this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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No, they're completely different, have absolutely nothing in common. Though, yes, the Roman Empire did steal a lot of the culture from Greece.
They are both Indo-European languages and it shows. The words for father and mother for example, are very similar in the two languages.
I will never understand why people always want to deny the interconnected nature of the universe and instead want everything to be unrelated and separate
The word for father and mother (especially mother) are similar in many European languages, Slavic included, which doesn't mean the cultures share the same roots.
Though yes, I would agree that living on the same continent meant different cultures get to share a lot, inclding language, through trade or other means.
The point being made though was that the languages are well shown to be genuinely related through a common ancestral language from which they both deviated, just as have most languages in Europe and parts of the Near East. The connection is tangible and quite real, not something just based on some few similarities.
Thank you.
All I said is that they are related, because they very much are. Just read the Wikipedia page for either language if you're interested, you'll see that IE languages are all related.
Father and mother are probably the two worst examples. Mother is "mamá" in Spanish, and "mama" in Japanese, not because they're related, but because babies make that sound a lot.
That said, I agree with you completely. It's just that that specific example bugged me.
Mama is different than mater and pater both being very similar in several IE languages.
"Mama" is not the common word you'd use in Japan, it's a loanword from watching English/European media. Normally they'd use "Haha". At least as my neighbor once explained to me.
In Chinese, though, we use "maa maa", which does sound more similar.
I used to type up long explanations but I don't do it anymore. Either the person is not going to be uninterested and/or unconvinced, or they'll read up more on it on their own
Read my other comments for a more detailed explanation, but the tl;dr of the matter is that while they are both Indo-European languages, each is from a vastly different branch family of the Indo-European language family. The Hellenic and Romance branch families for Greek and Latin respectively.
Technically they are related, but technically if you go far back enough I am related to you too, however any sensible person would never make the claim that you and I are related simply because we share a common ancestor somewhere along our history.
Edit: my other comments also have sources, but I don't want to repeat myself once more, so I wont put them here as well. :)
"Technically".. I was simply trying to state that the absolutes being used here are wrong. They are. I am not interested at the moment in splitting hairs, that was never what I was trying to discuss. I happen to think it's interesting to see how things are related. I think I'd love studying linguistics if it weren't for your type being so prevalent. The type of person who will say "this has absolutely nothing to do with that" as if the only valuable perspective is to split and divide, and that taking a glimpse at the unknowable mysteries-- of exactly how historical changes played out-- is stupidity that should be stomped on.
It's 100% true that there is a relationship and telling people there isn't serves only to make you feel smart. I made no false assertions whatsoever so stop acting like I'm spreading dangerous lies.
I wasn't attacking you with my comment, but anyway. I do agree there is a relationship and they influenced each other a lot (mostly Greek influencing Latin, not so much in reverse). I was just trying to say that not even linguists claim they are related. I didn't once make the claim that they have nothing to do with each other either.
Yeah, the use of "related" in only one way is a pet peeve of mine. Relationships have many natures, and I think we all intuitively know that. I don't believe in arbitrarily enforcing one of those types as the only valid one. Notice I never said anything false. I just think it's fascinating to learn about those relationships and think about the things we can't know. It's not as though I imagined that they are super similar and then argued for that being fact ...
On that we agree :) If you like language/linguistic content in general, check out this guy. He makes content about old norse and such, its really interesting
I mean they are fairly similar. They share a lot of vocabulary, their nouns have corresponding declensions, verb conjucations are similar, there are a lot of other similar grammar constructions, and the Latin alphabet is mostly derived from the Greek alphabet, too.
Edit: Classical Greek and Classical Latin, at least. Modern Greek and Romance languages like Italian are further diverged from those ancestor languages to the point that they are difficult for modern speakers to even parse.