Why is it "Latin" America?

[Boudicea]

Where does this term come from? I've done some net-searching and can't find an answer.

[eyesroll]

1. If I could wager a guess, it's because Spanish and Portugese

are descended from Latin.

[Boudicea]

3. Isn't English also descended from Latin?

My stoopidity may be showing -- sorry.

[BurtWorm]

5. Not really.

It's descended from Germanic languages. The high incidence of latinate words in English stems from the Norman innvasion of 1066, when French influence seeped into the language.

[Salviati]

7. Languages from northern and western europe are classified as:

"Germanic" languages and include: Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Sweedish in the north and Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisian, German, and Yiddish from the west.

The Romance or latin languages include Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish.

(As pulled from my Linguistics 101 text...)

[Breezy du Nord]

2. Cause they all speak Latin related languages?

:shrug:

[arcane1]

4. but so do WE...

I agree, the term is confusing. Just like Latino, it seems like it went through a very strange etymology...

like we call Europe Europe, not Latin Westasia

[Breezy du Nord]

6. I thought English was a Germanic language

Or something...

[BurtWorm]

8. It is.

It got married to the Latin languages--by shotgun--in 1066 when the Normans invaded England.

[Maple]

9. The Normans

were 'Norsemen' originally Vikings

[Boudicea]

10. That bastard William!

[Bridget Burke]

11. Yes.

The root language for English is Anglo-Saxon, generally considered in the Germanic group. Danes, etc., settled in England & added some bits from the closely related Scandinavian family. But it remained Anglo-Saxon or Old English. (Known to Tolkien fans as Rohirric!)

Then in 1066 the Normans invaded. Originally Scandinavian settlers in Northern France, they brought their own version of French. For a couple of centuries the nobles spoke Norman French & the serfs spoke English. Many peope spoke both. Very little writing was done in English. (Let's ignore those Celts on the margins.)

Then Geoffrey Chaucer began writing in what we now call Middle English. By that time the language included many words from the French which, of course, has Latin roots.

The language continued to develop into Modern English.

I've left out a lot of stuff...

[Boudicea]

12. Thanks Bridget, very interesting stuff.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Other Latin influence

came in during the Renaissance, when more and more people, other than priests and monks, began learning the language in order to read Roman literature and philosophy.

Knowledge of Latin was nearly universal among educated people. In fact, Queen Elizabeth I corresponded with monarchs all over Europe in Latin, and scholars at universities made a point of conversing in Latin.

The Latin words used on formal occasions started seeping into English writing, then into English conversation, often undergoing modifications. (BTW: The words "Latin," "formal," "occasion" "conversation" and "modification" all come from either French or Latin. The rest of the words in the sentence are Germanic.)

Something similar is happening in Japanese these days. Everyone under the age of about sixty has studied English for a minimum of three years, and even though most people still don't speak it, using English words is extremely trendy. English words, modified to fit Japanese pronunciation, are often used to name things that didn't exist in traditional Japanese culture, such as "aisu kuriimu." (But the words for "car" and "cell phone" are made of Japanese/Chinese elements. Go figure.)

There are also mangled abbreviations of English words and phrases, such as "ekimani," for "exhaust manifold" or "konbini" for "convenience store."

Another phenomenon is taking an English word and using in a different meaning, such as "manshon" for "condominium apartment" or "kanningu" ("cunning") for "cheating in school."

Finally, there are the so-called "made in Japan" phrases made up of English elements, but totally unknown in the English-speaking world. Examples include "pokeberu" ("pocket bell" for "pager") or "bebii saakuru" ("baby circle" or "playpen").

But does that make Japanese an English-derived language?

Uh, definitely not!