What Is the Closest Living Relative to Latin?

Question

I am torn between Italian and Romanian. Italian retains much of the vocabulary and sounds of Latin, but Romanian still has a similar declension system (endings of words determine number, function, etc.). Thoughts?

Answer 1

Català ? I'm not sure Portuguese keeps all the H's from Latin where-as Castellano Spanish change's them to J's

Answer 2

I've heard that Sardinian is very close to Latin in terms of phonology.

Answer 3

Just to be devil's advocate, Latin is still technically around... ;)

I don't know anything about Romanian or any dialects, so I can't make any judgements there. Portuguese and French are definitely nothing (sound-wise) like Latin. Spanish and Italian are quite similar in pronunciation, so I might say that either of those are closer. As for vocabulary, Italian seems to have more similar orthography than Spanish, but I don't know as much Spanish as I do Italian, so...

Answer 4

Italian has much late Latin vocabulary and Romanian has the most archaic grammar. Also retains a lot of words from an old version of Latin than Western Romance languages and to some extent even the vocabulary is closer. It's a difficult answer because each language retains more of Latin in different field that another.

Answer 5

Romanian is the purest form of Latin left. One of my French teachers is from Romania and clarified that :)