Linguist Forum

Specializations => Historical Linguistics => Topic started by: mallu on January 01, 2015, 04:49:23 AM

Title: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: mallu on January 01, 2015, 04:49:23 AM

Here is a question from a PhD Entrance test for Linguistics.
Assetion (i)- Catalan and Spanish are Latinate language
Assertion(ii) - Gothic and Icelandic are Germanic languages.

Are these assertions true.
Hope someone will come out to help. Thanks in advance

Title: Re: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: freknu on January 01, 2015, 06:49:21 AM

I think "Latinate" is just a synonym for the Italic family, or perhaps more specifically, languages descended from Latin — so perhaps:

Indo-European
> Italic
>> (1) Latinate?
>>> Latin
>>>> (2) Latinate?
>>>>> Catalan, Spanish

Either (1) a synonym for Latino-Faliscan (or even Italic as a whole), or (2) a name for the languages descended from Latin (often also called Romance).

Title: Re: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: Daniel on January 01, 2015, 07:12:34 AM

Really weird way of phrasing it, but in context it seems it's just a synonym for "Romance".

The only time I've seen "Latinate" used is regarding vocabulary (almost? exclusively for English).

Title: Re: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: cranberryletters on January 04, 2015, 08:20:46 AM

It's a synonym for descending from Latin, i.e. "Romance."

Title: Re: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: lx on January 10, 2015, 07:18:25 AM

The assertions are true, by the way :)

Title: Re: What are Latinate languages?
Post by: JuanPablo84 on April 01, 2015, 11:57:21 AM

The assertions are both true, but it is an unusual name. I think it translates Spanish "lenguas latinas", which means romance languages, in other words, languages derived from Vulgar Latin. These are Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Catalan, French, Italian, Romansh and Rumanian, and a couple of extinct languages like Dalmatian.
But in other contexts, it means vocabulary derived from Latin in non-romance languages.

Hope it helps!