Zeno in Italo Svevo's great novel, thought Latin is a language unsuited to women; so much so that he "thought that even among the ancient Romans the women had talked Italian." This is not as crazy an idea as it sounds at first blush, non รจ vero? I mean, set aside all the sociobabble about how men and women talk differently. There are cultures, are there not, where men and women really do have different languages? So maybe ancient Roman women really did talk Latin.
Source: Italo Svevo, The Confessions of Zeno 68 (Alfred A. Knopf ed 1930, 1958).
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