How do Ancient and Modern languages interconnect?

In this article, Georgia (Y10) explores the ways in which languages have influenced one another over the years.

Language is an interesting concept. Google defines it as ‘the principal method of human communication’, but then there is also the study of linguistics, or ‘the scientific study of language’. It seems odd to consider the idea of language being even slightly related to science; after all, speaking your native language is second nature, unlike the difficulties that I know we all face when attempting to calculate red-shift or perform an exact titration. Yet the study of language is scientific. Each word, although not always intentionally, has developed over time, picking up different dialects and colloquialisms along the way. Conversing in a foreign language requires precision and the application of sets of rules. As a student who studies French, Spanish, Latin and Classical Greek for GCSE, I personally take great interest in the intricacies and similarities of Ancient and Modern European languages. 

There is a wide array of languages in the world today, approximately 7000 by estimation. And a myriad of these are rooted in the similar ancient tongues. The Roman empire occupied much of Europe and brought Latin to many areas. Therefore, languages such as Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, Sardinian, and other Romance languages directly descend from Latin. However, many other languages are embedded with aspects of Latin, such as English, Albanian, and to a certain extent Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian and Swedish. 

Understandably, Italian is considered the most closely related to Latin out of all the Romance languages. That is not to say that they are the same, or that if an Italian-speaker were to visit Ancient Rome they would understand every word spoken. However, they are both based on the same ancestral roots and have some clear similarities. Most notably, Italian still retains the distinction between ‘short and long vowels’ which is no longer applicable to most other Romance languages. Furthermore, Italian shares many cognates with Latin: ‘land’ translates to ‘terra’ in both Italian and Latin; head translates to ‘capo’ in Italian and ‘caput’ in Latin; and river translates to ‘fiume’ in Italian and ‘flumen’ in Latin. 

But we can also consider words derived from Latin in other modern languages. Take the Latin word ‘liber’ meaning ‘book’, for example. In Italian and Spanish, ‘book’ is translated to ‘libro’ and in French, ‘book’ is ‘livre’. Furthermore, we can also see how the English term ‘library’ – a building or room containing collections of books – derives from the Latin ‘liber’. This applies to many other English words as well. For example, the Latin ‘fructus’ translates to ‘fruit’ in English – clearly you can see the stem ‘fru-‘ here, but even more specifically ‘fructus’ is the root of ‘fructose’, the term for fruit sugar. There are a multitude of other words I could mention: the English word ‘civilian’ deriving from the Latin ‘civis’ meaning ‘citizen’; or the English word ‘urban’ deriving from the Latin ‘urbs’ meaning ‘city’. I really could go on forever. But it would also be interesting to explore this principle in relation to Ancient Greek. 

Similarly to Latin, Ancient Greek has had an influence on Modern language. Languages derived from Ancient Greek are known as Hellenic languages. However, unlike Latin, the only current Hellenic language is Modern Greek. Now, I will not go into the exact links between the two, as I am unfortunately lacking in knowledge of Modern Greek. However, I would like to explore the fact that in many Modern languages, there are a variety of words or parts of words (morphemes) which still originate from Greek. For instance, the Greek word ‘φοβος’, (pronounced ‘phobos’) means fear clearly a stem for the English word ‘phobia’ (fear of). Similarly, ‘δημος’ (pronounced ‘dermos’) means ‘people’. From this we get the word ‘democracy’ meaning ‘a government by the people’. There are so many more words like this, showing how, although English and other Modern languages may not originate from Ancient Greek directly, its influence is still present today. 

Overall, I hope that today I have convinced you of the scientific aspect of language. Each word that we use today has a history behind it; it acts as an amalgamation of hundreds of languages that have come before. The English language itself has links to ancient languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, and to modern languages like French, Spanish, Italian and so many more. The numerous links, derivations, and connections that we can make between languages are something that I find truly fascinating – the very concept of a certain word or morpheme staying in use, with the same or similar meaning, over hundreds, or even thousands of years simply baffles me. I have chosen to study so many languages because one day, I would like to have the knowledge to communicate fluently in many different ways. But secondly, I am so interested in being able to use that knowledge to further explore the linguistic origins and connections between those languages. However, the study of linguistics in nature is incomplete because language will continue to develop, seen in the colloquialisms and differing dialects across the world today. And so, I don’t know about you, but I remain eminently excited to see what will happen to language across the world in the years to come.