# How big of a vocabulary did (does) Latin have? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 18, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309 "2013-03-18T22:56:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/21 "2013-03-19T16:26:32Z")
A question that may relate or not to the OP, especially with the living language angle: How close is RCC Latin (Church Latin) to that spoken in Rome? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/22 "2013-03-19T16:34:19Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > How close is RCC Latin (Church Latin) to that spoken in Rome? This can be taken two ways; I think you meant the first but I originally read it as the second, so I’ll answer both. How close is RCC Latin to the Latin of Ancient Rome: not all that far off. Many words have shifted meaning and new ones have been added, and the grammar has changed a bit, but an educated Roman could certainly handle Church Latin and someone educated in only RCC Latin could read Roman Latin without much difficulty. Pronunciations differ in minor ways. How clase is RCC Latin to the Latinate language of Contemporary Rome: not all that close, though it’s much easier for Italians to learn Church Latin than for speakers of most other languages, and the pronunciation of the letters is identical. Many words are unchanged but few of those are verb forms. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/23 "2013-03-19T17:34:40Z")
Isn’t Latin still one of the official languages of Switzerland, since it’s predominant in one of the cantons? No doubt it would have deviated significantly from classical Latin. I was under the impression (not sure where I got it) that “Church Latin” pronunciations varied considerably from “Academic Latin” (though, who knows how well they know how Classic Latin was pronounced … but yes I do know they have ways to extrapolate backwards.) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/24 "2013-03-19T18:53:25Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Well, it doesn’t have any English adjectives. That is, non-Latin adjectives. :smack: Right. Now write that a hundred times before daybreak, or I’ll cut your balls off. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/25 "2013-03-19T19:45:51Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > No, not because it’s a zombie, but because in some contexts Latin is still a living language. The main source of new Latin words is botanists and zoologists naming new species of plants and animals, because they all get new Latin names. Necromancers, every one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/26 "2013-03-19T21:24:36Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Isn’t Latin still one of the official languages of Switzerland, since it’s predominant in one of the cantons? No doubt it would have deviated significantly from classical Latin. > > I was under the impression (not sure where I got it) that “Church Latin” pronunciations varied considerably from “Academic Latin” (though, who knows how well they know how Classic Latin was pronounced … but yes I do know they have ways to extrapolate backwards.) You’re probably thinking of [Romansh,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language) which isn’t really any closer to Latin than any other Romance language, and is distinctly less similar than Italian. Academic Latin extrapolates a lot of its pronunciation guidelines based on transliterations (usually of names) between Greek and Latin. Therefore, it’s assumed that because when Caesar wrote his name in Greek, he used K instead of Σ or Χ, that the “C” should be pronounced hard. There’s some questions about this, due to the vast migration of the sounds ascribed to Ancient Greek letters compared to their modern forms. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/27 "2013-03-22T06:15:38Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > A “stunt”? It’s just as much a stunt as all the names that chemists give to new chemicals. Well, yes. That’s his point. People aren’t coining new Latin words in that context. They are coining a words in the scientific lingua franca. It is not intended that these words be used only when Latin (or Greek) is being spoken, but for every language to use them when such specificity is needed. And to help the OP be answered: He is obviously not looking for an exact number, just a rough figure. For instance, English has around 250,000 distinct words if you don’t count inflections. So pick your own rules and give a rough number. The best I can find on Google is that there are only 9,000,000 words in the existing Classical Latin texts ([cite](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3298278?uid=3739536&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101906313551)), but I am unclear if that’s the total number of words or number of distinct words, and, if the latter, it definitely includes inflections and conjugations. The OP does not need an exact right answer, and this pedantry is reducing the ability for him to find the rough answer he seeks. ---
**Author:** ![moriah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b2d939/32.png) [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/28 "2013-03-22T14:50:55Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > A question that may relate or not to the OP, especially with the living language angle: Depends on one’s definition of living… Is there a community for whom Latin is a native (born into it) language? No. It’s dead. Is there a community for whom Latin is fluent and new words are being coined? Yes.\* It’s living. \*New words are coined by Vatican Latinists so they can address things like ‘television’ and ‘the Internet.’ ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/29 "2013-03-22T18:48:59Z")
I’ve also heard the standard that a language is only dead when there’s nobody who knows it. Even if the Vatican officially switched to some other language, there’d still be scholars across the globe who could read Cicero in the original. This is in contrast to many local tribal languages, for which there are only a handful of people, or none at all, who know the language any more. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/30 "2013-03-22T19:28:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve also heard the standard that a language is only dead when there’s nobody who knows it. Even if the Vatican officially switched to some other language, there’d still be scholars across the globe who could read Cicero in the original. This is in contrast to many local tribal languages, for which there are only a handful of people, or none at all, who know the language any more. [Language death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death) is actually a very complicated and nuanced thing. For one thing, Latin isn’t simply a language, it’s the prestige dialect of one historical phase of a whole language family. In that sense, it was never alive to begin with—Caesar and Cicero probably sounded different when talking to their buddies. The [diglossia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia) just increased until Latin and the daughter languages were felt to be different things. The millions of Latin speakers in early medieval Europe never exchanged Latin for a different language—it just drifted further away from the literary prestige dialect. So in that sense it never died the way other languages die. And as you said, there are currently Latin speakers, so it isn’t completely dead. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/31 "2013-03-23T21:17:25Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Isn’t Latin still one of the official languages of Switzerland, since it’s predominant in one of the cantons? No doubt it would have deviated significantly from classical Latin. No Latin is not an official language of Switzerland. They have three “really” official languages (German, French, Italian) and one other recognized language (Romansch) that you can communicated with the federal government in. Now whether the official German is High German of Swiss German (which by any objective standards are distinct languages) is another matter. I once a bag from a department store that had its slogan printed on it in six languages: German, Swiss German, French, Italian, Romansch, English. When the Swiss telephone company was privatized (having previously been part of the PTT), the name they chose for the new company was: SwissCom. Make of that what you will. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/32 "2013-03-23T21:26:46Z")
Short on words for color, if I recall correctly. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309/33 "2013-03-24T09:55:34Z")
Most words in any language, by some distance, I believe, are nouns. I doubt whether classical Latin had anything like as many nouns as modern English, simply because we know about many more things (that need names) than the Ancient Romans did. We know about most of the things they did, plus a whole lot more that have been discovered or invented since. I doubt whether the numbers of other parts of speech varies much between the two languages. We have not discovered or invented many more types of action (verbs), ways of acting (adverbs), or qualities of things (adjectives), and the numbers of pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, interjections etc. in either language (probably any language) is small. I would expect any differences of numbers of other parts of speech to be negligible compared to the large difference in the number of nouns. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-of-a-vocabulary-did-does-latin-have/653309.md?page=1)