Contrasting Spanish and Latin

Within the realm of recorded history we know that the Roman political conquest of such districts as Gaul (France), Spain, and Dacia (Roumania) had as a consequence a Roman linguistic conquest. Out of this victorious ancient Latin grew the Romance languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuegese, Roumanian and Italian. We can readily see the derivation of words from the Latin in for instance the word for friend: in Latin it is "amicus", in Spanish "amigo", in Italian "amico", and in French "ami". English too has many words that are derived from Latin. Words like maternal (mater), dual (duo), or dental (dens). When we start comparing grammar then we see that Spanish is a true daughter language of Latin. Take for example the conjugation of verbs. To conjugate a verb is to list together all of its forms, so let's take for example the verb "to love". In English we say:

         I love                        we love

         you love                   they love

         he, she , it loves

In Spanish we don't need the preposition "to" to express the infinitive form of this verb, we simply know it as "amar". Whereas in English the third person singular is the only form that changes to indicate person and number, Spanish changes the ending every time to distinctly indicate who is doing the loving:

        Yo amo                      nosotros amamos

         tu amas                     vosotros amaís

         el, ella, Ud. ama       Ellos, Ellas, Uds. aman

In Latin we conjugate it this way:

         amo           amamus

         amas          amatis

         amat          amant

Latin does not use a personal pronoun before the verb since it is an inflected language but Spanish being a modern language uses it and by doing so makes the verb that much more emphatic resulting in emotional effects at levels not present in Latin. Notice the beauty and free-flow of Spanish when contrasted with Latin in the following sentence:

Latin- Puer puellae bellae rosam dat.

Spanish- El niño le da a la niña bonita una rosa.

English- The boy gives the pretty girl a rose.

Although Latin has a much more conservative system of expression, it does so at the expense of the adorning pleasure found in Spanish.

BONAM FORTUNAM!

BUENA SUERTE!

GOOD LUCK!

Ed