Introduction

This course features a discussion that shows how languages develop – a spoken language is constantly undergoing change while written language is more conservative. In its second part, it also looks at the evolution of Latin into the Romance languages: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and others. The discussions throughout this course are between Professor Geoffrey Horrocks and Dr. James Clackson, both of the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge University.

Learning Outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• Demonstrate an awareness of the general differences between spoken and written languages
• Demonstrate an awareness of how spoken Latin developed into the later Romance languages
• Demonstrate an awareness of some early Latin forms of words, as found in Plautus and archaic Latin
• Demonstrate an awareness of Latin’s place within the wider Indo-European tradition of languages.