Roman Language, Literature and Its Influence on Modern Languages
Roman language, literature and its influence on modern languages
This domain tests how Latin shapes later languages and literatures. You need to explain Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes in English words, recognise Romance-language developments, and connect Roman authors to specific later works. The exam rewards accurate morphology and concrete examples, not vague claims that Latin “influenced” English.
Word formation
Latin roots carry core meaning: portare “carry” gives transport, export, portable, report; dicere “say” gives dictate, predict, verdict; manus “hand” + scriptus “written” gives manuscript. Prefixes change direction or degree: trans- “across”, ex- “out”, re- “back”, sub- “under”, in- “not/into”. Suffixes form nouns and adjectives: -tion, -ment, -able, -ous, -ity.
From Latin to Romance
Vulgar Latin, the spoken variety, developed into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The case system was lost, prepositions took over, and word order became more fixed. English gained Latin vocabulary twice: directly in the Renaissance and indirectly through Norman French. This creates doublets such as secure/sure and legal/loyal.
Worked example
Explain transport. Trans- means “across”; portare means “carry”; so transport means “carry across”. The same root appears in export (“carry out”), import (“carry in”), report (“carry back”), and portable (“able to be carried”). The prefix is not decoration: it changes the direction of the action.
Literary influence
Virgil’s Aeneid supplies the epic model for Dante’s Divine Comedy, where Virgil guides Dante, and for Milton’s Paradise Lost. Ovid’s Metamorphoses feeds Shakespeare’s mythic plots; Seneca shapes Elizabethan revenge tragedy; Cicero shapes prose rhythm and rhetorical argument; Horace gives the carpe diem motif. Name the later text and the specific feature borrowed.
Traps
- Assuming every Latin-looking word came directly from Latin; many came via French.
- Confusing a root’s Latin sense with its modern English sense.
- Mixing Greek and Latin roots (e.g. tele- is Greek).
- Listing derivatives without explaining the meaning link.
- Saying “Shakespeare was influenced by Ovid” without naming a play or device.