The Origins of Romance
Thursday, 4th February 2010
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, the argument about which language is the most romantic is being hotly contested once again!
Some people feel that French is the ultimate language to express love, evoking the glamour of Paris, roses, fine wines and walks along the Seine with your loved-one. Others find that Italian speaks to them with its passion and vitality, la dolce vita having a powerful romantic allure.
Technically speaking, the Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, are a branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising all the languages that descend from Latin. The six most widely spoken are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan, although there are many others including Corsican, Galician and Friulian.
In fact, the term “romance” comes from the Latin romanice, which means “to speak in Roman” and applied initially to anything written in the Roman vernacular. The word romance in the modern sense of a love affair or romantic novel has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales focusing on love were composed in the vernacular and came to be known as “romances”.
Valentine’s Competition: If you have a story to tell about finding love through language we’d like to hear from you! Find out more...
Tags: spanish
Posted by Cactus 2010-02 under
Permalink
