Did the ancient Romans talk like present-day Italians?

Have a look at Ancient Greek or Sanskrit. Latin is baby-speak by comparison.

I mean there's a chance it is. Linquists who look in the past tend to romanticize what they translate as they don't know the vernacular for sure. For example from This site (pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti from Pompeii.htm)

While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores."

Linquists likely translated this but the Latin vernacualr for Romans back then, what they translated could of been: "me and my mate had some shitty service and then we went and go fucked some good whores."

tl'dr: People probably talked in the same low brow way they always have as languages and vernacular evolve with time.

Yeah, of course it's easy to learn compared to other ancient languages. But it's hard as shit compared to most modern languages.

Well considering most linguists focus on translating official documents, correspondence, etc. then of course that's true.

What idiot is going to write down a conversation between him and his mate, especially before the digital age.

Why do Amerimutts think Italians talk in those ridiculous terroni dialects? Standard Italian sounds fairly neutral like Latin.

I suppose it depends on the person's intellect, devotion, and mother-tongue; but I found Latin to be far easier than French and/or German.

>choosing the easiest of hard languages is still easy

Yeah, ok buddy. And what's Latin to Spanish? To French? To German?

ancient romans probably sounded something like this.
youtube.com/watch?v=UerBCXHKJ5s

Yes.

Hence the intentional casting of Romans as people with British accents. We would not take them seriously.

>*gesticulation intensifies.*

Only when they were singing. During the non-musical parts of the day they spoke in pig latin.

>It's the brownest language known to man, if orcs from Mordor spoke arabic, it would sound something like Italian.

>I'm sieging here! I'm sieging here!

Pretty sure Dustin Hoffman isn't Italian

>mfw I will never exist in the universe where Rome has Sopranos style dialogue instead of le ebin shakespearan britcucks
Fucking kill me now

ancient Greek's article and conjugations literally make it easier lmao

>le ebin

Why do you keep posting this in every single thread? kys and spare us

I smell a god damn lie you bastard

I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've used the phrase today. And the second post I've made on Veeky Forums in weeks.

>Italians
fake nationality

>I'm sieging here! I'm sieging here!
>Mater mia that's a spicy fish sauce!
>AY MARIUS FAGETABOUIT
Sicilians

"""""Italian""""" am*ricrips aren't italian

Ergo, their way of talking is not representative of real italians

Ergo, ancient romans did not talk like that

The way Italians emote is practically a inherited from Romans, body language snd an absurdly loud registry came from the Roman passion for oratory. The inflections might be new but Romans were still deageningly loud Italians.

Those so called "terroni dialects" are not only closer to standard Italian than the northern dialects, but also to Latin.

Garum is phoenician

Ancient Greek is easier than Latin lmao. You don't get the definite article in Latin.

This would make a great comedy flick.
>Friends! Romans! Paisans!
>Shut the fuck up over there!
>I'm talking over here!

>Crassus my insula is burning down!
>ah badda bing badda boom, forgetaboutit

>Varus, give me back my legion-onis!

carmella could you please shut the doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Fuck you faggot Romans got it from the Greeks. It's like saying burgers are German. Or french fries are more Belgian than American. Or ketchup is....British? I think? Whatever you get the point.

If one is learning Ancient Greek, then one is far past the point of caring about the definite article's declension. Ancient Greek has the middle voice, active past participles, and the optative mood; more complicated than Latin, though not by much.

Try Sanskrit.

Kek.

>the only difference between Latin and ancient Greek participles is the "past" active

might want to do some more studying

Don't be such an autist. Do you think that guy would know the difference between the Greek aorist and perfect? It's the 'past tense' in colloquial speech.

no they were infected with faggotism and it created Italian

>misunderstand what he was saying to begin with
>list 4 things Greek has that Latin doesn't to say Greek isn't much more complicated while leaving out plenty more
>called out but only address aorist vs perfect
work on reading comprehension too

Have you studied both languages? If so, you should know that Greek is much tougher than Latin.

I pointed out some simple differences between Latin and Greek; Latin has one less mood and one less voice to worry about, hence lessening the number of verb conjugation dramatically. This is not to mention the vowel sandhi, irregularities in the aorist and perfect stems, and the whole other matter of the dialects, including Homeric.

You sound like someone who's tried Latin and found it hard. Suck it up.

I believe they did. They were pretty over-dramatic, there are accounts of senators crying bitterly as part of a choreographed speech or the likes.
For how they spoke on the street, there are only some few examples. Big city life in Rome must have been hectic, Horace's satires with their staccato style reflect that quite well, especially satire 1.5 should give you a good impression.
Petron's Satyricon libri should be an interesting in that regard as well

learn to read, that literally makes it easier you ding dong

Yes, that was *my* original point. Latin is far, far easier than Greek. In fact, Latin is one of the easiest languages ever.

...

what did ancient gabagool taste like?

No one actually answered the question lol...

I'm a former Latin student (I took 6 years in middle school/ high school) and I still revisit it from time to time. Latin was spoken a bit differently from modern Italian.

Latin was pronounced different than modern Italian in a few ways. A few things were different. A "v" was actually pronounced as a "w", and "c" did not make a soft "s" sound, only a hard "k" sound and for a while also took the place of "g". Vowels I believe were very rigid and didn't take on more than one sound, save for a dipthong like "Caesar", which would have been pronounced "Kai-sar" (hence the German Kaiser) instead of "see-sar". Those are the big ones I can remember right now the others. How exactly this differentiates from modern Italian I would not know since I am no expert on Italian.

Another thing, modern Italians would say the Latin phrase "Veni vidi vici" as "veenee veedee veechee". Latin only used the hard "k" sound for "c", so the Latin pronunciation would be something like "Wehni Weedee Weekee".

There's an explanation of the accents, proounciation etc of latin in the wikipedia article if you're interested in taking a look. I also would recommend this video youtube.com/watch?v=_enn7NIo-S0

Also, fuck that guy who says Latin is easy. It's absolutely not. Yes Greek and Sanskrit are hard but that doesn't make Latin a walk in the park either. It's like saying that hitting a home run off a major league pitcher is easy because running a mile in four minutes is hard. Both are hard and require an extensive amount of training and dedication.to pull off.

Tl;dr: Latin has significant pronunciation differences from modern Italian, and sounded much different than the average modern English speaker thinks it does.

Congratulations, in your post you have made mistakes on the reconstructed pronunciation and you don't even have any idea on how Italian is pronounced.
Truly a wonder of a post.

Latin was considered a brutish low class sounding language in its own time, which is why the elites preferred Greek. So, the stereotypical Italian pattern is probably the equivalent of what they sounded like.

"Ey, take a look at the pair on that broad"

be clearer: before the letter G was around, the letter C was used where later latin would use the letter G. It represented both sounds which were always distinct.

Also at some point difference in vowel quantity led to a difference in vowel quality as well. Plenty (including Allen) suppose this happened as early as the classical period, so the i in liber would have a different quantity and quality from the i in līber.

Okay smart guy, clear it up for people then, where did I make a mistake? I'm by no means an expert on this, which is why I included links to help explain it better than I can. I do know for a fact that the things that I pointed out are differences from Italian. But since you're so enlightened and appear to be the resident expert around here, why don't you explain it for us?

Yeah I wrote that at 4 AM while I was half asleep and undoubtedly I left stuff out I was just going off of what I remembered from Latin class. If you can point out other stuff then go for it.

EYYYY OPAAAAH

also southern italian dialects also don't sound like that.
i've been told that sicilian sounds like some kind of slavic language (when i speak it)

Italian doesn't sound like Turkish.

>Watch it Brutus

>Thracian Slave Girls?
>Ova eeeerrrreee

Capocollo

Not only did you completely miss the point(the question was the use of the language, not the words and their pronounciation) you also fell for classic memes.
Regardless your post reeks of Reddit. Go back there

>post reeks of Reddit.

What's the point of even claiming this? Not him btw, but I keep seeing it complained about and I can only assume that reddit touched you somewhere. It does nothing to advance discussion, or dissuade the opponent. It just looks like butthurt put on display.

No the ancient Romans were Nordic.

GOBBLA GOBBLA HUMUNGA! BORK BORK BORK!

Real Italians aren't Nordic like ancient Romans.
Ergo, ancient Romans did not talk like that.

youtu.be/GVBN0_UOL6I

MARCVS ANTONIVS: Look ye here!
*uncovers Caesar's corpse*
Lictor at Antony's side: Oof, Madonne! He looks terrible!

>Daddy, I wanna go see the christians and jews get eaten by lions!
>DO YA TINK I GOTTSA ENOUGH MONEY FOR DAT?

>life of Sulla as a mafia movie

Would it be kino? Sulla as godfather.

Antonius Corpulentus says we should throw this guy into the Tiber.

Turkish is a beautiful language though and when spoken correctly sounds very nice.

AYYY Gaius, watch me break dis carthaginian guy's fuckin kneecaps!

>öglöglü büzrügögli gübüncir gümrük bütüngü
lmao it sounds like gargling diarrhea

desu Mafiosi are mostly Sicilian who are Greek genetically and culturally

Caesar's death was accidental. They were having a meeting on knives in the empire. All the gesturing when the discussion got heated lead to Caesar's death.

Cicero: Ey Senator, ya here that? I called Marc Anthony a fuckin Queer

Turkish is a gangly, ugly language

This thing about saying I’m [verb] here is exlusively Italoameric*n, same thing about “Forget about it!!!” Being spammed in every sentence they utter, real Italians don’t talk like that, the only correct stereotype is “mamma mia”

Lol most retarded thing I’ve ever read

Lol I’m Italian and you think we pronounce it Veenee Veedee Veecee

Really?

Lol

Not him but I’m Italian and we pronounce it Vehnee Veedee Veecee not Veenee Veedee Veecee

it would demolish modern definitions of kino

>the cataline conspiracy
>the conscriptions
>the first civil war
>the rise of augustus and the Flavian dynasty

it's all a giant mafia story

*all the way to the Flavian dynasty

the world has been deprived from a depiction of based BESTpasian for too long

Kino passion of the Christ?

Pilate: Ehh, you calling yourself king Jew round here?

I agree with you. I think it's a very cute sounding language, especially when spoken by a pretty girl, but it does fit that guy's description better than Italian does.