Latin Alive
The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages

Joseph Solodow tells the story of how Latin developed into modern French, Spanish, and Italian, and also deeply affected English.

Joseph B. Solodow (Author)

9780521734189, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 January 2010

370 pages, 7 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

"Joseph Solodow, lecturer in Classics at Yale, joins the expanding ranks of scholars writing accessible histories of Latin, with his Latin Alive...the readers will be attracted by the mixture of perspectives, and the majority of readers will learn details they had not realized before....We can all read it with pleasure. " --BMCR

In Latin Alive, Joseph Solodow tells the story of how Latin developed into modern French, Spanish, and Italian, and deeply affected English as well. Offering a gripping narrative of language change, Solodow charts Latin's course from classical times to the modern era, with focus on the first millennium of the Common Era. Though the Romance languages evolved directly from Latin, Solodow shows how every important feature of Latin's evolution is also reflected in English. His story includes scores of intriguing etymologies, along with many concrete examples of texts, studies, scholars, anecdotes, and historical events; observations on language; and more. Written with crystalline clarity, this book tells the story of the Romance languages for the general reader and to illustrate so amply Latin's many-sided survival in English as well.

1. Introduction: is English a cousin to the Romance languages?
Part I. Latin: 2. The career of Latin, I: from earliest times to the height of empire
3. The career of Latin, II: the empire succeeded by barbarian kingdoms
4. Latin at work, I: nature of the language
names and qualities
pronunciation
5. Latin at work, II: actions and states
6. Vulgar Latin
Part II. The Romance Vocabulary: 7. The lexicon in general
shifts in the meaning of words
8. Changes in the form of words
9. When words collide: conflict and resolution in the lexicon
10. Immigrants: non-Latin words in the Romance languages
Part III. Proto-Romance, or What the Languages Share: 11. The sound of proto-Romance
12. The noun in proto-Romance
13. The verb in proto-Romance
Part IV. Earliest Texts and Future Directions, or Where the Languages Diverge: 14. French
15. Italian
16. Spanish.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF]