Creation of Latin, Lithuanian, Italian

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Q I

Is Lithuanian older than Latin?
https://www.quora.com/Is-Lithuanian-older-than-Latin/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:37 pm

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

If we count all stages of a language from when it’s identifiable as itself, the reverse

First words in Lithuanian were probably from Quedlinburg Chronicle in 10th or 11th C. AD. Written, ones, that is.

First words in Latin might be Praenestine Fibula, but it is probably a forgery, oops, it seems a new analysis occurred in 2011 and confirmed it, this was after my university studies where we heard “no, it would not have been fhefhaked, it would have been fheked” … it is from 7th C BC. Carmen Saliare is redacted even earlier, around 700 BC, and is preserved in fragments, each of which is later, but supposed to preserve the original pronunciation, with a few mistakes, perhaps.

When we go to beyond its oldest identifiable stage in writing, we don’t know for how far before it had been a separate language. When did Lithuanian, Old Prussian, Latvian branch from each other? When did Latin cease to be same language as Oscan, by Oscan adopting the qu > p shift? Or for that matter, how long before that had Italic been really clearly differentiated from Celtic?

We know Latin became French some time between Caesar conquering Gaul in 50 BC and Sequence of St. Eulalia from c. 880 AD. I have quarrelled with someone else about how long before that sequence French had existed as a separate language from Latin: Creation of Last Language from quora Den Hollander's answer to When was the last new language created?

Silvestras Guoga

13m ago

The antiquity of language is defined also by stating how much ancient grammar constructions or words it retained from the theoretical Proto-language

Hans-Georg Lundahl

2:05 pm

Sorry, that is not “how old” but “how archaic”.

Plus, it also depends on how you reconstruct the theoretical Proto-language.

For instance, Lithuanian will be more archaic than Latin if PIE verbs were two main tenses like Hittite, but the reverse if there were many tenses and moods like Sanskrit.

Since we don’t have that PIE written down or recorded, so far - if it existed and commonalities are not Sprachbund phenomena - this is hard to decide.

With PIE lexicon, we fare even worse, since only c. 500 words are known, and some could as easily be local Sprachbund phenomena between neighbouring “branches of IE”.

Q II

How and when did we decide Latin and Italian were separate languages? Why isn't Italian just called Modern Vulgar Latin or something?
https://www.quora.com/How-and-when-did-we-decide-Latin-and-Italian-were-separate-languages-Why-isnt-Italian-just-called-Modern-Vulgar-Latin-or-something/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:48 pm

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

You know the difference between Anglo-Saxon and English?

Sometimes you date Old vs Middle English to 1066. But Anglo-Saxon chronicle continued to be written to sth like, if I recall correctly, 1166, a century after the Conquest.

The key is spelling and continuity of writing tradition. Anglo-Saxon died out, plain and simple, after the last monastery in which it was cultivated dropped it (Tolkien may have another view of its continuity with West Midland’s Middle English of the Gawain poet, but even that takes on a lot of features from the new language), and then there came a new spelling with Chaucer (there had been other, experimental, spellings in between, like that of Orrmulum).

Now, the case is similar with Latin vs Italian. On one date, Italian as we understand the word is simply a local somewhat illitterate pronunciation of Latin, and on another one, you start doing written poetry in Italian. At that stage, Italian is a separate language from Latin, a man knowing both would write in one language things like “in medio itineris vite nostre” and in the other one “nel mezzo del cammin’ di nostra vita”. At that point, to him and many other people like him, these are two languages.

I took the text example for Medieval Italian from Dante, but I think it was perhaps a 100 years before him or so that this happened.

“The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,”

Italian language - Wikipedia

Note 17 refers to storia della lingua di Vittorio Coletti - Enciclopedia dell'Italiano (2011): storia della lingua in "Enciclopedia dell'Italiano"

“Of the 12th century” = the one before Dante.