Romanization

by 昂帝 (Andy) sltn= (Salatan)

All roads and waterways in the Old World led to Rome. The trails and shipping routes from the interior and coastal areas of the Far East, Middle East and North Africa were used to bring goods to the Roman Empire and its capital. But that is only half of the story. If we look at our civilization today, we could also say that all roads emanated from Rome. Different parts of the globe have various degrees of Roman influences. We can see them in our government, infrastructure, culture and education.

Rome was founded in 753 BC in Latium region, the ancestral land of the Latin tribe. The Roman law and the Senate were instituted and by the 3^rd century BC, Rome already had a representative government composed of only rich people, much like the present governments in many nations. The Roman state expanded and occupied the entire Italian peninsula in 264 BC. The Romans waged wars and colonized the places around the Mediterranean. They spread their culture and language to their empire. The Latin language spoken by the people in the colonies became the basis of the modern Romance languages such as Romanian, Italian, French, Catalan, Castilian (Spanish), and Portuguese.

The Romans built roads to facilitate transportation and communication among their colonies. They put stones to mark the mile similar to the posts we currently see in the highways. They constructed edifices with columns, an architectural element that is prominent in numerous buildings in several countries until now. They created a system to move water from a source to the communities, a very important infrastructure in any modern populated area. They developed urban planning and implemented it in designing the cities in the Roman provinces.

Hispania was one of the Roman territories. It was divided into three provinces: Hispania Tarraconensis, Hispania Baetica, and Hispania Lusitania. Part of Lusitania later became Portugal while the rest of Hispania became Spain. Like the Romans, the Portuguese and the Spaniards also spread their culture and language to their respective empire. Their former colonies now compose Latin America, Latin Africa, and Latin Asia. Latin America is from Mexico in the north to Chile in the south. Latin Africa and Latin Asia are not contiguous. Latin Africa include Angola, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde. Latin Asia include Goa (India), Macau (China), East Timor, Guam (USA), and the Philippines. All of these countries (not the territories) are members of the Latin Union.

Britannia was a Roman province that later became England and Wales. Like the Portuguese and the Spaniards, the British also spread their culture and language to their empire. British colonists occupied the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The British Empire reached an area of more than 13 million square miles making it the largest empire in world history. The English language is not a Romance language but more than 50% of its vocabulary came from Latin. English is now an official language in more than 50 countries. Among those are countries in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Philippines.

The Roman Empire started to decline in the 4^th century AD, about the same period the Tamils from south India started arriving in the Philippines and introduced their Pallava script to the native Austronesian islanders. The Philippine script is a syllabary where one letter stands for one syllable. For instance, the Arabic word “salatan” is transcribed as sltn=. The Philippine and Latin scripts were used by a Spanish missionary in writing the Doctrina Cristiana in 1593, the first printed book in the Philippines using Philippine or Latin script. An earlier version of the book inscribed in traditional Chinese script was published by another Spanish missionary in 1592 with the help of a Chinese printer.

In 1605, an Italian missionary wrote Xizi Qiji (Miracle of Western Letters), the first Chinese book in Roman alphabet. This was the first effort to romanize the Chinese language that would later result in Pinyin. For example, the Chinese name 昂帝 is transliterated as “Ang-di” in Pinyin and Americanized as “Andy.” The Pinyin system is now widely adopted in Greater China (Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines) and in every Chinatown around the world. We Chinese normally use Pinyin to teach our language to the non-Chinese. However, we still prefer to use our characters in marking their tourist sites.

The Vandals vandalized the Roman Empire in 455 AD. The grandeur of the Roman institutions was eclipsed during the Dark Ages. But after almost a millennium, the light of Rome was rekindled. The descendants of Roman citizens in former Roman provinces explored the planet and discovered places previously unknown to them. The Spaniards and the Portuguese brought the rule of Roman law and Roman statues to represent the important persons in the history of Christianity, the official religion of the Roman Empire as declared by Emperor Constantine in 325 AD. The British and the Americans brought Roman government with equal branches and a form of Christianity without Roman statues. All of them brought the Roman calendar, Latin script, and Latin lexicon to their dominions.

Latin is already a dead language but Latin words are still alive in languages currently spoken by more than 2 billion people. Latin script is being learned by all modern students. Roman calendar is being used in all computers, tablets and smartphones in all corners of the earth. Therefore, we still all live in a Roman world.

The Author: 昂帝 (Andy) sltn= (Salatan) is a descendant of Chinese migrants in the Philippines but never learned to write in Chinese or Philippine script.