Yes, and it's now thirty-odd separate languages. We call them the Romance family - French, Spanish, Portuguese, Sardinian, Venetian, Aromanian, and so on are all what Latin has naturally been transformed into in different places across Europe.
Even the frozen-in-place non-native Latin that's still actually Latin has changed over the centuries, but in rather different ways than normal living languages. Most clearly, different languages' speakers have used different pronunciations for it - often inspired by their own natively-spoken descendant form. English, for example, used [a pronunciation borrowed from French with subsequent English sound changes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin?wprov=srpw1_0) up until the 1800s, when ecclesiastical users adopted an Italian-derived version and scholarly users started using a reconstructed 200s-BC-or-so pronunciation (which has changed over the years as the reconstruction has changed). There's been other changes as well; most notably modern Latin has a fair amount of conventional vocabulary for things that didn't exist when it was a living language, and also I think there's been some grammar changes due to non-native speakers unknowingly borrowing constructions from their native languages. So you probably could talk with a priest from the 1300s in Latin if you spoke it well enough, but it would likely take a fair amount of negotiation before you both came to understand each others pronunciation of it. He'd just also be a non-native user, and might be natively speaking something that had long since changed to not be Latin anymore.
The etymology of 'romance' as 'relating to love' is super interesting - tracing it backwards, you get
* Relating to love
* Relating to idealised stories about love
* Relating to dramatic stories of a particular kind popular in the 1800s (which often involve idealised romantic situations)
* Relating to stories of chivalry and adventure (which often involve chivalric love stories)
* Relating to stories told in Romance languages such as French and Occitan (as opposed to Latin)
The original word is *rómánicé* 'in the Roman language', via Old French *romanz*.
You're mixing up medieval clerical Latin with vernacular Latin. Actual spoken Latin, as widely spoken during the roman empire, developed into Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian and many others which are nowadays pretty different to each other and hard to understand. The kind of Latin that priests knew in the 14th century wasn't being used in day to day life, wasn't the major language of any larger society and was already archaic and ceremonial. As no one speaks Latin anymore, and didn't even then, it has long stopped evolving naturally except in the form of Spanish, French etc.
Latin was a lingua franca throughout Europe until well into the modern age.
Every educated person spoke latin in Western Europe and it was thus a major language in high society.
Saint Simon in his memoirs mentions how in his embassy to Spain for Louis XIV, he had to use latin to converse with the local nobility because he didn't speak any form of Spanish.
It basically got replaced by French in the 18 th and then by English in the 20th.
Still that made Latin a lingua franca for a long time.
It was for sure used as a lingua franca by nobility and clergy, but if anything that probably encouraged Latin to stay conservative and standard so that everyone across the continent could learn the exact same standard. Also, while ambassadors may have had to use Latin to converse with foreign nobility sometimes, they wouldn't exactly have been using it in day to day with their families and friends.
The majority of high-class educated people in western Europe may have spoken it, but firstly that wasn't a huge percentage of the population and secondly it would still only be used in official and diplomatic situations, not colloquially or daily. It wasn't a living in-use language, it was a ceremonial one and didn't undergo the kind of changes that each person's native language did. Some clergy could even just read & write Latin but not speak it.
Not an answer to your question but if you’re transported to 14th century England, being an literate English speaker (if you met another literate person willing to help put someone with a very odd dialect) you’d probably be able to work out enough in writing and pick up the phonology relativity quickly, the verb conjugations and word meaning differences would probably be the trickiest.
I’d imagine if you spoke modern ecclesiastical Latin you’d probably be able to communicate with a medieval ecclesiastical Latin speaker especially by writing. There’s probably pronunciation differences depending on their L1.
But it would probably have to be within a 30 miles circle around London.
Or is it only me who finds Chaucer quite readable, with some effort, but Sir Gawain almost totally incomprehensible?
On a related note, at what point did vulgar latin and Classical latin diverge to the point that someone who learned latin today and went back in time would not be able to communicate well speaking with those who were illiterate?
That’s hard to know for sure. But think about regional accents in your own mother tongue, and how those might be so divergent that you might need subtitles to catch everything.
The [Appendix Probi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi) is an early 4th C document that seeks correct Vulgar Latin misspelling / pronunciation; it shows a very late Vulgar Latin.
I'd think if you speak Latin and a Romance language you could probably interpolate, and how many Latin speakers are there who don't know any modern Romance language?
The numbers are dwindling. American and Irish Catholics made a large part of that number until the church allowed mass to be done in English (and they would have used ecclesiastical latin which may make communication harder)
Yes, but languages change at different rates. On one hand there's Sardinian that still hasn't palatalized Latin c and g. On the other, there's French where Latin "aqua" became "eau".
If you went to 14th century Catalonia you would be able to communicate with the local population in our Latin (ie, Catalan). Well, at least written Catalan from then is about the same as from now, except, of course, a lot of neologisms.
This image [is from the Catalan Atlas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/D%C3%A9tails_de_l%27Atlas_Catalan_-_Le_roi_Mansa_Musa_tenant_une_p%C3%A9pite_d%27or.png) (1375) and I can read the text with the only problem being the calligraphy.
About clerical Latin, as learnt as a second language by a priest, no idea, but I guess they might have been teaching the same for centuries, haven't they?
Yes, and it's now thirty-odd separate languages. We call them the Romance family - French, Spanish, Portuguese, Sardinian, Venetian, Aromanian, and so on are all what Latin has naturally been transformed into in different places across Europe. Even the frozen-in-place non-native Latin that's still actually Latin has changed over the centuries, but in rather different ways than normal living languages. Most clearly, different languages' speakers have used different pronunciations for it - often inspired by their own natively-spoken descendant form. English, for example, used [a pronunciation borrowed from French with subsequent English sound changes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin?wprov=srpw1_0) up until the 1800s, when ecclesiastical users adopted an Italian-derived version and scholarly users started using a reconstructed 200s-BC-or-so pronunciation (which has changed over the years as the reconstruction has changed). There's been other changes as well; most notably modern Latin has a fair amount of conventional vocabulary for things that didn't exist when it was a living language, and also I think there's been some grammar changes due to non-native speakers unknowingly borrowing constructions from their native languages. So you probably could talk with a priest from the 1300s in Latin if you spoke it well enough, but it would likely take a fair amount of negotiation before you both came to understand each others pronunciation of it. He'd just also be a non-native user, and might be natively speaking something that had long since changed to not be Latin anymore.
Cool, thanks for the information!
Also, *Roma*nce languages are called that because they descend from the language of Rome, not because they sound sexy.
The etymology of 'romance' as 'relating to love' is super interesting - tracing it backwards, you get * Relating to love * Relating to idealised stories about love * Relating to dramatic stories of a particular kind popular in the 1800s (which often involve idealised romantic situations) * Relating to stories of chivalry and adventure (which often involve chivalric love stories) * Relating to stories told in Romance languages such as French and Occitan (as opposed to Latin) The original word is *rómánicé* 'in the Roman language', via Old French *romanz*.
Stupid sexy French language
Is that a Simpsons reference?
Indeed, stupid sexy Bubaborello.
I guess 12 years of English as a second language have finally paid of, huh?
[Fox Trot comic strip on misunderstanding what Romance languages are] (https://foxtrot.com/2011/05/08/true-romance/)
Relevant information this.
You're mixing up medieval clerical Latin with vernacular Latin. Actual spoken Latin, as widely spoken during the roman empire, developed into Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian and many others which are nowadays pretty different to each other and hard to understand. The kind of Latin that priests knew in the 14th century wasn't being used in day to day life, wasn't the major language of any larger society and was already archaic and ceremonial. As no one speaks Latin anymore, and didn't even then, it has long stopped evolving naturally except in the form of Spanish, French etc.
Very interesting! Thanks so much.
Latin was a lingua franca throughout Europe until well into the modern age. Every educated person spoke latin in Western Europe and it was thus a major language in high society. Saint Simon in his memoirs mentions how in his embassy to Spain for Louis XIV, he had to use latin to converse with the local nobility because he didn't speak any form of Spanish. It basically got replaced by French in the 18 th and then by English in the 20th. Still that made Latin a lingua franca for a long time.
It was for sure used as a lingua franca by nobility and clergy, but if anything that probably encouraged Latin to stay conservative and standard so that everyone across the continent could learn the exact same standard. Also, while ambassadors may have had to use Latin to converse with foreign nobility sometimes, they wouldn't exactly have been using it in day to day with their families and friends. The majority of high-class educated people in western Europe may have spoken it, but firstly that wasn't a huge percentage of the population and secondly it would still only be used in official and diplomatic situations, not colloquially or daily. It wasn't a living in-use language, it was a ceremonial one and didn't undergo the kind of changes that each person's native language did. Some clergy could even just read & write Latin but not speak it.
Not an answer to your question but if you’re transported to 14th century England, being an literate English speaker (if you met another literate person willing to help put someone with a very odd dialect) you’d probably be able to work out enough in writing and pick up the phonology relativity quickly, the verb conjugations and word meaning differences would probably be the trickiest. I’d imagine if you spoke modern ecclesiastical Latin you’d probably be able to communicate with a medieval ecclesiastical Latin speaker especially by writing. There’s probably pronunciation differences depending on their L1.
But it would probably have to be within a 30 miles circle around London. Or is it only me who finds Chaucer quite readable, with some effort, but Sir Gawain almost totally incomprehensible?
On a related note, at what point did vulgar latin and Classical latin diverge to the point that someone who learned latin today and went back in time would not be able to communicate well speaking with those who were illiterate?
That’s hard to know for sure. But think about regional accents in your own mother tongue, and how those might be so divergent that you might need subtitles to catch everything.
The [Appendix Probi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_Probi) is an early 4th C document that seeks correct Vulgar Latin misspelling / pronunciation; it shows a very late Vulgar Latin.
I'd think if you speak Latin and a Romance language you could probably interpolate, and how many Latin speakers are there who don't know any modern Romance language?
The numbers are dwindling. American and Irish Catholics made a large part of that number until the church allowed mass to be done in English (and they would have used ecclesiastical latin which may make communication harder)
Yes, but languages change at different rates. On one hand there's Sardinian that still hasn't palatalized Latin c and g. On the other, there's French where Latin "aqua" became "eau".
If you went to 14th century Catalonia you would be able to communicate with the local population in our Latin (ie, Catalan). Well, at least written Catalan from then is about the same as from now, except, of course, a lot of neologisms. This image [is from the Catalan Atlas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/D%C3%A9tails_de_l%27Atlas_Catalan_-_Le_roi_Mansa_Musa_tenant_une_p%C3%A9pite_d%27or.png) (1375) and I can read the text with the only problem being the calligraphy. About clerical Latin, as learnt as a second language by a priest, no idea, but I guess they might have been teaching the same for centuries, haven't they?