2451: Re-Latinization of (Vulgar) Romance Languages Aug 27, 2021

The modern standard Romance languages associated most as descendants of Latin would include French, Spanish, and Italian. Of those, each has varied over time to different degrees, but one of the reasons that Italian has diverged less than French for instance is that there were simply more, usually educated people who over time re-latinized the language. For instance, usually in French the 'al-' becomes [o] and this happens too in Spanish, such as 'alter' (Latin for 'other') becoming 'autre' in French, 'otro' in Spanish, but 'altro' in Italian. Even medieval Spanish is less like Latin in certain phonological ways than today due to similar efforts to transform Castilian in particular which is why some medieval text will use the form 'oto' for the Modern Spanish 'alto', from Latin 'altus' (high) but in French it is still 'haut(e)'.