Contrary to the generally accepted idea, the French do not come from the Latin nor Italian, Spanish , Romanian or any other Romance language derived from Latin. Here is the summary of the thesis I will demonstrate .
In the early centuries of the history of Rome, two peoples, and therefore two languages coexist in the small territory of Lazio. A people spoke Latin and the other spoke Italian. These two towns were merged into one. The Italian became the language spoken and written language remained Latin .
Thus, from the second century BC, the Romans were bilingual : they used Italian as spoken and written Latin as the language, and it is these two languages which they contributed to all regions they conquered. After the Roman conquest in Italy, France, Spain and Romania, left their respective villages to adopt the Italian language as a spoken language and the Latin is only used for writing, as did the Romans.
It is plausible to think that the Romans call his spoken language the 'Roman'. To avoid confusion with our use of the term today, I will call the language spoken by the "old Italian" Roman. I use this term on purpose since the Romans spoke latin deformed, sometimes called "Vulgar Latin" or "Low Latin", but simply spoke a different language, which has not the latin as origin, and that it was a form Italian .
Bilingualism language spoken - written language has nothing exceptional. Shortly before the beginning of the Christian era, in Jerusalem, the Hebrew language spoken by the Jews until this time, gives way to Aramaic, but keeps its status of religious and literary language. The Jews of Christ's time were bilingual : they spoke Aramaic and Hebrew writing .
Today, in Arab countries, the Arabic dialect is spoken and written in classical Arabic only. In Germanic Switzerland, the spoken language is Swiss German and written language is High German. In Quebec, the spoken language is rich in words from an original vocabulary, but French is still used when writing academic perfectly. In Africa, in America and in Asia, bilingualism language spoken - written language is an everyday reality. Different people continue to use their native languages and writing using the official language, usually the language of the former colonizers : the Spanish , the French, the English...
The strong divergence between Latin and the Romance languages is under discussion for a long time among Latin scholars and linguists. In 1940 the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev concluded their research with these words : "the mother tongue we have come to rebuild is not the same Latin that has been handed down to us by the literature." In 1953, French linguist Jean Perrot notes just as the mother tongue has been reconstructed from the various Romance languages "is not for the state to know Latin". Either find a very different Latin mother tongue but are hesitant to move away from dogma and say that instead of "another Latin" is quite simply "other language" .
In 1985 the great Latinist Jozsef Herman recognized at the international congress of linguistics and Roman philology, in front of an audience of coming scholars from around the world : "We Romanists, along with historians of the Latin language, we are almost the only ones to know with respect to the process of transformation from Latin to romance language, we have more hypothesis and controversies that certainties [ ... ] . "
In the late twentieth century, the more advanced the research, unless they disagreed researchers in regard to an explanation about the transformation of Latin in the Romance languages. The difficulties stem from the fact that researchers are prisoners of dogma that the Romance languages come from Latin and manage to find explanations for all the supposed transformation of Latin. Try, therefore, to explain the disappearance of declensions, gender neutral, the deponent verbs, verbal adjectives, and the appearance of the items, the past perfect , conditional...without success.
Antoine Meillet, the famous French linguist of the early twentieth century, provides only partial demonstrations and unfounded conclusions hiding bad his peremptory formulas "common innovations result from the fact that a delicate and complex mechanism was handled by new people from all walks " [1 ] How is it possible that people from different backgrounds could cause the same linguistic innovations? There is a surprising mystery. For Antoine Meillet, the second major explanation lies in the fact that people prefer simplicity: "The deponent is the kind of useless complication in the language". The people, therefore , would get rid of the deponent. A little further says: "When you leave the neutral, Roman got rid of a linguistic category that meant nothing for a long time."
As for the Greek people, they have remained neutral, like the Germans and the Russians. Antoine Meillet has laws of variable geometry.
One of two things: either remain in the lyricism of Littre exclaiming in the introduction to his dictionary: "To the great surprise of the learned, mutations were made as if a concert had prepared beforehand determined" [2 ] or try to make a rigorous analysis and a little more scientific .
What are the main objections that can do the Latin origin of the Romance languages ?
- How is the disappearance of the same grammatical forms could occur in all the Romance languages ?
- How is the appearance of the same grammatical forms could occur in all the Romance languages ?
- How to explain the disappearance of the same Latin words and the appearance of a negotiation non-Latin words in all the Romance languages ?
- How to explain the disappearance of adjectives, adverbs, the most common Latin verbs in all Roman languages ?
- How is it that such a transformation has been made in less than four centuries, since the demise of the Roman Empire around the year 450 AD and the emergence of the Roman language mentioned at the Council of Tours, in 813, when stability of languages seems to be a general law? Antoine Meillet, however, repeatedly demonstrates this feature of languages in his book about the history of the Latin language: "language of a great empire, Latin remained stable for 800 years" [3 ] . After 8 centuries of stability, the language would have mutated from a stroke at a dizzying to the point of becoming something completely unrecognizable speed.
Antoine Meillet does feel that there 's a single Latin curiosity, and manages to find explanations for the stability of certain languages, as it does with the Turk. "Today Turkish is the Turkish thousand years ago , the rigid language outlining the history preserved". Will there be a law to explain the preservation of languages by the schematic? Antoine Meillet also emphasizes that "the structure of Arabic today is still similar to that of the Semitic languages than three thousand years ago". And who knows ancient Greek and modern Greek can not but be struck before the amazing continuity of Greek vocabulary and grammar over 2500 years. In fact , languages are predominantly stable. So why a Latin transformation - transformationand go - in the course of less than four centuries only?
Why the Latin language is frozen, why all the Romance languages resemble each other and are so different from latin?
We will review all these questions and I shall endeavor to make accessible to nonspecialists demonstration. It is necessary, however, my dear reader, that you are aware of two major pitfalls:
First, you can not escape the weight of dogma, and it will come to mind constantly the same question: "But how is it possible that every university, in every country, teach the Latin origin of the Romance languages? Perhaps they are wrong for so long and steadily that possible? And why would an amateur who make this discovery, not a university scholar? " .
Just do not think that a minister of the church at the same time I could question the dogma and tradition. See how linguists Perrot and Jean Louis Hjelmslev censor. They stop halfway through the crossing. Do not be timid. Dare to go to the extreme of logic, whatever your previous convictions.
The second obstacle comes from a superficial analysis do believe that Latin and the Romance languages have many common points. Do not want to say that the latter are spawned from the first? The German and English, both Germanic languages are quite close, and yet , the English language does not have the German like mother tongue, the same with Russian and Polish, for example.
The many common points into Latin and the Romance languages come from their common origin, the Indo-European. To this are added the effects of coexistence of nearly 20 centuries between the Romance languages spoken and written language as Latin, to the point that many Romance words are taken as loans from Latin.
Finally, the blind belief in a Latin origin of the Romance languages has led to the French etymologists to invent a Latin origin almost every word. All procedures, from the witty to the most dishonest, are at the service of demonstrating an alleged affiliation without respect for any scientific rule. Will show that the Indo-European origin often appears much more evidence, and it is possible to imagine more rational etymologies. Surely you must have heard thousands of times the word WORK comes from the Latin "tripalium" (instrument of torture), that the word SLAVE comes from the "slavus" (Slavic), or that the word FOREST comes from "Forestis" (exterior). These etymologies are unfounded, but they reinforce the idea of a Latin origin of the Romance languages when they are nothing but the result of our wrong ramblings.
There also I imagine your bewilderment. How - I - tell you that all our etymology is false and what are their titles to afford such questioning? As I said: I am not a man of the temple. Simply, for years I have studied many languages and linguistics, and I discovered that there was another possible way.
Let me quote Buddha, "Do not believe in anything simply hearsay. No attesting only to the traditions because they have been honored after numerous generations. Do not believe in anything simply from the testimony of a sage of antiquity. Do not believe something because the odds in your favor or play because custom push us to take it as true. Do not believe in anything based only on the sole authority of your teachers or priests".
It is this provision which applied to consider another Copernican worldview.
Get rid of your preconceived ideas, not placed in the hands of specialists, judge for yourselves .
I next two schemes affiliation Roman languages . The "old" scheme, which is taught in all universities, and the new scheme, which will demonstrate in this book.
In the old scheme, the primitive language, the indoeuropean have originated the Latin. Since Roman times, Latin would have evolved into a low Latin, which would have given birth to the Romance languages.
In the new scheme, which will demonstrate in this book, have given rise to the Indo-European Latin, on the one hand, and on the other, the old Italian, long before the Roman era, then, the old Italian had given birth the various Romance languages, while Latin had no children.
[1] Antoine Meillet, Esquisse d’une histoire de la langue latine, 1928. Librairie Klincksieck.
[2] Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, Librairie Hachette, 1870.
[3] Op. cit.
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