Pardon my posting, but I was wondering…is there any surviving record of weather or not there were, as the title says, regional accents in the Latin spoken in different parts of the Roman Empire? You know, like larger countries (The United States, for example) have regional accents today? And, if so, what they sounded like?
Well, thanks for your time,
Ranchoth
I’m not sure if this helps, but I remember that once when I was in a Roman museum in Cologne, I was looking at a bunch of Latin inscriptions on tombstones. I remember reading a sign that mentioned that the spelling on a lot of the later stones was corrupt; the reason stated was that the local Germanic pronunciation had affected the spellings of Latin words. So, at least in that case, the Latin in the Cologne area must have been spoken with a distinctive accent.
