Spanish Is Latin
- One minute read - 161 wordsLike most nerds of a certain stripe, I’d always known that the Romance languages, true to their name, descend from the Roman Empire and Latin. But the YouTube creator behind 10 Minute Spanish has a genuinely great multi-part series on how Latin became Castilian, which became the national dialect spoken across the Iberian Peninsula. Somewhere in there was the light bulb moment:
It’s absurd to say that modern Chinese evolved from ancient Chinese, or that modern Greek evolved from ancient Greek — both of those are just considered Chinese and Greek, respectively. So why do we say Spanish evolved from Latin? It is, in fact, Latin.
10 Minute Spanish has a wonderful series on the subtle changes and geographic and demographic pressures that shaped the language over time, well worth your time if this is of interest. He also has an excellent series on Spanish pronunciation, as well as the rules and registers governing tú versus vosotros across the Spanish-speaking world.