Questions tagged [language-evolution]

For questions regarding how Latin has changed over time.

Questions tagged are about how Latin has changed over time. They can be largely broken down into two categories:

  1. Asking when a certain change occurred
  2. Asking how a certain change occurred

Questions should be about specific changes, not broad things. For example, these are good questions:

When did “c” before “e” or “i” start to be pronounced as [ts] (in contrast to classical [k])?

Why do fear clauses invert the meaning of ut/ne?

These are not:

When did verbs come into existence?

Why did some words change spelling from classical to medieval Latin?

Note that while asking "why" is acceptable, it has to be "why" in the sense of "what caused it", not "for what reason/purpose".

132 questions
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Did Latin change less over time as compared to other languages?

In this answer to a question about the preciseness of Latin, there is a quote from from Frederic Taber Cooper's Word formation in the Roman Sermo Plebeius (1895): There were, as Cicero himself has pointed out, three ways in which the deficiencies…
Adam
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Are there records of Latin-based pidgin languages?

A pidgin language is a simplified form of communication that arises naturally when two groups lacking a common language need to interact. Such interactions must have been common in the ancient world, so I imagine some pidgins must have been spoken…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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Is latino sine flexione dead?

Latino sine flexione is a variant of Latin created by Peano in 1903. As far as I know it was used in scientific literature but since forgotten. I found this site and a few discussions on Duolingo but not a single speaker. A quite complete grammar…
user3165
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Why didn't readers prefer spacing to scriptio continua before 600 A.D.?

Naomi Baron. Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (1 edn 2015). Top of p. 21. I'm assuming that even in one's L1, “spaced words make it easier to decode in your head”. Why wasn’t scriptio continua popularized or standardized…
user6114
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When did the Latin language stop changing?

Visiting an old house today, I observed a Latin inscription above the door and it occurred to me that it makes sense to use a 'dead' language for permanent messages as the meaning of the words will never change. Of course, Latin was used in academic…
DrMcCleod