions. I can hear exactly what happened. The sound changes are not as severe. It's kind of like medieval Latin, but with a lot more English loanwords for modern concepts and a few more changes. If I just study the changes in grammar, and verify that all these words I recognize are not false friends, I will definitely understand this one day."

[vannilla]

Beware that Italian got a lot of influence from other languages and actually very little of it is latin.
Italy was conquered by literally every european nation that ever existed past and present at least once and you can not only see it in various historical buildings, but hear it as well in which words are used where or which sounds people make to read the same word.

Oh, by the way, the germanic-sounding pronounciation of latin is actually made up and recent studies are slowly debunking it, so please forget it and use the more "italian sounding" one.

[Mæstro]

Before the XX^th century, everyone would just read Latin as though it were his preferred language. No effort was made to match ancient pronunciation. I like what a modern Greek has to say on reconstructed pronunciations:

However, the truth is when non-Greek scholars attempt to pronounce Classic Greek in the reconstructed way, they think they pronounce accurately. To me, American scholars sound distinctly American (like Platos with spurs and cowboy hats), Germans sound German, etc.

I read Latin out loud as though it were my own German, and it sounds nice enough to my ear, which is all I care about. Incidentally, of the modern Romanic dialects, the Sardinian is believed the most conservative.

[athenian200]

Beware that Italian got a lot of influence from other languages and actually very little of it is latin.
Italy was conquered by literally every european nation that ever existed past and present at least once and you can not only see it in various historical buildings, but hear it as well in which words are used where or which sounds people make to read the same word.

Yeah, I would say that's the case with most Romance languages, though. None of them really sound too close to Latin. They all sound a lot like something else. Mostly I'm just surprised that I understand as much of it as I do. I definitely believe what you're saying, though. One of the other interesting things is that the Italian word for blue isn't any of the Latin words for blue. It's "blu," like in English. Apparently we both got that word from French at some point.

So it seems like the reason I can figure it out easily goes beyond just knowing Latin. Apparently the words that don't come from Latin are likely to come from French, Spanish, or English, and English has a lot of French vocabulary as a result of England being conquered by the Normans. And I already have some exposure to Spanish too.

EDIT: Ah, it looks like the pronunciation I learned for Latin wasn't the more Germanic-sounding one after all. That could be another reason why I'm picking up Italian easily, because the Latin I learned was pronounced very similarly to Italian in the first place. It seems like in the US, a lot of Latin teachers speak both Latin and Italian and teach both languages, so often they wind up using their Italian pronunciation for Latin. It's odd, they said it was the classical reconstructed one, but based on the sounds it was actually the other one. They didn't pronounce "v" more like "w," or anything like that. I guess that solves the mystery.

[leothetechguy]

Our Latin Teacher once tried to teach us Italian ...during our latin lesson. I might try learning it again.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Dp you know the old pun "I Vitelli Dei Romani Sono Belli" ?
It looks and sounds exactly the same in Latin and Italian but it means altogether different things ! I won't add a spoiler
Unfortunately there is no article in the English wikipedia.

[athenian200]

Dp you know the old pun "I Vitelli Dei Romani Sono Belli" ?

Actually, yeah, I am familiar with that one. LOL.

That's one of the reasons why I verify the meaning of each word I recognize. False friends can have hilarious/awkward results, and are one of the major pitfalls when learning Romance languages. You'll recognize a lot of vocabulary, but you'll have to double-check to make sure it means what you think.

What's really odd is that both "bellus" and "bellum" come from Latin (though pulcher was the more common word for beautiful back in the day). That is, there are words for war and beautiful that sound very close... I wonder if that means they thought there was something beautiful about war? LOL.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Dp you know the old pun "I Vitelli Dei Romani Sono Belli" ?

Actually, yeah, I am familiar with that one. LOL.

Should we reveal the spoiler to the other forumers, or let them do their homework ?

What's really odd is that both "bellus" and "bellum" come from Latin (though pulcher was the more common word for beautiful back in the day). That is, there are words for war ...

"bellum" (war) continues in Italian in learned words like "bellico" or "bellicista, bellicismo".
I wasn't consciously aware of a Latin "bellus" for beatiful ("bello" ... note beautiful is beauty-full, beauty in Italian is nowadays "bellezza", but an older form is "belta'", in French beaute from beau) but it is not uncommon that a word in romance languages derived from "popular" Latin (e.g. "caballus" for horse where classical "equus" got lost).
"guerra" (war) comes from Langobard werra, there are a few loans from the Langobard (=> Lombardy) period (586-800 AD).

Italian is more static about lexicon and pronounciation than most languages. We can easily read Dante's comedy (written around 1300), it is actually taught in school in the last 3 classes of high school.

[athenian200]

Should we reveal the spoiler to the other forumers, or let them do their homework ?

Well, here's what I remember, but it could be wrong...

"i vitelli" is "the calves" in Italian but is something like "Go! Little calves" in Latin. (I think this would be calves in the sense of baby cows in both cases, not a part of the leg).
"dei Romani" means "of the Romans" in Italian, but it means "of the Roman God" in Latin.
"sono belli means "are beautiful" in Italian, but it means "sound of war" in Latin.

So putting this all together, you get...

"Go, little calves, at the war sound of the Roman god!" in Latin.

And...

"The calves of the Romans are beautiful." in Italian.

One implies those poor calves are going to be sacrificed to a Roman god in hopes of securing victory in a war, and the other implies Roman calves are too beautiful to be sacrificed to a god.

"guerra" (war) comes from Langobard werra, there are a few loans from the Langobard (=> Lombardy) period (586-800 AD).

That makes a lot of sense, and interestingly I actually know "guerra" from Spanish.

Italian is more static about lexicon and pronounciation than most languages. We can easily read Dante's comedy (written around 1300), it is actually taught in school in the last 3 classes of high school.

I've definitely noticed that. The spelling and pronunciation do seem slower to change. And interestingly, one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and look more into the language was because I was curious about Dante's work. He is probably one of the most famous Italian authors.

[vannilla]

Quote

I think the quote refers to accents caused by the mother tongue. That's perfectly fine: nobody spoke perfect latin at the time either; just to name an example, there is a hypothesis which says that the current tuscan dialect contains elements of the old etrurian language. If that really survived two millennia, I'm sure etrurians speaking latin had a distinctive accent. (For those who don't know, the etrurians were among the first populations to join Rome and it was a mostly pacific union based on commerce.)

What I was referring to is how they actually gave different sounds altogether. It's not like the case of the english language where people that can't say the "Æ" in "cat" simply opt for a straight "A", it's about how instead of "F" they say "P".
As far as I know something like that does not exist regarding classical greek.

We can easily read Dante's comedy (written around 1300)

That's also because our good old friend Manzoni suggested to the king during the unification to use Dante as the base for the common language. Doesn't mean the rest of your point is invalid, but I'm sure if we had started with something else things would've been a lot different.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Should we reveal the spoiler to the other forumers, or let them do their homework ?

Well, here's what I remember, but it could be wrong...

"i vitelli" is "the calves" in Italian but .... (I think this would be calves in the sense of baby cows in both cases, not a part of the leg).

Only partially wrong (and I cheated a bit ). Vitello is indeed a calf (animal) and also meat (veal; we do not distinguish the animal from the meet like pig/pork or ox/beef ... English got that from the Normans) in Italian (in Latin the animal is "vitulus" but is some ancient italic languages it might be spelled with "e". In fact the very name of Italy derives from an ancient population Vituli living at the southernmost tip of the peninsula ... during the so called "Social War", when the Italic federates rebelled to Rome, the issued coins labelled "Viteliu") cfr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Italy and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_o ... 0%9388_BC)

Anyhow, back to the pun, I cheated as I wrote all words capitalized. It should have been:
Italian: I vitelli dei Romani sono belli = the calves of the Romans are beautiful.
Latin: I, Vitelli, Dei Romani sono belli = go, Vitellius, to the sound of war of the roman god

(Vitelli, vocative of name Vitellius - like one of the emperors in the "year of the three emperors", 69 AD)

[athenian200]

Only partially wrong (and I cheated a bit ). Vitello is indeed a calf (animal) and also meat (veal; we do not distinguish the animal from the meet like pig/pork or ox/beef ... English got that from the Normans) in Italian (in Latin the animal is "vitulus" but is some ancient italic languages it might be spelled with "e".

Wait, so does that mean it can also be "The veal of the Romans is beautiful"? If there's no distinction between calf and veal, then that means they could either be calling the animal beautiful, or calling the meal made from the animal beautiful. LOL.

What's interesting is that Latin seems to have had a diminutive form of vitulus that was spelled with an "e":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vitellus#Latin

I think that was what made it a little more confusing. LOL.

In fact the very name of Italy derives from an ancient population Vituli living at the southernmost tip of the peninsula ... during the so called "Social War", when the Italic federates rebelled to Rome, the issued coins labelled "Viteliu") cfr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Italy and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_o ... 0%9388_BC)

I never would have drawn a connection between Italy's name and cattle, but I know that cattle were very important in ancient times for building wealth. It makes sense.

Anyhow, back to the pun, I cheated as I wrote all words capitalized. It should have been:
Italian: I vitelli dei Romani sono belli = the calves of the Romans are beautiful.
Latin: I, Vitelli, Dei Romani sono belli = go, Vitellius, to the sound of war of the roman god

(Vitelli, vocative of name Vitellius - like one of the emperors in the "year of the three emperors", 69 AD)

So it looks like I missed the possibility that Vitelli could be an emperor's name in the vocative. LOL. I had to look up what "vitelli" could be in Latin, and the first thing I found was the possibility that it was the nominative plural of vitellus, which can mean either egg yolk or small calf.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

for the Latin form of the pun, Vitellius could be any person named so, not necessarily the 69 AD emperor.
for the Italian form of the pun, "i vitelli" means definitely "the calves" (more animals, of masculine or indefinite sex).

The word for "veal" meat cannot be plural (only "vitello") ... however just to confuse you some people might use the feminine form for "veal" (una fettina di vitella, a slice of veal, instead of una fettina di vitello). Myself, I would regard such usage strange, although I saw it, cannot tell whether it is archaic or regional - but not my region). For me "vitella" is a female calf. And we use "vitelli" only for bovines, not other animals (I saw the usage of "calf" for a small dolphin in Anne McCaffrey's books).

For the reference to egg yolk concerning "vitello", it is not a term in everyday's usage (in recipes yolk is "tuorlo" or even more common "il rosso d'uovo" lit. "the red of egg"), although I know the adjective "vitellino" as a term used in embriology (compare https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_vitellino and versions in other languages). But to further confuse you "vitellino" is also the diminutive of "vitello", so it might refer to a newly born, baby calf, or just used when speaking with children to refer to a calf.

Bovines (and their meat) may be confusing. "manzo" is the common form for beef (meat) but equally refers to an animal older than, I believe, 1 year. And one can use it both in the generic masculine form for a young ox or a generic young bovine, or at the feminine ("manza" (*)) for a young cow. The words for ox, bull and cow are more normal (bue, toro, vacca or mucca). The word "vacca" is usually not used (except technically by a veterinary or a zoologist) because it could be assimilated to an insult for women (like the words "bitch" or "sow"), while "mucca" is more politely used, specially talking with children. However the adjective from "vacca", i.e. "vaccino" is commonly used (and not only for vaccines, which as everybody should know derive their names for Jenner's tests with cow pox) e.g. "latte vaccino" (cow milk) or "ricotta vaccina" (but also "ricotta di mucca", a sort of cottage cheese made from cow milk, instead of sheep or goat milk).

(*) the young daughter of a colleague had invented a para-etymology for word "transumanza" (transhumance, the practice of moving cattle from one place to another, e.g. hill and mountain pastures, from trans-humus i.e. across-ground or across-terrain). She splitted it as tran(s)-su-manza and interpreted it as across-up-young cow, and commented that when the cattle come down from the mountain to the plain it should be tran-giu-manza (across-down-cow), or when it involves sheeps it should be tran-su-pecora

[vannilla]

cannot tell whether it is archaic or regional

Well, some people say "la coltella" instead of "il coltello", so maybe things go deeper than that.

The word "vacca" is usually not used (except technically by a veterinary or a zoologist)

In many dialects vacca is actually used more than mucca, and considering people speak their dialect first and italian second, it ends up being the more common of the two names.

P.S. "lapis" is the correct translation of "pencil" in italian

[athenian200]

The word for "veal" meat cannot be plural (only "vitello") ... however just to confuse you some people might use the feminine form for "veal" (una fettina di vitella, a slice of veal, instead of una fettina di vitello). Myself, I would regard such usage strange, although I saw it, cannot tell whether it is archaic or regional - but not my region). For me "vitella" is a female calf. And we use "vitelli" only for bovines, not other animals (I saw the usage of "calf" for a small dolphin in Anne McCaffrey's books).

Ah, that actually does make sense. We don't really use "veal" in plural form either. It does make it clear it's about the animals and not the meat in that context though. If you have a plural, it has to be referring to the animal. Good to know.

Interestingly, I didn't know "calf" could be used for anything other than a young bovine in English, so that's something I didn't know about my own language.

For the reference to egg yolk concerning "vitello", it is not a term in everyday's usage (in recipes yolk is "tuorlo" or even more common "il rosso d'uovo" lit. "the red of egg"), although I know the adjective "vitellino" as a term used in embriology (compare https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_vitellino and versions in other languages). But to further confuse you "vitellino" is also the diminutive of "vitello", so it might refer to a newly born, baby calf, or just used when speaking with children to refer to a calf.

Ah, I didn't expect any reference to that obscure Latin term for "egg yolk" to have survived in Italian, though it looks like it kinda did in the scientific literature. Interesting that what was once the diminutive form for "vitulus", became the main term for "calf" in Italian, and that now has it's own diminutive form as "vitellino".

Bovines (and their meat) may be confusing. "manzo" is the common form for beef (meat) but equally refers to an animal older than, I believe, 1 year. And one can use it both in the generic masculine form for a young ox or a generic young bovine, or at the feminine ("manza" (*)) for a young cow. The words for ox, bull and cow are more normal (bue, toro, vacca or mucca). The word "vacca" is usually not used (except technically by a veterinary or a zoologist) because it could be assimilated to an insult for women (like the words "bitch" or "sow"), while "mucca" is more politely used, specially talking with children. However the adjective from "vacca", i.e. "vaccino" is commonly used (and not only for vaccines, which as everybody should know derive their names for Jenner's tests with cow pox) e.g. "latte vaccino" (cow milk) or "ricotta vaccina" (but also "ricotta di mucca", a sort of cottage cheese made from cow milk, instead of sheep or goat milk).

It's good to know "vacca" is potentially offensive in Italian, although the adjective form is used. Definitely seems like finding the right terms to refer to bovines in different contexts can be involved, though. Sometimes I forget to use "bull" for a male bovine instead of "cow," since cow is used so much more often and I only think of bulls when I think of Spanish bullfighting.