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

Joseph B. Solodow

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511809903

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.

"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

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-vi
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Contents
pp vii-viii
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List of Maps
pp ix-x
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Acknowledgments
pp xi-xii
- By Connecticut Woodbridge
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1 - Introduction
pp 1-6
English Is Not a Cousin to the Romance Languages, But …
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PART ONE - LATIN
pp 7-8
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2 - The Career of Latin, I
pp 9-30
From Earliest Times to the Height of Empire
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3 - The Career of Latin, II
pp 31-55
The Empire Succeeded by Barbarian Kingdoms
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4 - Latin at Work, I
pp 56-82
Nature of the Language; Names and Qualities; Pronunciation
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5 - Latin at Work, II
pp 83-106
Actions and States
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6 - Vulgar Latin
pp 107-124
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PART TWO - THE ROMANCE VOCABULARY
pp 125-126
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7 - The Lexicon in General; Shifts in the Meaning of Words
pp 127-143
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8 - Changes in the Form of Words
pp 144-157
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9 - When Words Collide
pp 158-180
Conflict and Resolution in the Lexicon
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10 - Immigrants
pp 181-198
Non-Latin Words in the Romance Languages
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PART THREE - PROTO-ROMANCE, OR WHAT THE LANGUAGES SHARE
pp 199-200
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11 - The Sound of Proto-Romance
pp 201-225
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12 - The Noun in Proto-Romance
pp 226-244
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13 - The Verb in Proto-Romance
pp 245-262
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PART FOUR - EARLIEST TEXTS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS, OR WHERE THE LANGUAGES DIVERGE
pp 263-264
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14 - French
pp 265-290
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15 - Italian
pp 291-309
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16 - Spanish
pp 310-332
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Suggestions for Further Reading
pp 333-334
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General Index
pp 335-339
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Index of English Words
pp 340-356
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References

Suggestions for Further Reading

,Histories of the Latin language, from ancient times to the present: Janson, Tore, A Natural History of Latin, transl. Sorensen, Merethe Damsgard and Vincent, Nigel (Oxford, 2004); Ostler, Nicholas, Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (New York, 2007).

,On Indo-European: Watkins, Calvert, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd ed., (Boston and New York, 2000), also found as an appendix to that dictionary.

,On Vulgar Latin: Herman, József, Vulgar Latin, transl. Wright, Roger (University Park, 2000).

,On the Romance languages: Posner, Rebecca, The Romance Languages: A Linguistic Introduction (Garden City, 1966); Boyd-Bowman, Peter, From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts (Washington, 1954); Pei, Mario, The Story of Latin and the Romance Languages (New York, 1976).

,English etymological dictionaries: Barnhart, Robert K., ed., The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (New York, 1988); Klein, Ernest, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Amsterdam, 1971); Onions, C. T., ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (New York, 1966).

,On the histories of English words: [Mish, Frederick C., ed.] Webster's Dictionary of Word Origins (Springfield, MA, 1989); Greenough, James Bradstreet and Kittredge, George Lyman, Words and Their Ways in English Speech (Boston, 1900; reprinted); Heller, Louis, Humez, Alexander, and Dror, Malcah, The Private Lives of English Words (London, 1984); Hughes, Geoffrey, Words in Time: A Social History of the English Vocabulary (Oxford, 1988), and A History of English Words (Oxford, 2000); Owen Barfield, History in English Words, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, 1967).

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Latin Alive

The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages

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