20
votes
Accepted
How do we know that Italian words come from accusatives, not ablatives?
Professor Martin Maiden (Professor of the Romance Languages, Fellow of Trinity College) writes that
"The overwhelming majority of modern nouns and adjectives [in Italian - Alex B.] appear to ...
- 11.6k
16
votes
Accepted
What is the first text considered Italian instead of Latin?
According to the Handbook of Medieval Culture (Albrecht Classen, vol. 2):
The first written evidence considered to be Italian rather than Latin is known as the Placiti Cassinesi, which are four ...
- 2,292
15
votes
How do we know that Italian words come from accusatives, not ablatives?
Italian noun and adjective forms are not derived exclusively from Classical Latin accusative forms:
Sometimes an Italian form comes from the Classical Latin nominative, as in the singular form of the ...
- 27.3k
12
votes
Accepted
A poem that works in both Latin and Italian
This page (in Italian) has three bilingual Italian-Latin poems.
"Salve Regina" by Anacleto Bendazzi (1883-1982) seems to be the Christian-themed one (though I don't know either Italian or Latin well ...
- 1,332
11
votes
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Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate – in Latin?
You can listen to the whole chorus being sung in Latin here (be sure to enable Latin subtitles). The performer is Roland Kadan, an Austrian Latin teacher who has published a whole Latin songbook.
He ...
11
votes
Accepted
Hushing with a finger gesture
The Egyptian god Harpocrates was typically depicted as a boy with his finger held to his lips.
Example here.
He makes a few appearances in classical literature, such as Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.692:
...
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11
votes
Hushing with a finger gesture
I found a non-classical reference to this gesture in the Metamorphoses (or Golden Ass) of Apuleius (AD 124-170):
At ille, digitum a pollice proximum ori suo admovens et in stuporem attonitus, ‘Tace,...
- 39.5k
11
votes
Accepted
Do we know which Latin word the Italian term "andante" comes from?
I generally trust Etymonline more than Wiktionary:
musical direction, "moderately slow," 1742, from Italian andante, literally "walking," present participle of andare "to go," from Vulgar Latin ...
cmw♦
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9
votes
What is the first text considered Italian instead of Latin?
Ostler (see my comment on Luc's answer) remarks, in relation to the appearance of a language that is recognisably Italian:
" . . . touchingly, the first surviving example of imperfect written Latin — ...
- 18k
8
votes
Accepted
Is the palatalization of "d" between "a", "i" or "o" and "ie" or "iu" only a Medieval Latin phenomenon?
It is generally assumed, based on graphic data (including misspellings), that palatalization in Latin was operational as early as the second century AD (e.g. Maiden 1995, Repetti 2016, Weiss 2009/2011,...
- 11.6k
8
votes
How close is modern Italian pronunciation of sounds to Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation?
I might be a little late, but I think I still have something to add, based on what I see in the other answers.
Before the XX century, there was no single Ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin, but ...
- 11.1k
7
votes
Accepted
Was there ever a difference between 'volo' and 'volo'?
The Wiktionary article on Italian volere says that, as the infinitive suggests, the verb was moved to the second conjugation in Vulgar Latin, so it traces it to a "Vulgar Latin *volēre". The -gli- in ...
- 27.3k
7
votes
How close is modern Italian pronunciation of sounds to Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation?
As far as I can tell, "Ecclesiastical Latin" does not in fact seem to exist as a single defined standard. (I don't know whether it ever did.) There seems to be vagueness or uncertainty about ...
- 27.3k
7
votes
Accepted
How to translate piazza?
https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_Sancti_Petri_(Roma)
with references, believe it or not.
- 17.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Generic use of Italian "fare": analogue in Latin?
For playing a musical instrument, Latin uses ludere. See II. under Lewis and Short:
II. Trop.
A. To sport, play with any thing, to practise as a pastime, amuse one's self with anything: “illa ...
cmw♦
- 52.2k
5
votes
What is the correct Italian Latin pronunciation of "projicias" and "sacrificium"?
In practice, Italian pronunciation is not as standardized as one might think (both the pronunciation of the Italian language, and the Italian pronunciation of words of the Latin language). So I have ...
- 27.3k
4
votes
How close is modern Italian pronunciation of sounds to Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation?
To answer one half of your question, I believe that the modern Italian pronounciation of words that are consciously Latin words is almost identical to the Ecclesiastical Latin.
To answer the other, ...
- 466
4
votes
How close is modern Italian pronunciation of sounds to Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation?
In my mind, the term “Ecclesiastical Latin“ (which as far as I can tell is especially widespread in the US) is highly problematic. It's not a dialect, as Latin texts traditionally used in the liturgy ...
- 1,103
4
votes
Do we know which Latin word the Italian term "andante" comes from?
The most probable theory is that andare comes from Latin ambulare, probably through the military command ambulate “forwards!”, whence Italian andate and also French allez.
http://www.cnrtl.fr/...
- 17.6k
4
votes
Accepted
Gemination after stressed vowel
You're right that such gemination is not correct Classical pronunciation, and I believe the answer to your question whether it occurred in post-Classical Latin/Romance is no. Italian amata does not, ...
- 30.9k
4
votes
Was there ever a difference between 'volo' and 'volo'?
volō can indeed mean either “I want” or “I fly”, but the other forms of the two words are different (e.g. infinitive velle vs volāre), so they were definitely perceived as different words and this ...
- 17.6k
3
votes
Accepted
How to translate "pesto"?
The word pistatio already exists; OLD defines it as 'the action of ramming down,' which sounds quite unappetizing.
In the entry for pistare that is linked to in the question, the attestation provides ...
- 19.3k
3
votes
How to translate piazza?
Going off of the king of infallible sources, Wikipedia,
Other major forums are found in Italy; however, they are not to be confused with the piazza of the modern town, which may have originated ...
- 605
3
votes
Gemination after stressed vowel
I don't know exactly why you have heard pronunciations of Italian amata with a long /tː/, but I would guess this is just a case of different speakers using different phonetic durations for ...
- 27.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Gender and number in medieval composite active perfect
According to Alkire and Rosen (Romance Languages: a Historical Introduction), a perfective construction with habeō wasn't uncommon in Classical Latin:
Caput cinctum habēbant filō.
They had their ...
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2
votes
Pronunciation of intervocalic EV in Greek words in Roman Ecclesiastical
The Italian ecclesiastical pronunciation of "ev" is simply /ev/ (e. g. here). The same goes for the French pronunciation of ecclesiastical Latin (only the ending changes: /ɔm/).
Addendum
...
- 2,292
2
votes
¿Was "grosso modo" popularised from Latin or Italian?
from Du Cange, et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887 (10 vol.). searchable full-text online edition, by the École nationale des chartes:
http://ducange.enc....
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1
vote
Generic use of Italian "fare": analogue in Latin?
Some examples from the Vulgate:
2 Kings 3:15
nunc autem adducite mihi psalten cumque caneret psaltes facta est super eum manus Domini et ait
But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when ...
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