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"It never became the mother tongue for any of those people." Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Portugal all speak a variation of 'Latin'.
by sonnyblarney 8y ago
"It never became the mother tongue for any of those people."
Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Portugal all speak a variation of 'Latin'.
- Jack000 8y agoby this standard, Japanese would be a variation of Chinese
- vixen99 8y agoIrrespective of the relation between Japanese and Chinese, the immense contribution of Latin found within modern European languages is a given as anyone armed with a dictionary can deduce for themselves.
- jcranmer 8y agoItalian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian are all directly derived from Vulgar Latin. Japanese is a linguistic isolate, perhaps distantly related to Korean (which is also a linguistic isolate). Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system, and a little bit of vocabulary; calling Japanese a variation of Chinese is akin to saying English and German are a variation of Latin.
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoIt's even further remote than saying English and German are a variation of Latin, as at least the Germanic languages are in the same family of Indo-European languages. Japanese and Chinese are not related in any way we know of. It'd be more like saying Finnish or Hungarian are a variation of Latin or German. Some small amount of shared vocabulary (and maybe phonetics) due to proximity, but no more.