# Question reg.Latin used today versus Latin in antiquity **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2016, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216 "2016-06-24T09:56:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/21 "2016-06-25T10:51:44Z")
Sorry, that was a little harsh on my part. I can see how in this thread it might be appropriate to point out the vowel sound issue. My apologies. (It would NOT be so appropriate, though, if the OP were specifically asking about how Latin “v” was pronounced). ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2016, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/22 "2016-06-25T11:04:23Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Is Italian just the natural evolution of Latin, or did it have outside influences? Modern standard Italian evolved from a Tuscan regional dialect of late Vulgar Latin, while the standard Latin we’re most familiar with is mainly based on the Latium (Lazio) regional variety. So, there are a few differences there already (partly based on different substrates – e.g., I presume, a bit more Etruscan influence in Tuscany). More importantly, Italian co-evolved with Spanish and French to shift from a language where word order didn’t matter much, to one where there aren’t many case endings in nouns. (Vulgate Latin was already showing signs of this). I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure each of these Romance languages (and others) influenced each other at different Medieval times in specific ways as this process played out. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/23 "2016-06-26T05:17:57Z")
When I took Latin in HS, I recall that the priest said the Latin (Tridentine) Mass used “kitchen” Latin, not literary Latin. For example, the last phrase of the “Agnus Dei” is “dona nobis pacem”, “give us peace.” But “dona” is the imperative mood, so it’s COMMANDING Jesus to give us peace! Very disrespectful! The subjunctive should be used, something like “Ut des nobis pacem” (Google Translate of “May you give us peace.”) ---
**Author:** ![mr\_wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@mr\_wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_wolf)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2016, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/24 "2016-06-26T13:02:58Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > When I took Latin in HS, I recall that the priest said the Latin (Tridentine) Mass used “kitchen” Latin, not literary Latin. For example, the last phrase of the “Agnus Dei” is “dona nobis pacem”, “give us peace.” But “dona” is the imperative mood, so it’s COMMANDING Jesus to give us peace! Very disrespectful! The subjunctive should be used, something like “Ut des nobis pacem” (Google Translate of “May you give us peace.”) I had this question myself awhile ago. The name imperative is a bit misleading as most polite requests traditionally use the imperative although there are a lot of words that are the same for the subjunctive present and the imperative. It should perhaps be called facultative. “Soyez béni, monsieur.” ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2016, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/25 "2016-06-28T23:48:00Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > We have an excellent idea how the Romans sounded speaking Latin, with the following caveat: What we call ‘Classical Latin’ in formal study is actually normalized to the practices of the high literate culture of around the Augustinian period, which by no coincidence is the period and social echelon from which we have the most evidence and in which the most highly regarded literature in the language was produced. > > … I’m not sure what OP has in mind re Church Latin appearing cliched or hackneyed to Roman (Classical) hearers, but to writers and readers, **JohnnyAngel** points out what I, fluent in neither language culture, believe to be the case: fluent pre-Christian Romans would find most writings in Church Latin simple minded and dirt simple. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2016, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/26 "2016-06-28T23:57:15Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > When I took Latin in HS, I recall that the priest said the Latin (Tridentine) Mass used “kitchen” Latin, not literary Latin. For example, the last phrase of the “Agnus Dei” is “dona nobis pacem”, “give us peace.” But “dona” is the imperative mood, so it’s COMMANDING Jesus to give us peace! Very disrespectful! The subjunctive should be used, something like “Ut des nobis pacem” (Google Translate of “May you give us peace.”) > [@mr\_wolf](#): > > I had this question myself awhile ago. The name imperative is a bit misleading as most polite requests traditionally use the imperative although there are a lot of words that are the same for the subjunctive present and the imperative. It should perhaps be called facultative. “Soyez béni, monsieur.” Subjunctive, jussive, cohortative, and optative moods skulk about among imperative tenses all the time. I recall tracing the transmission of multiple versions of a “Gregorian” chant where a fork in the road was visible only by a change in one word from optative to vocative. (Quotes because I can’t remember if it was from the Old Roman repertory or some other.) ---
**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:** [June 29, 2016, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/27 "2016-06-29T00:44:17Z")
26 posts, and I’m the first to point out that there are three different flavors of Latin, not two? There’s classical Latin, which is how the ancient Romans would have actually spoken (or at least, our best reconstruction of that). There’s ecclesiastical Latin, fossilized at a particular stage of its drift, as spoken in church. And there’s modern Latin, used in the jargon of law, the sciences, and other fields, pronounced as though it were English. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/28 "2016-06-29T02:16:38Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > We have an excellent idea how the Romans sounded speaking Latin, with the following caveat: What we call ‘Classical Latin’ in formal study is actually normalized to the practices of the high literate culture of around the Augustinian period 😕 😕😕 “Augustan”, perhaps? “Augustinian” AFAICT generally refers to St. Augustine. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/29 "2016-06-29T05:46:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 26 posts, and I’m the first to point out that there are three different flavors of Latin, not two? There’s classical Latin, which is how the ancient Romans would have actually spoken (or at least, our best reconstruction of that). There’s ecclesiastical Latin, fossilized at a particular stage of its drift, as spoken in church. And there’s modern Latin, used in the jargon of law, the sciences, and other fields, pronounced as though it were English. The third one is English. Or French (in which case it is pronounced as French because it is), Spanish, German, Swedish, Urdu… ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/30 "2016-07-06T03:59:53Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > 😕 😕😕 “Augustan”, perhaps? “Augustinian” AFAICT generally refers to St. Augustine. It appears you are right, according to [some light googling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustan_literature_(ancient_Rome)). > [@Chronos](#): > > And there’s modern Latin, used in the jargon of law, the sciences, and other fields, pronounced as though it were English. That third item would definitely befuddle any ancient Romans who heard it. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/31 "2016-07-06T05:25:32Z")
I recall reading something that said the vulgate latin had departed from the strict formal even by Augstan/Augustinian times; as someone mentioned, like the difference between television announcer English and street English, only worse. However, the Latin we know and love today (“people called Romans, they go house”) is almost exclusively based on a standard body of texts, written between 100BC and a few hundred AD. It would be no different than if we absorbed how to speak English strictly from the collected works of Shakespeare and a few peripheral texts. You have only to look at how incomprehensibly varied even English is/was when there was no mass media or sound recording; every isolated part of England had its own distinctive accent, and over a millennia vocabulary has drifted and pronunciation even more has drifted. MOst other European nations can demonstrate the same variability. Things must have been worse in antiquity. No wonder that the multilingual Roman empire described outsiders as speaking like “bar-bar-bar”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2016, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216/32 "2016-07-06T06:27:12Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > You have only to look at how incomprehensibly varied even English is/was when there was no mass media or sound recording; every isolated part of England had its own distinctive accent, and over a millennia vocabulary has drifted and pronunciation even more has drifted. MOst other European nations can demonstrate the same variability. Actually, while dialectal variety is wide in every language, I can read medieval Spanish texts without more problems than those derived from the handwriting and from occasional specialized vocabulary: to me, many agricultural implements or pieces of armor are as alien as this laptop to a 10th century person. Spelling has changed but it tends to be pretty consistant within a given period and the shifts are a lot more minor than for English. Some languages have gone through large vocalic shifts (French, English); others haven’t. Some have dialects which are distinguished in great part by whether certain consonants have shifted or not, but this affects pronunciation, not spelling: in writing it’s not visible. English has shifted a lot more than German, Greek, Italian or Spanish. Spanish has acquired a lot of words from languages other than Latin (Greek, Arabic, Germanic languages, Basque, other pre-Roman Iberian languages, American languages) and lost the declensions, but 16th century Spanish is pretty much the same as modern Spanish: the biggest difference is in a handful of modes of address, some of which are still used when writing to a government officer. Lope de Vega, Góngora, or 14th-century Conde Lucanor don’t need modernized versions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-reg-latin-used-today-versus-latin-in-antiquity/758216.md?page=1)