Romance

Sorry to disappoint already, but no, this is not where I will be sharing excerpts from my romantic poetry and novels – that will have to wait for another blog. The Romance languages are the languages that descend from Latin. They include French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian, and can, thanks to countless historical changes, be very different to their ancient ancestor.

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21/06/2020 – La Joie de Joret
How can French dialects explain why ‘car’ and ‘chariot’ are such similar English words?

15/03/2021 – The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
Latin has three genders for its nouns. French, Spanish and Italian have two. What happened? How do you lose a whole gender?

17/09/2022 – Five Sound Changes That Make Italian Make More Sense
Here’s my attempt to introduce five sound changes that go some way to explain why Modern Italian is the way is. They’ve certainly helped me out!

21/11/2022 – The Almost Romance Languages
The Romance languages are a big part of Latin’s linguistic legacy, but what about the thoroughly Romanised languages that lie just outside this family?

21/1/2023 – Bad Romance: An Introduction to the Appendix Probi
Centuries ago, an unknown Roman writer made a list of common spelling mistakes, and accidentally created a linguistic treasure trove. Here’s how.