Paola legit linguam latinam

Nobody knows how Latin was pronounced but because it was one of the languages that was spoken in Italian peninsula it would be natural that it sounded a little bit like Italian today. Like mother like daughter or like we say: no apple drops far away from the tree. On my video Paola, digital human voice, reads Latin using Italian accent.

Moreover like Finns can play with the word order in sentence today I believe Latin could do the same 2000 years ago. That’s why I am very skeptic that Latin was never spoken on the streets like Cicero and other boys wrote it in the books. That manner is due to the poetical metrics. Because every word inflects depending on mode, time, gender and/or person, it was difficult to get syllables in the patterns otherwise. This is a common trick also in the older Finnish poetry as our words also inflect. On the other hand the traditional Finnish song poetry didn’t behave in that way because it used its own metrics. The Kalevala, Finnish National epic, has strongly impact on J.R.R. Tolkien.

Without that clinical usage Latin might have survived for us to speak. Perhaps Latin speakers on the streets placed adjectives after the main word as it happens in Romance languages even today. In some idioms the place of object was at the beginning of the sentence but was it always the case. More likely the different word orders in sentence had different nuances, like it is in Finnish, and sometimes even different meanings.

By the way, the title of this post is grammatically incorrect because it doesn’t follow the SOV rule,which requires that the verb is after the object in the sentence. It should be Paola linguam latinam legit according to grammar books. 

On my video Paola, digital human voice, reads Latin using Italian accent.

Paola legit linguam latinam	Paola reads Latin
Eius latina bona est.	Her Latin sounds good.
Paola quaerit:	Paola asks:
”Quid agis?”	”How are you?”
Tu respondes:	You reply:
”Bene, gratia,	”I’m well, thanks,
Et tu?”	And you”?
Paola:	Paola:
”Bene valeo etiam.”	”I feel fine too.”
Tu:	You:
”Nunc mihi eundum est.”	”Now I must go.”
Paola:	Paola:
”Omnia bona tibi exopto.”	”I wish you all the best.”
Tu:	You:
”Gratia, et similiter, vale!”	”Thank you, and likewise, bye for now!”
Paola:	Paola:
”Vale!”	”Bye, bye!

Habetis diem bonam!

Your Homework

Please print this postcard and give it to your special one. If you don’t understand the message you are going to get a splendid quality time when you translate it together 😉