# What IS this language, anyway? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 7, 2009, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194 "2009-04-07T00:17:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/1 "2009-04-07T00:17:37Z")
I was sent a link to a Petra (contemporary Christian group) singing in English – but the video is written in a Romance language that looks like nothing I’ve ever seen … my first description was “Portuguese written by someone about a half hour into an acid trip”. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QmQgX8bb0Fw/hqdefault.jpg "Astazi vei fi cu Mine in Paradis (cantec The Road to Zion)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmQgX8bb0Fw) I’m very curious as to what the displayed words are in (they more or less translate the sung words, I realize). Any linguists with ideas? ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/2 "2009-04-07T00:23:41Z")
Looks like Romanian to me. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/3 "2009-04-07T00:28:09Z")
This [online language identifier](http://www.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/tools/guesser.en.html) concurs that it’s Romanian. ---
**Author:** ![MikeG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikeg/32/4329_2.png) [@MikeG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeG)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/4 "2009-04-07T00:32:08Z")
Whoa, flashback. Petra was big when I was a kid living in a christian commune in Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/5 "2009-04-07T01:42:08Z")
Basically, if it looks like Italian except with lots of U’s and diacritics, it’s Romanian. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/6 "2009-04-07T02:37:53Z")
I can’t get YouTube these days, but my guess based on your description was Romanian. Looks like I was right! FWIW, Romanians like to claim their language is closest to Latin. Any truth to this? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/7 "2009-04-07T02:57:02Z")
I’d say it’s Romanian. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/8 "2009-04-07T04:22:54Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > FWIW, Romanians like to claim their language is closest to Latin. Any truth to this? I’ve heard that from a Romanian, too. But no - unsurprisingly, I’d say Italian is the closest Romance language to Latin. **ETA** : on the other hand, Wikipedia tells me that Romanian has a six-declension nominal system, which would make me say it’s closer to Latin grammatically, if not in vocabulary and tone. **ETA again** : Uh, I can’t read. It only has three declensions. So I’m on the fence. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/9 "2009-04-07T04:43:19Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > FWIW, Romanians like to claim their language is closest to Latin. Any truth to this? I worked on a project last year that involved a Romanian division, and was told this several times. Regardless, Romanian has a lot of influence from Slavic tongues, as well as some from Hungarian (which is not even from the Indo-European family). Italian, as mentioned above, is probably the language that has the least non-Romance influences of the Latin descendant tongues. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/10 "2009-04-07T05:18:31Z")
It’s often said that the [Sardinian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language) language has preserved more archaic features from Latin than any other language, even more so than Italian. But Sardinian is closer to Spanish than to Italian. Although Mario Pei, in _The Story of Language_, quoted a poem that was worded identically in both Italian and Latin at the same time. (It was a clever trick done by using only Italian feminine singular and masculine plural nouns & adjectives, and 1st-person singular and imperative verbs that haven’t changed from the Latin forms.) I don’t suppose that would be possible in Sardinian. Italian and Sardinian are the only languages that have preserved the Latin infinitive endings _-are, -ere, -ire_ unchanged from Latin. Wikipedia calls Sardinian an “archaic neo-Latin” language rather than a Romance language. I wonder what distinction was intended by that. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/11 "2009-04-07T12:55:52Z")
> [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](#): > > I’ve heard that from a Romanian, too. But no - unsurprisingly, I’d say Italian is the closest Romance language to Latin. > > **ETA** : on the other hand, Wikipedia tells me that Romanian has a six-declension nominal system, which would make me say it’s closer to Latin grammatically, if not in vocabulary and tone. > > **ETA again** : Uh, I can’t read. It only has three declensions. So I’m on the fence. Do you mean declension or cases? [Latin has only 5 declensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension). Either way, IMHO, I think that resemblance in case systems is something that might make us think that languages are similar because it’s one of the first things people think of when they think of learning languages, but really, it’s not that important as a characteristic of a language. For instance, German and Dutch are highly alike, presumably more so by some accounts than either language is to English, even though German has four cases and Dutch does not have a case system (anymore). The German case system shares some aspects with both the Latin one and those systems present in Slavic languages, but no one would say German’s closer to Latin or Russian than to Dutch. (And then there’s Bulgarian, a Slavic language all the way, but it has no case system. Still, not more like Dutch than like Russian). My point is that even if Romanian and Latin had the same system of declensions or the same number of cases, that wouldn’t necessarily mean to me that there more similar to each other than to other Romance languages that have no case system. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/12 "2009-04-07T13:16:25Z")
> [@MikeG](#): > > Whoa, flashback. Petra was big when I was a kid living in a christian commune in Chicago. Nitpick: Petra was never _big_. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/13 "2009-04-07T13:54:47Z")
Thanks, everyone – I **knew** about Romanian, but that this video text mght be that language whooshed right by me, I guess. **Johanna** , I’ve seen it suggested that Sard is an outlier to the other Romance languages, sharing little with them besides origin from Vulgar Latin. OTOH, I’ve also seen it described as a dialect of Italian. Subjective, of course, but what standards would you use to resolve that? ---
**Author:** ![MikeG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikeg/32/4329_2.png) [@MikeG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeG)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/14 "2009-04-07T15:10:28Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > Nitpick: Petra was never _big_. Heh, maybe not absolutely but in the relative isolation of the commune, oh yeah. I met them along with most of the other well known Xtian rock names e.g. Keith Green, Amy Grant, and Daniel Amos. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/15 "2009-04-07T18:40:21Z")
I’ve heard a few times that Romansh is closest to Latin. It’s spoken in SE Switzerland ---
**Author:** ![ruritanian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@ruritanian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruritanian)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/16 "2009-04-07T19:07:25Z")
I speak Romanian and this _is_ Romanian - albeit mostly written without the usual diacritics, e.g. “ă” is written as “a” - hence (perhaps) the confusion. The text generally follows the song; in addition, there are quotes from the Bible identifiable by the reference at the end (e.g., Petru 3:21 is Peter 3:21). ---
**Author:** ![Laalune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Laalune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laalune)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/17 "2009-04-07T19:26:32Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > FWIW, Romanians like to claim their language is closest to Latin. Any truth to this? Well I am Romanian, and I’ve never heard this claim! I was taught that Italian is closest to Latin. Romanian is heavily influenced by Slavic languages (something like 25%, if I remember correctly). On the net people don’t usually use diacritics, they use “sh” for “ş”, “tz” for “ţ” and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/18 "2009-04-07T20:14:32Z")
From my exhaustive research, i.e. reading Wikipedia articles, I have learned that according to most linguists, Sardinian is archaic particularly in its phonology, retaining more consonant clusters than the other Romance languages which have lost nearly all of them. IIRC Sardinian has gone its own way in the origin of the definite articles, having formed them from the Latin demonstratives _ipsos_, _ipsas_, and so on rather than _illo_, _ille_. (You can see where modern articles like _la_, _le_, _lo_, and _el_ come from. Romanian is more archaic morphologically. It retains a rectus/obliquus system of two cases, with --again IIRC–the oblique taking in genitive and dative, and the other case taking in everything else. I was interested to learn that the Romanian word for cousin is _kumnat_. It didn’t seem to relate to anything I know in any other language. Then it hit me: a _cognate_ is a pair of “cousin” words in two related languages. They may or may not have the same meaning, but if they don’t, the meanings of the two are usually related in some way. _Brother_ and \*Brüder, both mean the same thing in English and German respectively. If you imagine pronouncing _cognate_ as those letters would be read in Italian, then it does sound very much like _kumnat_ indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Laalune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Laalune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laalune)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/19 "2009-04-07T20:50:33Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I was interested to learn that the Romanian word for cousin is _kumnat_. Nitpick: “cumnat” means “brother-in-law”, and it does come from the Latin “cognate”. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194/20 "2009-04-07T21:58:04Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > Nitpick: Petra was never _big_. They were probably the biggest Xtian rock band there was in the 80s. Not as _good_ as a metal band based in Chicago commune I could name, but the biggest for sure. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-this-language-anyway/492194.md?page=2)