Misunderstandings, colloquialisms, wrong words and false friends: 1

 

Latin is a romans language.

 

This depends on how you understand the speaker! 

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For a brief summary of what the Latin language is about (and its legacy on the English language), then do check out Not4GrammarBores, which you can find in this website, but as far as history is concerned, it was the language of Italy and Rome during the era of the Roman Empire. But is that what the speaker is stating? 

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Maybe they think it is a romantic language. I don't know, but if I was to ask my wife an vis ut expendas in a weekend Paris?, would it sound romantic? Would she go, 'oooh, darling, sic, modo me et te, et simul hotel cubiculum!'. Well, maybe... Paris is a great place for a romantic weekend, but again, I think that's not what the speaker is saying.

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Okay, how about the Romansh language? No, it's a language spoken in south-east Switzerland and is an official language.

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I'm sure it's not the Romanian language, or the Romani language spoken by the Romany peoples, of which seven varieties exist to the point they could considered different languages.

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Maybe they mean it is a romance language. No, it's not a language in which you use only vocabulary connected with love, but an adjective to describe the modern languages that evolved from something called 'Vulgar Latin'. No, not Latin rude words, but the Latin that was being spoken between the sixth and ninth centuries. It is a branch of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family, along with Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. 

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So based on the evidence we have discussed, it looks like the speaker is trying to tell us that Latin is, in fact, a Romance language (note the capital R).

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