To try everything Brilliant has to offer - free - for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/polyMATHY . The first 200 to sign up will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription. Watch me speak Latin and Ancient Greek to a Greek Man! ruclips.net/video/Yvfs5aCIy0g/видео.html ⬅on my other channel ScorpioMartianus ERRATA below. To see more Latin Comprehensibility Experiments, watch this playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLQQL5IeNgck0CHikelCGjqi7sZAcF1c7K See AncientLanguage.com/ for more on how to learn Latin with outstanding teachers. At 03:34 I translated "pira" as "grapes," but they are "pears" - I have no idea why; I guess I was thinking about how much I like grapes. 🍷 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus" learn.storylearning.com/lu-promo?affiliate_id=3932873 🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/54058196
If you try this using Attic Greek in Athens, are the languages similar enough that it becomes unchallenging? Edit: answered in the other thread. Thanks. 😊
Here's a thought: What if Romania, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal all started teaching Latin in their schools and made it a second official language for their countries; then they form some sort of trade or political union something akin to the EU and Latin would be the official language of the union used for all trade and diplomacy among the nations?
It's so fun seeing the thought process on people's faces when they realize "why is this guys Italian so weird - wait what the hell is he speaking - OH okay this is Latin" -B
I know it’s a joke, but it's actually truer than one might expect: Italian dialects/languages can be so different and obscure (both in pronunciation/sound shift _and_ in parts of the vocabulary!) to speakers of other dialects that Italians could basically be tricked into believing that some made-up Romance sentences were from some random Italian dialect (this has been used for studies in psycholinguistics; of course here it wouldn’t happen, they recognize Latin from school). Or the other way round: an Italian colleague of mine from Taranto has told me that her father was once sent to talk to a ‘foreign’ trucker that had arrived at their company (her father was their language expert because he understands a bit of Spanish and like three words of English 😂). But it turned out that the guy was Italian, too: he was “from Noci, province of Bari” _(d’ Nauc’, provincia d’ Ber’)._ 😭😄
Just to add, but depending on the specific word, some words might vary very little from latin. In continental southern dialects for example, cherry usually stays something similar to "cerasa", in my own for example it's "cerase" (with the "e" making a specific sound). If I hadn't studied latin I would probably initially think that he was speaking in some dialect honestly! Great work to both of you by the way, from Italy!
As an old Spaniard (72), I can say we had to study a lot of Latin language when I was a boy (10), for 7 years. So I could understand almost everything at first. It was curious and touching to me to listen to it after so many years! Thank you very much!
We (in Italy) still study Latin in high school, even to this day, for 5 years. And, if you choose to go to go to certain high school (in Italian ''Liceo Classico''), you have to study also Ancient Greek. I think same happens in Spain, as you describe.
I'm just 33 and studied Latin at school in Germany. I can understand what he says but I couldn't speak it as in I couldn't find the words and grammar quickly enough to have a conversation but I completely understand what he says so we could at least converse in two languages :D
@@klamin_original The same thing happens to me with German. I studied it in high school and still remember the syntax, grammar and pronunciation. When a German speaks to me slowly I understand what he says but if I have to speak I get confused and use the English glossary which contains many more Latin terms than German. The limits of Latin are given by the fact that, apart from Catholic priests, in modern schools, there was no conversation, relegating it to the role of a dead language.
The human brain's neural translation is something else! Something that (unfortunately) I feel we will never be able to recreate with online translators (though I may be taken for a fool yet!). I heard whispers that we're born with the ability to speak and understand every language, but we just lose it over time. Damn transitioning from our embriotic stem cells! LOL! (AKA Aging)
@@demetriusstiakkogiannakes1326 usually not, largely due to extensive phonological changes, including deletion of *w between vowels and in onset, debuccalization of *s to /h/, fronting of *u to /y/, devoicing of *bʰ *dʰ *ɡʰ to /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ and triple reflex of labialized velars *kʷ depending on the following vowel to /p, t, k/. The grammar, however, remained fairly similar to late PIE
@@demetriusstiakkogiannakes1326 No modern speaker could understand PIE. However, a few random words would come through. For example, ‘*wodr’ is one of the words for ‘water’!
Very enlightening. I am in Maryland, USA . I speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and a little French, enough to survive there . I see and hear the relationship in all Latin based languages. It is so much fun to learn another language and travel . Have a nice day everyone . I love you
I like how he is actually using a lot of direct language pedagogical techniques to help people understand what he is saying. Defining words, elaborating on the question, using gestures, but always staying in the target language. It’s very friendly and unintimidating and people seem to respond quite well to it.
I do absolutely not understand Latin or Italian (only Danish, English, German, mostly Swedish, Norwegian, and some Dutch). But his pedadogical way of gesturing and explaining, plus me drawing from the languages I do know, actually made it possible for me to understand bits of what he said.
@@DMG380 Classical Latin sounded out pretty much every syllables. Vulgar Latin started "dropping" syllables and evolved into modern Romance Languages.
@@taoliu3949 I'm not a historian so apologies if my expansion comes with its own errors. But I think it's worth mentioning that "Classical Latin" in this context would mean something akin to "Received Pronunciation" in English. Or in other words 'educated and upper class Latin speakers' pronounced every syllable with regular rules. However much like English, Latin was the language of a governmental, mercantile, and cultural empire. So you've got people far away from each other who might only be half able to read or write along with changing trends in speech affecting the evolution of what would become modern Romance Languages. I add all this because the word Vulgar has a different common meaning nowadays beyond "the common people". Just repeating that you're essentially right but it's worth pointing out that "Vulgar Latin" is not bad Latin, it's just common Latin. So another way to think of it is like the difference between a local dialect and how you speak in school or for a presentation. Side note, there have been some interesting observations by linguists and videos done here on youtube about how words that mean "common" or "middle" tend to take on a meaning of "bad" over time.
canis est Cerberus. (Cerberus est canis Romanus, in Pompeii habitābat, dominus ēum Lūcius Caecilius Iucundus erat). And wow that last was not conjugated properly, if I even got the right words at all! It's been a while!!)
I am Italian, I studied Latin during my high school. I did love it! And my dearest friends as well...we tried to speak Latin most of time. It was a lot of fun. So now your video is making me mildly emotional. Bene fecisti, amice!
Very interesting video. I am from Rome. I would like to add some useful information for non-Italian and non-Roman viewers. Parco di Tor Tre Teste is a public park in the suburbs of Rome, close to a working class neighborhood with the same name. The most part of the people being interviewed by Luke Ranieri state that they live in the next district. In Italy, Latin is still studied at high school, but not in all the types of secondary school. It is just studied in “Liceo Classico” and “Liceo Scientifico” the hardest and most prestigious branches of high schools, attended by 35% of the students primarily coming from well-off and educated families. I am specifying it just because, given the location and the way of speaking Italian of the people (with a very strong Roman accent), it seems very likely that the majority of the park-goers never studied Latin before. Since Luke’s experiment is twice interesting.
I did something similar at a central train station in Germany recently. Little did I know that I was speaking to a classical philology professor. The interaction was both hilarious as well as confusing for the both of us.
I ended up speaking to a couple in Sabadell who turned out to be Latin & Ancient Greek professors, though they didn't speak much unfortunately, more of the reading/writing kind :(
I think it probably also helps that you know Italian lol. Which let's you where they are at in the conversation when they respond. I can imagine dialogue is still possible, but it would just take a little longer I'd think if the person speaking Latin didn't know Italian. Thanks for the video, I love your stuff!
This is really awesome; if we had more content like this, more people would be willing to learn Latin, or at least learn about Latin. When the gentleman picks up on cherries and pears and understands what they mean, or the "prefer" words, it's basically a practical demonstration of non-linguists still having an innate grasp of cognates and phonetic change over time. Once my Romanian friend and I tried doing this: we'd both speak in a sort of creole, where I'd speak in a half French half Occitan-ish made up speech on the spot, and he'd do the same with French and Romanian--basically speaking non-existent Romance languages being improvised on the spot, we kept the phonetics close enough to a typical Italian sound, similar to how you'd switch to Ecclesiastical at some points so the cognates would be clearer. We managed to spend the entire day conversing with no problem
Well said! I've had Spanish speaking friends say things like "I didn't know you knew Spanish!" but I was writing things in Latin. A Norwegian friend amuses me by the way she perceives German. It breaks my heart that so many people are afraid of language learning, though, so many myths about it are out there. That you can't learn past a certain age or whatever.
So true. I am a Bulgarian and have spoken with a Russian and Serbian each one of us speaking our own language + mixing what little we know of each others and had no issue communicating simple things. Love your music by the way.
@@danielroy8232 It sounds that way, but everyday people do it all the time. Slavs (Polish, Ukrainians, etc.) pick up each other's languages that way real quick...
it's legendary when the guy immediately gets "cerasa" (cherry), which is very different from "ciliegia", because "cerasa" is also how they call cherries in lots of southern dialects
@@ITALICVS effettivamente sì. io ho sempre "scirega" (sono milanese), ma penso che anche "sciresa" sia plausibile vista la somiglianza al francese "cerise". e anche lì la radice latina è sempre la stessa
Nel dialetto siciliano ci sono tante parole che possono essere di tanti origini come arabo, spagnolo, e francese. Come l'uva, in siciliano si dice rascina viene dal francese "raisin". La mela si dice pumu, pomme in francese.
I understood almost everything as a Spanish speaker, in both the Latin and Italian, in my experience some words that are nothing alike between Spanish and Italian, are usually similar to the French word.
@@godofthisshit is really dead when it has a bunch of offshoots? That's like saying English is dead, because old English "died". Italian is basically modern "Latin".
have you tried to go to sardinia? it is told that the sardinian language is the closest language existing to latin, it has even kept some of the grammar. it might be interesting the comparation between latin and sardinian
@Riccardo Pibiri In Casteddu, podit essi. Fadiddu bandai in Nùgoro a biri chi su Sardu est morrendusì. In prus: s'Italianu regionali sardu, fintzas su nostru de Casteddu, allogat meda costrutus de su sardu e duncas de su latinu etotu e assora no diat essi sa pròpriu cosa ca in sa penisula. Fradi miu, cun totu su coru: fortzis est genti arrimada cumment'e tui chi est cuncordendi su problema in primis. Tui, dda stimas, sa lingua tua, in primu logu?
@Riccardo Pibiri non è così tragica per come la descrivi, abbiamo ancora qualche speranza di farla rinascere come lingua. Per Luke gli consiglierei di andare in qualche paesino del nuorese, li il sardo è parlato attivamente anche dai bambini.
You should definitely try this experiment in Sardinia and see the reaction of locals speaking sardo. Pretty sure it's gonna be interesting as our language, as you might know already, is considered to be the most direct evolution from ancient Latin or even viceversa, as some recent theories are saying. Great video and congratulations for what you do! =)
Consider that we also kept the hard sounds of the consonants, like Chentu ( kentu) for one hundred, or Chelu ( Kelu) for the sky. But in my nuorese dialect we also have some sentences that are almost identical to Latin, like: "Ponemi tres panes in sa bertula" that in Latin is "Pone mihi tres panes in bertula" that means "Put me three breads in the saddlebag".
My grandpa (Sardinia) used "UBE" for "Where" in his dialect. We say Domu for House. And many others sardinian-latin words. Hundreds...maybe thousand. Go to Sardinia.
well its a dead languange, but since Italian, spanish, french, rumanian and portuguese come from latin thats why we are all latinos we can understand easly between us
@@Clearskies3848 That depends, i talked to several italian friends and they can understand my Uruguayan Spanish really easy, maybe because Uruguay was populated with Italians and Spanish and we dont really have native-americans over here, they were all killed when europeans arrived. So Spanish from Uruguay has that italian accent, and i also can understand italians talking, the same goes for portuguese is way easier to understand than italian...
@@Tonyx.yt. English is still a Germanic language because the current percentage of the lexicon doesn't matter in language classification only the language's actual origin. English started as a Germanic Anglo-Saxon language that over time gained a lot of Romance vocabulary due to French rule.
@@Tonyx.yt. Yes but most everyday speech is Germanic. You have to account for the fact that the other 2/3rds includes medical and scientific jargon, which is almost exclusively Latin and Greek--and that this pattern is shared by most European languages. I myself used mostly Germanic words here and could have used less Latin ones and still sounded normal. I have never studied German or Dutch or Swedish and can still find myself understanding chunks of what they say. German is the hardest to make intelligible without studying it because it's so....casey. English has lost almost all of that. Can make out some things in written Danish, but spoken it's pronounced so wildly. On the other hand, I'm fluent in French and even a stereotypical pop cultural French/Romance phrase like "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" is nonsensical unless you studied French or a Romance language or were taught its meaning.
@@matt04eldorado76 All students at our high school in Germany learn Latin as their first foreign language. They only learn English as a second foreign language. As a third foreign language, they have to choose between ancient Greek and French. They can voluntarily learn Italian as their fourth foreign language.
@@frexelsio6786 There are around 200 high schools of this type in Germany. We call these high schools "altsprachliches Gymnasium", which means "ancient language high school". Another term is "humanistisches Gymnasium”. 🙂
I confirm. Spanish speaker here, and I had no trouble understanding the conversations while washing the dishes. Pretty amazing, though I have to say that the context helps a lot.
I really like this video - I like to scroll the comments and see what I can understand while listening which is very little but knowing a bit of Spanish, French, and Italian as well as the pre- and suffixes we often use in English helps a lot!!
This is so good, love it! It highlights the hilarity of arguments like "how come there are still apes if that's where we come from?" Drawing static boxes around fluid processes leads to such arguments if people don't comprehend that's what they're doing.
When I was 15, we went to Italy, with my Latin class. With Latin (and French), we were able to communicate quite well. I have to say that it was easier than our trip in Germany, although at the time we had learned German for 5 years and Latin for only 2 (but we’re french).
In my opinion as someone whose mother language is slavic and second one is english I found it far easier to learn italian instead of german. I studied german for 12 years in school, I can understand it, but I absolutely can’t write it and I can barely speak it. I’ve been learning italian for a tear now and I can definetly see the difference between the two, italian is far easier to learn.
Lucio, I would love to see you come down to Magna Graecia - especially the Province of Lecce - and speak to the people of the five or six communities that still speak Griko Salentino. Pax et Bonum!
Luke I'm so glad people like you exists, I'm Italian, and I purposely have chosen a liceo without latin when I was young, the reason being they tried to teach me in middle school but everything was an endless memorization of cases, and I've noticed that despite the hours and efforts even people that end the liceo classico don't speak Latin and Greek at all and they can't even translate from Italian to latin, they only learn written latin to Italian. I blame the obsolete method, there is no reason why people can speak English (sort of) at the end of high school but not latin even if they study it more.
i chose the liceo with latin and unfortunaly its a very obsolete method of teaching. i have a lot of issues with the latin subject and my grades are pretty low despite all the efforts i put in.
@@ricplays5905 well my tip would be to use courses like assimil or the one Luke is promoting in the video alongside the standard homeworks, it's far less boring and in the long run far more effective, if you are from liceo classico Imagine having the second test from the graduating exam and finish it in a an hour without too much headaches.
The exact same thing happens in Greece. When I finished school I could speak both English and German but I couldn't even write a sentence in ancient Greek because the teaching methods are so obsolete
assimil is great indeed. Different tools depending on starting languange to target one, yet always immersive method. Also, always funny, with jokes etc and some good insights on the culture. Anyway - and unfortunately - in italian high schools you don't need to speak in latin to get high grades, you need to translate, fullstop :-/ just keep studying the dull method, take it as a puzzle to solve, not to communicate.
As a Vietnamese French speaker, I couldn't understand anything without reading the subtitles. It does related a lot but sounds far more different. Thank you !
Hello from a Greek Aromanian speaker! I'm always fascinated by the similarities between Latin, this great historic language, and our little non-written, non-official, verbal language of the mountains and the countryside that came to life through it. I'd love to hear if you've ever been interested in our language, which unfortunately is rapidly dying, and if you possibly have tried to learn more about it. Keep up the great work!
I don't think aromanian is dying. Maybe you should visit the Dobrogea region in Romania. There are more than 2 million aromanians there. Also many romanians speak it, because is basically a romanian dialect,easy to understand and speak.
Imagine Jackson Crawford going around asking Danish/Swedish/Norwegian people what their names are in Old Norse haha It might go well if he tried it in Iceland.
@@polyMATHY_Luke As a native swedish speaker, most of us would just look at him weird and go "Where the [expletive] did you learn swedish?!" Lol I can understand most basic sentences of old norse (weather, time of day, greetings and basic questions), but anything more complicated and it might as well be some norwegian gibberish!
I could understand that though I only know a smattering of latin or Italian. (I am an educated, native speaker of English with some ability in Spanish.) It all depends on the vocabulary required for the situation
So interesting! Watched this video around the time it first came out. I found it interesting that the Italians could understand the Latin, but I couldn't understand either. Rewatching it now after learning Italian for a few months, I can understand quite a bit of both!
This summer I spent a half term studying in Rome. I was going to Mass in Latin almost every day and I can say that it helped me understand the sense of what people were saying in Italian a fair amount, given that I don’t speak a lick of Italian 😅
Capolavoro totale! Continua così Luke - è davvero fantastico vederti in Italia e fare questi video davvero meravigliosi. Se dovessi mai organizzare un incontro da qualche parte con un pubblico, faccelo sapere!
I had Latin in school for over 4 years. It‘s funny how, if he asked me, I could actually answer in Latin 😂 . I wonder what his reaction would be, if someone actually answered in Latin.
@@ski2mi From a formal study of classical Latin. After three years of such study at the high-school level, I was able to score 667 (from within 200-800) on the Latin College-Board achievement test (the CEEB), which was rated as particularly good
@@ski2mi We have documents of studies showing that. For example, we know the C is hard in classical latin because it was reported in multiple commentaries and documents. Its not a "might" we know many things about classical pronunciation for a fact, around 98% accuracy
This was really interesting. I would have LOVED to hear you talking to people from Sardinia who speak Logudorese dialect or, people from the Alto Adige Dolomite Mountains area who speak the Ladin language, both of which are supposed to be very close to Latin.
you are such a humble guy, so great guy, so friendly, and so intelligent... i love history also, also roman and greek, my wife is southitalian, pls continue with your nice content...
Hi Luke! I've been following your channel for a while now and I'm always fascinated by your videos. I'm Italian and I find easier to us to understand the ecclesiastical pronunciation since it's the one used in schools and in the Catholic world (and it sounds closer to italian). I noticed that in this video you switched sometimes from classical to ecclesiastical when you wanted to help people to better guess/understand your sentences. The first time I heard you speaking I didn't even know there was a classical pronunciation and I thought you were highly educated about grammar but the "typical American guy" screwing up "our" pronunciation. I quickly realised I was so wrong and I have to thank you since you tought me someting new.
Me encanta tu canal de RUclips. Soy de Costa Rica, el Español es mi lengua materna. Al leer el latín se comprende fácilmente. Por contexto se saca lo que quiere decir.
Once again, I felt like I'm participating in this video as a native Spanish speaker and as someone who has studied Portuguese as well. I try to avoid reading subtitles and try to understand the whole conversation through my skills on the languages that I've already mentioned. It is really interesting and the thought of finding some random person trying to communicate with me in latin seems to be a fun experience.
Sensational! They get a very close idea, enough to keep a certain level of basic conversation!! But even I, as a Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese speaking person can keep a basic level of conversation with an Italian. We share the same root language.
Italian is very close to Latin when it comes to its vocabulary and pronunciation. This is the fundamental reason, I think, Italians can understand the gist of Latin. Aside from the fact that Italians learn Latin in high school. Spanish speakers may have a slightly harder time understanding Latin but it just depends on the context-- i.e., if the words/phrases used in Latin are very similar to Spanish. For example, for many Spanish speakers, they would have a slightly harder time understanding the following: Salve, ut facis hodie? Americanum sum. Mihi placet pira et mala. Bibo cervisia quoque. But... They would understand the following much better: Bonus dies, quomodo vales? Quid facis hodie? Ego Americanum sum. Mihi placet pira et ceresia. Bibo cervisiam quoque. Pone in mensam et sellas. Ponlo en la mesa y sillas.
Not all Italians study Latin in school. As Diego mentioned, Latin is only studied in specific types of high schools belonging to a category called "liceo" (there are more than 2 types of liceo) but there they only study ecclesiastic Latin and they don't study it as a language: the point in those classes is more translating pieces of Latin literature. 99% of the students struggle a lot with Latin and virtually nobody learns anything more than a few words. I never studied Latin but I could follow all the dialogues in the video because they were simple dialogues and Luke spoke fairly slowly and I'm Sicilian and that helped because some bits are uncanched in my dialect.
It is not ecclesiastic latin, if it is directed to translate classic pieces of Latin literature. And usually students learn much more than a few words. way more than a few.
@@animadverte It is ecclesiastic Latin because what they "translate" has been adapted through the centuries and sorry but no, people don't really learn much in high school unless they are really interested and make an extra effort. Those few who did learn something are exceptions (either they had very good and passionate teachers who deviated from the classical way of teaching Latin or they made an extra effort as students).
The amount of skill and study and intimate knowledge of both Latin and modern Italian that this required should not be understated. My personal favourite moment is around 6 minutes when he is discussing buying food, and refers to food in a way the couple does not first understand. So he then uses another term, cibum, but he pronounces it with a hard “c” sound, which is how it would have been pronounced in classical Latin. The couple does not understand this and so he repeats the same word (cibum) but with a soft “c” sound. The couple then picks up that he’s referring to food, as in Italian the most widely used term is “cibo”, with a soft “c”. He did the above to give them better and better hints, and he knew it would help because he knew that Italian phonetics was majorly influenced by the ecclesiastical Latin being spoken at the time that the Vulgar Latin was also in its various forms. And one chief characteristic of ecclesiastical Latin is that the “c” becomes soft before an i or e. This is something Italian directly retained (other languages like Spanish and Portuguese further deviated). He had to know all of this to offer up these tips. It’s so interesting seeing such a masterful grasp of historical linguistics
I'm Italian and understanding those people speak is so fun Also those are simple sentences that use words that are really similar to Italian so they are understandable. Really fun video tho Latin is also taught in most high schools in Italy
Che video interessante ! Sono polacco ma so parlare fluentemente l'italiano e ho anche studiato il francese e credo anch'io di essere in grado di capire il latino piu' o meno come gli italiani intervistati a Roma.
I am very late on this but this is absolutely fascinating stuff. I am Canadian with Italian origins. I am fluent in Italian, Spanish, and my central Italian dialect (Ciociaro). I am also proficient in French and Portuguese. So with those grammars and vocabularies in my head, the sparks and familiarities ticking while watching this video were incredibly interesting.
This brought back my high school Latin . I understood him! I also speak some Spanish, which was a huge help. I'm not surprised that Italians could figure out what he was saying. But they wouldn't have been able to figure out a complicated conversation, other than a few words.
Clever answer: "Cicero qualche volta!" ahahah I don't know if the lady made this pun expressly, but in several dialects of northern Italy, < chiacchierare > (to chat, to converse) is said with a postalveolar < c >, i.e.: < ciciarare > ; conjugated to the first person, it is: < ciciaro > or < cicero >. So it sounds like : "I chat... sometimes". A nice wordplay. ^^
I SO wish l had you as my Latin teacher back in my Liceo’s years!!! l’m italian and what made me hate Latin (and generally any other foreign language) was the teaching method used in Italy; the only thing that is “teached” is the grammar, nothing else matters in the italian schools, at least up to high school level. Can you imagine that? 5 years of Liceo studying english grammar and almost no conversation training, almost no native speakers’ pronounciation examples (we got it by own initiative from songs, not from the school)… and that was (l believe it’s the same today) what we got. And now aplly the same method with Latin… 🤦🏼♂
Have you ever considered coming to Switzerland (Grisons) talking to the local Romansh-speaking people in latin? Romansh has developed from latin but due to very remote and isolated valleys back in the day, it evolved very different than Italian. It’s kind of a latin-lombard mix.
I had a classical education in the UK which included some basic study of latin for a couple of years. As an adult I’ve spent some time learning German, Danish, French and Spanish and it’s surprising how much of what you were saying in Latin I could understand. I even impressed myself!! 😂
I absolutely love your Chanel Luke. One of the best on here. This in particular, is one of the best you have done as it demonstrates through sound, inflection & social interaction the ability to communicate in an historical language with one of the present day. Who says Latin is a dead language, I argue that even with the few that speak it fluently it will live on. Xxx
I was in Sardinia (Cagliari / South Sardinia) a few weeks ago. The people there speak sardic language which is heavily influenced by Latin. Please go and try this experiment there.
When I was in Sardinia, I was greeted with buongiorno, or however it's spelled. I don't speak italian at all, so I can't really say if they talked in Sardinian or Italian, but it sounded like Italian to me.
@@aitokoojii1462 it depends on where you've been. For example in Alghero they speak a Spanish dialect. But in Cagliari they speak for sure sardic language which you will hear all day
Amazing. Had a friend, my boss, go off to Italy one time speaking Spanish. He got along fairly well. I was a bit shocked not only that Latin would pass with Italians but that I could understand half of it (not looking) though my last Latin instruction was 65 years ago. I did live in Syracuse...(New York :-) ) and when very young live in an Italian neighborhood.
Bravi tutti i partecipanti, mi ha fatto particolarmente piacere vedere quella giovane coppia capire così bene il latino. 👏🏻👏🏻 Gratias ago tibi Magister Lucius. 🔥
6:14 hearing the kids play hide and seek in the background made me happy, because it reminded me of when I played with my friends. (I’m italian btw so if I wrote something wrong it’s for that.)
I'm French and my name is Louis, just like this Italian man in the video whose name is Lugi. Here in France we have lots of medieval historical texts written in Latin that mention the French kings called Louis. "Ludovicus" is the form that appears in most of them. So basically you could call this guy "Ludovice" in vocative. ^^
ive said this for years! and the ubi sumus dove siamo one summed it up perfectly you can hear the evolution (or devolution depending on your perspective ) man o man thanks for this vid man
you are a master linguist... wow. I know Portuguese and I can pick up like half the words when I read the subtitles, and like 20% by listening. I tried learning latin but it in very difficult with no one else to talk to or media to listen to. You are very good.
I'm Iaponus. Now i'm in Gallia and learning the language. The pronunciation and listening are too difficult for me. On the other hand, listening latin and italiano are easier ! And surprised Italian is so similar to French in written form! I love your video.
French is closer to Italian tha Spanish is actually. Not the pronounciation but the written form it is. My opinion, I know other people have a different one :-)
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At 03:34 I translated "pira" as "grapes," but they are "pears" - I have no idea why; I guess I was thinking about how much I like grapes. 🍷
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You should try to speak Latin to Romanians or Sardinian speakers one time 😁👀 be interesting to see that 😎
If you try this using Attic Greek in Athens, are the languages similar enough that it becomes unchallenging?
Edit: answered in the other thread. Thanks. 😊
Thanks for the compliment 😊 Italians like me love the Latin 🇮🇹
Here's a thought: What if Romania, France, Spain, Italy and Portugal all started teaching Latin in their schools and made it a second official language for their countries; then they form some sort of trade or political union something akin to the EU and Latin would be the official language of the union used for all trade and diplomacy among the nations?
@@caribbeanman3379 sarebbe fantastico/It will be fantastic!!!!
It's so fun seeing the thought process on people's faces when they realize "why is this guys Italian so weird - wait what the hell is he speaking - OH okay this is Latin"
-B
Hahaha. Thanks for watching, Blue!
OMG OSP STOP HIJACKING MY ENTIRE RUclips FEED
I know it’s a joke, but it's actually truer than one might expect: Italian dialects/languages can be so different and obscure (both in pronunciation/sound shift _and_ in parts of the vocabulary!) to speakers of other dialects that Italians could basically be tricked into believing that some made-up Romance sentences were from some random Italian dialect (this has been used for studies in psycholinguistics; of course here it wouldn’t happen, they recognize Latin from school). Or the other way round: an Italian colleague of mine from Taranto has told me that her father was once sent to talk to a ‘foreign’ trucker that had arrived at their company (her father was their language expert because he understands a bit of Spanish and like three words of English 😂). But it turned out that the guy was Italian, too: he was “from Noci, province of Bari” _(d’ Nauc’, provincia d’ Ber’)._ 😭😄
Wooo! Maybe a crossover in the future?
Just to add, but depending on the specific word, some words might vary very little from latin. In continental southern dialects for example, cherry usually stays something similar to "cerasa", in my own for example it's "cerase" (with the "e" making a specific sound). If I hadn't studied latin I would probably initially think that he was speaking in some dialect honestly!
Great work to both of you by the way, from Italy!
As a native English speaker, I understood almost everything; I read the subtitles.
😎
That'll do it.
Ewwww... A subtitlist!
I'm not a native English speaker but I understood 😂😂😂
L M A O
I speak Portuguese and it’s amazing how you can feel the meaning of what is being said. It’s like recalling a language you never spoke.
¡Qué bueno! Hablo español y me ha pasado lo mismo.
Spanish-speaker here. I feel the same. 😊
Eu não entendi nada kkk
its ur grand grand grandparents' genes
@@amiesportsactually it would be grand x45 parents
As an old Spaniard (72), I can say we had to study a lot of Latin language when I was a boy (10), for 7 years. So I could understand almost everything at first. It was curious and touching to me to listen to it after so many years!
Thank you very much!
It's the same for me, I'm a 65 year old Italian
We (in Italy) still study Latin in high school, even to this day, for 5 years. And, if you choose to go to go to certain high school (in Italian ''Liceo Classico''), you have to study also Ancient Greek. I think same happens in Spain, as you describe.
@@nicolozss You're too young to have it right away. My generation studied Latin from grade 2 to twelve 🤣
I'm just 33 and studied Latin at school in Germany.
I can understand what he says but I couldn't speak it as in I couldn't find the words and grammar quickly enough to have a conversation but I completely understand what he says so we could at least converse in two languages :D
@@klamin_original The same thing happens to me with German. I studied it in high school and still remember the syntax, grammar and pronunciation. When a German speaks to me slowly I understand what he says but if I have to speak I get confused and use the English glossary which contains many more Latin terms than German. The limits of Latin are given by the fact that, apart from Catholic priests, in modern schools, there was no conversation, relegating it to the role of a dead language.
The whole concept of inter-intelligibility between languages is fascinating,
Yeah but in this case it's like a great-grandfather being summoned just to speak with his great-grandson
@@Nico-iv3wr
Somebody better pull up on Luke with some Old English.
The human brain's neural translation is something else! Something that (unfortunately) I feel we will never be able to recreate with online translators (though I may be taken for a fool yet!). I heard whispers that we're born with the ability to speak and understand every language, but we just lose it over time. Damn transitioning from our embriotic stem cells! LOL! (AKA Aging)
Everybody gangsta till the man starts speaking Proto-Indo-European
Gawdawmn
Can Greeks understand Proto Indo European?
@@demetriusstiakkogiannakes1326 usually not, largely due to extensive phonological changes, including deletion of *w between vowels and in onset, debuccalization of *s to /h/, fronting of *u to /y/, devoicing of *bʰ *dʰ *ɡʰ to /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ and triple reflex of labialized velars *kʷ depending on the following vowel to /p, t, k/.
The grammar, however, remained fairly similar to late PIE
I'm willing to be a Lithuanian would be able to hold a short conversation.
@@demetriusstiakkogiannakes1326 No modern speaker could understand PIE. However, a few random words would come through. For example, ‘*wodr’ is one of the words for ‘water’!
You are the kind of people we love to have in Italy,
Man of culture,
Smiley and easy going.
Thank you for spending your time here with us!
Molto gentile
Sorry to intrude but you couldn't have said it better, really! :D
His surname is Ranieri - he is returning to the land of his forefathers!
Well said.
What does even mean ? Everyone is welcome in Italy. We don't classifie people, at least no more.
The young couple just killed it. They understood everything.
@Edd Glassus how do you know?
@@giaume12 is probably because here in italy, the most part of high school teachs latin
@@nicolodesalvo3795 Only liceo scientifico and liceo classico students have Latin in their program.
All other schools don't.
@@itsmeandrea138 linguistic high schools study latin too
He also switched to Ecclesiastical pronunciation.
Lucius, you should try this in Sardinia. The dialect on the island is the nearest thing to Latin
It's a language not a dialect!
@@DP-vm2ddwhats the language?
@@Barfnuggets sardo
Dialetto*
@@davide7933 no è una lingua
Very enlightening. I am in Maryland, USA . I speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and a little French, enough to survive there . I see and hear the relationship in all Latin based languages. It is so much fun to learn another language and travel . Have a nice day everyone . I love you
I like how he is actually using a lot of direct language pedagogical techniques to help people understand what he is saying. Defining words, elaborating on the question, using gestures, but always staying in the target language. It’s very friendly and unintimidating and people seem to respond quite well to it.
I do absolutely not understand Latin or Italian (only Danish, English, German, mostly Swedish, Norwegian, and some Dutch).
But his pedadogical way of gesturing and explaining, plus me drawing from the languages I do know, actually made it possible for me to understand bits of what he said.
Here in Italy we use gestures for everything we say ahahah
Would the quacking be considered pedagogical? 😁
@@Islander2112 yes.
@@siliniaTL 🤌🤌
You speak Latin very clearly. Every syllable is understandable.
Probably not how Latin was actually spoken or you would not have so many Romance languages now.
@@DMG380 he is fairly acurate actually, at least thats his goal
@@DMG380 Classical Latin sounded out pretty much every syllables. Vulgar Latin started "dropping" syllables and evolved into modern Romance Languages.
@@taoliu3949 I'm not a historian so apologies if my expansion comes with its own errors. But I think it's worth mentioning that "Classical Latin" in this context would mean something akin to "Received Pronunciation" in English. Or in other words 'educated and upper class Latin speakers' pronounced every syllable with regular rules. However much like English, Latin was the language of a governmental, mercantile, and cultural empire. So you've got people far away from each other who might only be half able to read or write along with changing trends in speech affecting the evolution of what would become modern Romance Languages. I add all this because the word Vulgar has a different common meaning nowadays beyond "the common people". Just repeating that you're essentially right but it's worth pointing out that "Vulgar Latin" is not bad Latin, it's just common Latin. So another way to think of it is like the difference between a local dialect and how you speak in school or for a presentation. Side note, there have been some interesting observations by linguists and videos done here on youtube about how words that mean "common" or "middle" tend to take on a meaning of "bad" over time.
Em português isso acontece também, vulgar se tornou uma palavra pejorativa. Não se usa mais para algo comum. Assim com a palavra ordinário.
"Et quid est nomen canis" This is the kind of questions I want to be asked by an Italo-American speaking Latin in Rome
canis est Cerberus. (Cerberus est canis Romanus, in Pompeii habitābat, dominus ēum Lūcius Caecilius Iucundus erat).
And wow that last was not conjugated properly, if I even got the right words at all! It's been a while!!)
That one was interesting to me because of how clear it was as a native english speaker
Quid canis agit?
@@DeadLightAdrift canis in mensam stat
@@Teverell should be ablative
As an italian that studied latin and ancient greek in highschool I find it so amazing and beautiful, thank you for this content
I am Italian, I studied Latin during my high school. I did love it! And my dearest friends as well...we tried to speak Latin most of time. It was a lot of fun. So now your video is making me mildly emotional. Bene fecisti, amice!
Very interesting video. I am from Rome. I would like to add some useful information for non-Italian and non-Roman viewers. Parco di Tor Tre Teste is a public park in the suburbs of Rome, close to a working class neighborhood with the same name. The most part of the people being interviewed by Luke Ranieri state that they live in the next district. In Italy, Latin is still studied at high school, but not in all the types of secondary school. It is just studied in “Liceo Classico” and “Liceo Scientifico” the hardest and most prestigious branches of high schools, attended by 35% of the students primarily coming from well-off and educated families. I am specifying it just because, given the location and the way of speaking Italian of the people (with a very strong Roman accent), it seems very likely that the majority of the park-goers never studied Latin before. Since Luke’s experiment is twice interesting.
Grazie, cercavo delle persone che appunto non avevano conoscenza del latino.
i know three heads tower. it's near broken tower
E anche al linguistico,i primi due anni
@@corinnejoness grazie per la puntualizzazione :)
@@julestof "Puntualizzazione" è una parola interessante se ci pensi
As a Roman, this made me cheer and smile more than I could ever think possible. If my smile gets any bigger I am gonna lose the top of my head.
Does City of Rome have Latin course at schools?
@@ankokunokayoubi There are high schools that have Latin courses in Italy
awesome
Damn, you should see a doctor
Ah ah , tu quoque, Fabrizio ?
I did something similar at a central train station in Germany recently.
Little did I know that I was speaking to a classical philology professor. The interaction was both hilarious as well as confusing for the both of us.
I ended up speaking to a couple in Sabadell who turned out to be Latin & Ancient Greek professors, though they didn't speak much unfortunately, more of the reading/writing kind :(
@@graf Too bad they don't talk anymore fluently in ancient languages.
What language did you use? Middle High German?
Oh what a gas.
🙄
WHich train station and do you remember the professor's name?
I love these videos where you speak in Latin, Luke. Gratias tibi.
I think it probably also helps that you know Italian lol. Which let's you where they are at in the conversation when they respond. I can imagine dialogue is still possible, but it would just take a little longer I'd think if the person speaking Latin didn't know Italian. Thanks for the video, I love your stuff!
This is really awesome; if we had more content like this, more people would be willing to learn Latin, or at least learn about Latin. When the gentleman picks up on cherries and pears and understands what they mean, or the "prefer" words, it's basically a practical demonstration of non-linguists still having an innate grasp of cognates and phonetic change over time. Once my Romanian friend and I tried doing this: we'd both speak in a sort of creole, where I'd speak in a half French half Occitan-ish made up speech on the spot, and he'd do the same with French and Romanian--basically speaking non-existent Romance languages being improvised on the spot, we kept the phonetics close enough to a typical Italian sound, similar to how you'd switch to Ecclesiastical at some points so the cognates would be clearer. We managed to spend the entire day conversing with no problem
Well said! I've had Spanish speaking friends say things like "I didn't know you knew Spanish!" but I was writing things in Latin. A Norwegian friend amuses me by the way she perceives German. It breaks my heart that so many people are afraid of language learning, though, so many myths about it are out there. That you can't learn past a certain age or whatever.
this is some advanced level nerd shit and I love it.
So true. I am a Bulgarian and have spoken with a Russian and Serbian each one of us speaking our own language + mixing what little we know of each others and had no issue communicating simple things. Love your music by the way.
@@danielroy8232 It sounds that way, but everyday people do it all the time. Slavs (Polish, Ukrainians, etc.) pick up each other's languages that way real quick...
Haha, this is hilarious! :)
it's legendary when the guy immediately gets "cerasa" (cherry), which is very different from "ciliegia", because "cerasa" is also how they call cherries in lots of southern dialects
Not only southerners but even northerners. In Milan it's similar.. "sciresa"
@@ITALICVS effettivamente sì. io ho sempre "scirega" (sono milanese), ma penso che anche "sciresa" sia plausibile vista la somiglianza al francese "cerise". e anche lì la radice latina è sempre la stessa
I was taught 'a cerasa by my Sicilian mother then I learned it's ciliege in Italian.
a Roma moltissimi le chiamano ancora oggi così, cerase
Nel dialetto siciliano ci sono tante parole che possono essere di tanti origini come arabo, spagnolo, e francese. Come l'uva, in siciliano si dice rascina viene dal francese "raisin". La mela si dice pumu, pomme in francese.
So good to see that actual italians can actually understand latin so well! I loved this video!
Excellent and fascinating video, love the beauty of the Latin and the way you speak. Love the Italians, so bright, engaging and up for it.
I’m so glad to have found you! Listening to you is a great help, as I teach myself Latin.🕊️🕊️🕊️
I understood almost everything as a Spanish speaker, in both the Latin and Italian, in my experience some words that are nothing alike between Spanish and Italian, are usually similar to the French word.
As an Iraqi, I struggle with Egyptian Arabic, which is still Arabic. Algerian Arabic? No Arab from the Middle East can understand that!
@@موسى_7 there are tons of french words in algerian arabic
"sumus" much closer to somos than siamo... for example
As someone who studied French, some key words do sound very similar to French.
@@ericcarlson3746 Exactly!
I love how the faces of the Italian speakers lit up when they understood what you were asking ❤️
Mirabile auditu! Wonderful to hear! But I just used the second supine.
Lol Yes like some kind of genetic memory was hitting them. It is a beautiful language Latin, one they should be very proud of having given the world.
@@selmahare Eh, it's dead for a reason.
@@godofthisshityour grandma is dead for a reason
@@godofthisshit is really dead when it has a bunch of offshoots? That's like saying English is dead, because old English "died". Italian is basically modern "Latin".
have you tried to go to sardinia? it is told that the sardinian language is the closest language existing to latin, it has even kept some of the grammar. it might be interesting the comparation between latin and sardinian
We'd love to have him!
@Riccardo Pibiri In Casteddu, podit essi. Fadiddu bandai in Nùgoro a biri chi su Sardu est morrendusì. In prus: s'Italianu regionali sardu, fintzas su nostru de Casteddu, allogat meda costrutus de su sardu e duncas de su latinu etotu e assora no diat essi sa pròpriu cosa ca in sa penisula.
Fradi miu, cun totu su coru: fortzis est genti arrimada cumment'e tui chi est cuncordendi su problema in primis. Tui, dda stimas, sa lingua tua, in primu logu?
@Riccardo Pibiri non è così tragica per come la descrivi, abbiamo ancora qualche speranza di farla rinascere come lingua.
Per Luke gli consiglierei di andare in qualche paesino del nuorese, li il sardo è parlato attivamente anche dai bambini.
Yes, it's true. For example, in sardinian "domu" means house and comes from the latin word "domus".
@Riccardo Pibiri Io sono straniera quindi non parlo il Sardo, ma a scuola i miei compangi parlavano in Sardo tra di loro e io non capivo niente
That's f****** awesome ! Language is really something else in its own world and time. Nice vid !
0:37 Upon hearing Latin he felt fear and his first reaction was to fight you.
lmao, made me LOL man!
His ancestors must have been of a tribe that hated Rome 😂😂
LMAO HAHAHAHA
I think after hearing “salve” he was going to greet him raising his hand and then stopped.
That reaction is ‘cause Salve was very used at Mussolini’s era, so that turned into another fascist symbol
You should definitely try this experiment in Sardinia and see the reaction of locals speaking sardo. Pretty sure it's gonna be interesting as our language, as you might know already, is considered to be the most direct evolution from ancient Latin or even viceversa, as some recent theories are saying. Great video and congratulations for what you do! =)
absolutely a Must!, I bought the big "Pittau" dictionary Italia/Sardinian language and it is much clearer where the words came from.
great idea
Consider that we also kept the hard sounds of the consonants, like Chentu ( kentu) for one hundred, or Chelu ( Kelu) for the sky. But in my nuorese dialect we also have some sentences that are almost identical to Latin, like: "Ponemi tres panes in sa bertula" that in Latin is "Pone mihi tres panes in bertula" that means "Put me three breads in the saddlebag".
I was gonna suggest this. I was first introduced to Sardinian through the song Fibai E Tessi by Randagiu Sardu 😎💪
My grandpa (Sardinia) used "UBE" for "Where" in his dialect. We say Domu for House. And many others sardinian-latin words. Hundreds...maybe thousand. Go to Sardinia.
That's because Sardinian is one of the Romance languages, derived from Vulgar latin (not classical Latin).
That is so wonderful. Rome lives forever in its People. Latin is not a dead language.
well its a dead languange, but since Italian, spanish, french, rumanian and portuguese come from latin thats why we are all latinos we can understand easly between us
Neo-latin...@@sos.gamers
@@sos.gamersthat’s not true in the least bit. It’s not easy to understand what is being said going from Spanish to Italian or Italian to Portuguese
@@Clearskies3848 That depends, i talked to several italian friends and they can understand my Uruguayan Spanish really easy, maybe because Uruguay was populated with Italians and Spanish and we dont really have native-americans over here, they were all killed when europeans arrived. So Spanish from Uruguay has that italian accent, and i also can understand italians talking, the same goes for portuguese is way easier to understand than italian...
This was so awesome. Great job . Good photography. Good job editing . Your speech is clear . Dude . Well done
Thanks!
Absolutely awesome to hear this language come alive. Thank you!
I'm a Slavic person watching a video about an Italic/Romance language using a Germanic language to understand.
the majority of words in english came from french, latin and other neo latin languages, only like 1/3 is germanic
@@Tonyx.yt.
English is still a Germanic language because the current percentage of the lexicon doesn't matter in language classification only the language's actual origin. English started as a Germanic Anglo-Saxon language that over time gained a lot of Romance vocabulary due to French rule.
@@Tonyx.yt. Yes but most everyday speech is Germanic. You have to account for the fact that the other 2/3rds includes medical and scientific jargon, which is almost exclusively Latin and Greek--and that this pattern is shared by most European languages. I myself used mostly Germanic words here and could have used less Latin ones and still sounded normal. I have never studied German or Dutch or Swedish and can still find myself understanding chunks of what they say. German is the hardest to make intelligible without studying it because it's so....casey. English has lost almost all of that. Can make out some things in written Danish, but spoken it's pronounced so wildly. On the other hand, I'm fluent in French and even a stereotypical pop cultural French/Romance phrase like "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" is nonsensical unless you studied French or a Romance language or were taught its meaning.
One thing is certain: My Latin students understand and learn Italian easily! Thank you for this video👍🙂
You still have latin people born 2000 years ago by you in your class? Must be amazing, ask them if they want to join me on my reconquista of Gallia
@@matt04eldorado76 All students at our high school in Germany learn Latin as their first foreign language. They only learn English as a second foreign language. As a third foreign language, they have to choose between ancient Greek and French. They can voluntarily learn Italian as their fourth foreign language.
@@ItalianByLatin your high school is very strange !
@@frexelsio6786 There are around 200 high schools of this type in Germany. We call these high schools "altsprachliches Gymnasium", which means "ancient language high school". Another term is "humanistisches Gymnasium”. 🙂
@@ItalianByLatin ah ok I did't know that. That is fine, I understand German :)
I confirm. Spanish speaker here, and I had no trouble understanding the conversations while washing the dishes. Pretty amazing, though I have to say that the context helps a lot.
I really like this video - I like to scroll the comments and see what I can understand while listening which is very little but knowing a bit of Spanish, French, and Italian as well as the pre- and suffixes we often use in English helps a lot!!
This is so good, love it! It highlights the hilarity of arguments like "how come there are still apes if that's where we come from?" Drawing static boxes around fluid processes leads to such arguments if people don't comprehend that's what they're doing.
When I was 15, we went to Italy, with my Latin class. With Latin (and French), we were able to communicate quite well. I have to say that it was easier than our trip in Germany, although at the time we had learned German for 5 years and Latin for only 2 (but we’re french).
Funny how I say C'EST Francais ! means Let's French ! Instead of it's french to moi professuer de français.
In my opinion as someone whose mother language is slavic and second one is english I found it far easier to learn italian instead of german. I studied german for 12 years in school, I can understand it, but I absolutely can’t write it and I can barely speak it. I’ve been learning italian for a tear now and I can definetly see the difference between the two, italian is far easier to learn.
c'est français means it's french@@markoz673bajen8
Lucio, I would love to see you come down to Magna Graecia - especially the Province of Lecce - and speak to the people of the five or six communities that still speak Griko Salentino. Pax et Bonum!
Luke I'm so glad people like you exists, I'm Italian, and I purposely have chosen a liceo without latin when I was young, the reason being they tried to teach me in middle school but everything was an endless memorization of cases, and I've noticed that despite the hours and efforts even people that end the liceo classico don't speak Latin and Greek at all and they can't even translate from Italian to latin, they only learn written latin to Italian. I blame the obsolete method, there is no reason why people can speak English (sort of) at the end of high school but not latin even if they study it more.
i chose the liceo with latin and unfortunaly its a very obsolete method of teaching. i have a lot of issues with the latin subject and my grades are pretty low despite all the efforts i put in.
@@ricplays5905 well my tip would be to use courses like assimil or the one Luke is promoting in the video alongside the standard homeworks, it's far less boring and in the long run far more effective, if you are from liceo classico Imagine having the second test from the graduating exam and finish it in a an hour without too much headaches.
The exact same thing happens in Greece. When I finished school I could speak both English and German but I couldn't even write a sentence in ancient Greek because the teaching methods are so obsolete
assimil is great indeed. Different tools depending on starting languange to target one, yet always immersive method. Also, always funny, with jokes etc and some good insights on the culture.
Anyway - and unfortunately - in italian high schools you don't need to speak in latin to get high grades, you need to translate, fullstop :-/ just keep studying the dull method, take it as a puzzle to solve, not to communicate.
@@elenacipollone3799 the thing is, once you get natural with a language translating isn't a riddle anymore, it's just... Reading.
This was strangely interesting and informative, thank you. Italian people come across as very pleasant and sociable.
As a Vietnamese French speaker, I couldn't understand anything without reading the subtitles. It does related a lot but sounds far more different.
Thank you !
Hello from a Greek Aromanian speaker! I'm always fascinated by the similarities between Latin, this great historic language, and our little non-written, non-official, verbal language of the mountains and the countryside that came to life through it. I'd love to hear if you've ever been interested in our language, which unfortunately is rapidly dying, and if you possibly have tried to learn more about it. Keep up the great work!
My granmother is aromanian from Albania, her language was mix between latin and italian
@@testadelcomputer1839 Well Italian comes from Latin. I'd say Aromanian is a mix of Latin and Greek.
salutari din Romania!
você compreende romeno ?
I don't think aromanian is dying. Maybe you should visit the Dobrogea region in Romania. There are more than 2 million aromanians there. Also many romanians speak it, because is basically a romanian dialect,easy to understand and speak.
Imagine Jackson Crawford going around asking Danish/Swedish/Norwegian people what their names are in Old Norse haha
It might go well if he tried it in Iceland.
I’m sure it would be spectacular
Danes/Swedes/Norwegians don't like talking to strangers and many of them just leave when they can't communicate so it wouldn't be a fun video.
@@robertoprestigiacomo253 The Icelanders would just listen and talk normally with no difficulties :)
@@polyMATHY_Luke As a native swedish speaker, most of us would just look at him weird and go "Where the [expletive] did you learn swedish?!" Lol
I can understand most basic sentences of old norse (weather, time of day, greetings and basic questions), but anything more complicated and it might as well be some norwegian gibberish!
people would probably think he just being a drunk Danish lol
Sono molto felice di vederti parlare in latino e in italiano in modo così naturale 👏🏻👏🏻
I could understand that though I only know a smattering of latin or Italian. (I am an educated, native speaker of English with some ability in Spanish.) It all depends on the vocabulary required for the situation
So interesting! Watched this video around the time it first came out. I found it interesting that the Italians could understand the Latin, but I couldn't understand either. Rewatching it now after learning Italian for a few months, I can understand quite a bit of both!
Well done!
6:45. There's a colloquial verb "cicerare" which means to talk or to chat in Italian. Basically, what she said was "I chat sometimes".
That was so funny! 😂😂😂😂😂
3:21 this guy was also hilarious, the way he listened intently to the dialogue just to say non te capisco at the end
This summer I spent a half term studying in Rome. I was going to Mass in Latin almost every day and I can say that it helped me understand the sense of what people were saying in Italian a fair amount, given that I don’t speak a lick of Italian 😅
Capolavoro totale! Continua così Luke - è davvero fantastico vederti in Italia e fare questi video davvero meravigliosi. Se dovessi mai organizzare un incontro da qualche parte con un pubblico, faccelo sapere!
I had Latin in school for over 4 years. It‘s funny how, if he asked me, I could actually answer in Latin 😂 . I wonder what his reaction would be, if someone actually answered in Latin.
It's so wonderful hearing Latin properly pronounced -- much s it was spoken in the first century
And you know that how?
@@ski2mi From a formal study of classical Latin.
After three years of such study at the high-school level, I was able to score 667 (from within 200-800) on the Latin College-Board achievement test (the CEEB), which was rated as particularly good
@@donsena2013 Congratulations on learning how we think Latin might have been pronounced. That wasn't my question.
@@ski2mi We have documents of studies showing that. For example, we know the C is hard in classical latin because it was reported in multiple commentaries and documents. Its not a "might" we know many things about classical pronunciation for a fact, around 98% accuracy
This was really interesting. I would have LOVED to hear you talking to people from Sardinia who speak Logudorese dialect or, people from the Alto Adige Dolomite Mountains area who speak the Ladin language, both of which are supposed to be very close to Latin.
you are such a humble guy, so great guy, so friendly, and so intelligent... i love history also, also roman and greek, my wife is southitalian, pls continue with your nice content...
Grazie
Hi Luke! I've been following your channel for a while now and I'm always fascinated by your videos. I'm Italian and I find easier to us to understand the ecclesiastical pronunciation since it's the one used in schools and in the Catholic world (and it sounds closer to italian). I noticed that in this video you switched sometimes from classical to ecclesiastical when you wanted to help people to better guess/understand your sentences. The first time I heard you speaking I didn't even know there was a classical pronunciation and I thought you were highly educated about grammar but the "typical American guy" screwing up "our" pronunciation. I quickly realised I was so wrong and I have to thank you since you tought me someting new.
This guy is brave and has no sense of awkwardness whatever. I admire that.
I love this video. And that many of them understand it very well!
as italian, never studied latin, i could understand almost everything (even if with subtitles i admit it's easier)
This video… this channel… both so cool! Thanks for the great content and originality!
I’m really glad you like it!
Me encanta tu canal de RUclips. Soy de Costa Rica, el Español es mi lengua materna. Al leer el latín se comprende fácilmente. Por contexto se saca lo que quiere decir.
Once again, I felt like I'm participating in this video as a native Spanish speaker and as someone who has studied Portuguese as well. I try to avoid reading subtitles and try to understand the whole conversation through my skills on the languages that I've already mentioned. It is really interesting and the thought of finding some random person trying to communicate with me in latin seems to be a fun experience.
Sensational! They get a very close idea, enough to keep a certain level of basic conversation!!
But even I, as a Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese speaking person can keep a basic level of conversation with an Italian. We share the same root language.
Que trabalho incrível, o Latim soa tão bem para os ouvidos, obrigado.
This video made me so happy :) I love it when people are this enthusiastic :)
Italian is very close to Latin when it comes to its vocabulary and pronunciation. This is the fundamental reason, I think, Italians can understand the gist of Latin. Aside from the fact that Italians learn Latin in high school.
Spanish speakers may have a slightly harder time understanding Latin but it just depends on the context-- i.e., if the words/phrases used in Latin are very similar to Spanish.
For example, for many Spanish speakers, they would have a slightly harder time understanding the following:
Salve, ut facis hodie? Americanum sum. Mihi placet pira et mala. Bibo cervisia quoque.
But...
They would understand the following much better:
Bonus dies, quomodo vales? Quid facis hodie? Ego Americanum sum. Mihi placet pira et ceresia. Bibo cervisiam quoque.
Pone in mensam et sellas.
Ponlo en la mesa y sillas.
Only in scientific and classic high school
is like Ancient Greek and greek, different languages
Not all Italians study Latin in school. As Diego mentioned, Latin is only studied in specific types of high schools belonging to a category called "liceo" (there are more than 2 types of liceo) but there they only study ecclesiastic Latin and they don't study it as a language: the point in those classes is more translating pieces of Latin literature.
99% of the students struggle a lot with Latin and virtually nobody learns anything more than a few words.
I never studied Latin but I could follow all the dialogues in the video because they were simple dialogues and Luke spoke fairly slowly and I'm Sicilian and that helped because some bits are uncanched in my dialect.
It is not ecclesiastic latin, if it is directed to translate classic pieces of Latin literature. And usually students learn much more than a few words. way more than a few.
@@animadverte It is ecclesiastic Latin because what they "translate" has been adapted through the centuries and sorry but no, people don't really learn much in high school unless they are really interested and make an extra effort. Those few who did learn something are exceptions (either they had very good and passionate teachers who deviated from the classical way of teaching Latin or they made an extra effort as students).
You are an icon. A legend. A character.
I just loved your video, because I speak portuguese and I could understand some things!!
The amount of skill and study and intimate knowledge of both Latin and modern Italian that this required should not be understated. My personal favourite moment is around 6 minutes when he is discussing buying food, and refers to food in a way the couple does not first understand. So he then uses another term, cibum, but he pronounces it with a hard “c” sound, which is how it would have been pronounced in classical Latin. The couple does not understand this and so he repeats the same word (cibum) but with a soft “c” sound. The couple then picks up that he’s referring to food, as in Italian the most widely used term is “cibo”, with a soft “c”. He did the above to give them better and better hints, and he knew it would help because he knew that Italian phonetics was majorly influenced by the ecclesiastical Latin being spoken at the time that the Vulgar Latin was also in its various forms. And one chief characteristic of ecclesiastical Latin is that the “c” becomes soft before an i or e. This is something Italian directly retained (other languages like Spanish and Portuguese further deviated).
He had to know all of this to offer up these tips. It’s so interesting seeing such a masterful grasp of historical linguistics
I'm Italian and understanding those people speak is so fun
Also those are simple sentences that use words that are really similar to Italian so they are understandable. Really fun video tho
Latin is also taught in most high schools in Italy
Che video interessante ! Sono polacco ma so parlare fluentemente l'italiano e ho anche studiato il francese e credo anch'io di essere in grado di capire il latino piu' o meno come gli italiani intervistati a Roma.
It took so long for another episode luke! 😪 we have waited almost 1 year
I make videos every week. Please watch them too.
I am very late on this but this is absolutely fascinating stuff. I am Canadian with Italian origins. I am fluent in Italian, Spanish, and my central Italian dialect (Ciociaro). I am also proficient in French and Portuguese. So with those grammars and vocabularies in my head, the sparks and familiarities ticking while watching this video were incredibly interesting.
This brought back my high school Latin . I understood him! I also speak some Spanish, which was a huge help.
I'm not surprised that Italians could figure out what he was saying. But they wouldn't have been able to figure out a complicated conversation, other than a few words.
If you can, you shoud do this experiment in Romania too, i think it will be interesting!
Some day
@@polyMATHY_Luke try in Spain, and compare Gallegos, Catalanes and Castellanos
@@jdnw85 He’s done Spain.
0:05 wow, smooth camera work and smooth transition.
Good job, Luke.
Clever answer: "Cicero qualche volta!" ahahah
I don't know if the lady made this pun expressly, but in several dialects of northern Italy, < chiacchierare > (to chat, to converse) is said with a postalveolar < c >, i.e.: < ciciarare > ; conjugated to the first person, it is: < ciciaro > or < cicero >. So it sounds like : "I chat... sometimes". A nice wordplay. ^^
tnx a lot brother ^^beautiful video!!!! greetings from tuscany! the mother place of modern italian language ^^
This is fascinating! I was always curious about this. Thanks!
I started learning Latin after watching your videos, PolýMATHY is really one of the best channel ever tribune luke . 😊😊
I SO wish l had you as my Latin teacher back in my Liceo’s years!!! l’m italian and what made me hate Latin (and generally any other foreign language) was the teaching method used in Italy; the only thing that is “teached” is the grammar, nothing else matters in the italian schools, at least up to high school level. Can you imagine that? 5 years of Liceo studying english grammar and almost no conversation training, almost no native speakers’ pronounciation examples (we got it by own initiative from songs, not from the school)… and that was (l believe it’s the same today) what we got.
And now aplly the same method with Latin… 🤦🏼♂
Have you ever considered coming to Switzerland (Grisons) talking to the local Romansh-speaking people in latin? Romansh has developed from latin but due to very remote and isolated valleys back in the day, it evolved very different than Italian. It’s kind of a latin-lombard mix.
With a few German words thrown in the mix!
He could also go to Val Gherdëina up in the Dolomites, where they speak Ladin.
I had a classical education in the UK which included some basic study of latin for a couple of years. As an adult I’ve spent some time learning German, Danish, French and Spanish and it’s surprising how much of what you were saying in Latin I could understand. I even impressed myself!! 😂
I absolutely love your Chanel Luke. One of the best on here. This in particular, is one of the best you have done as it demonstrates through sound, inflection & social interaction the ability to communicate in an historical language with one of the present day. Who says Latin is a dead language, I argue that even with the few that speak it fluently it will live on. Xxx
Glad you liked it
These videos are beyond fascinating. I appreciate how much effort you put in to make these videos such a joy to watch 🙏
I was in Sardinia (Cagliari / South Sardinia) a few weeks ago. The people there speak sardic language which is heavily influenced by Latin. Please go and try this experiment there.
When I was in Sardinia, I was greeted with buongiorno, or however it's spelled. I don't speak italian at all, so I can't really say if they talked in Sardinian or Italian, but it sounded like Italian to me.
@@aitokoojii1462 it depends on where you've been. For example in Alghero they speak a Spanish dialect. But in Cagliari they speak for sure sardic language which you will hear all day
"salve" is actually a greeting in Italian, it means the same as it does in Latin and it's used in every region of Italy
@@Adler2935 I was in Cagliari for a day, and for almost a week in Seulo.
@@redivivo I don't remember hearing a single salve there, though.
Just entered the channel to see what is new and o, i found something. Thanks🤩
Welcome!
Thanks!! Entered to see some romanian stuff, but i like this too very much because i can understand some. Keep up the work!!🤩
Amazing. Had a friend, my boss, go off to Italy one time speaking Spanish. He got along fairly well.
I was a bit shocked not only that Latin would pass with Italians but that I could understand half of it (not looking) though my last Latin instruction was 65 years ago. I did live in Syracuse...(New York :-) ) and when very young live in an Italian neighborhood.
Bravi tutti i partecipanti, mi ha fatto particolarmente piacere vedere quella giovane coppia capire così bene il latino. 👏🏻👏🏻
Gratias ago tibi Magister Lucius. 🔥
Great video. I would love to see an Old Norse speaker go to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland or the Faroe Islands to see if the same is true.
Try doing this in Nuoro, Sardinia.
At the end of the day Sardinian is the most similar language to Latin
6:14 hearing the kids play hide and seek in the background made me happy, because it reminded me of when I played with my friends.
(I’m italian btw so if I wrote something wrong it’s for that.)
I'm French and my name is Louis, just like this Italian man in the video whose name is Lugi. Here in France we have lots of medieval historical texts written in Latin that mention the French kings called Louis. "Ludovicus" is the form that appears in most of them. So basically you could call this guy "Ludovice" in vocative. ^^
In line with your fruit question, "the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree". Nice to know there is still some Roman left in us Italians.
Roma Invicta!
Fascinating how in calabria dialect we call cherries “cerasi”
ive said this for years! and the ubi sumus dove siamo one summed it up perfectly you can hear the evolution (or devolution depending on your perspective ) man o man thanks for this vid man
Thanks for watching!
you are a master linguist... wow. I know Portuguese and I can pick up like half the words when I read the subtitles, and like 20% by listening. I tried learning latin but it in very difficult with no one else to talk to or media to listen to. You are very good.
I'm Iaponus. Now i'm in Gallia and learning the language. The pronunciation and listening are too difficult for me. On the other hand, listening latin and italiano are easier ! And surprised Italian is so similar to French in written form! I love your video.
French is closer to Italian tha Spanish is actually. Not the pronounciation but the written form it is. My opinion, I know other people have a different one :-)
I was in France in holiday this year and could get along reading the menus with my little knowledge of Italian ehehe