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| Proto-Romance | |
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Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance. Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e. the latest stage common to all of the Romance languages. Because some of the less familiar Romance languages branched off early from the others (Sardinian in particular, followed by Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages), it is also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g. Proto Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched off); Proto Italo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Romanian branched off); and Proto Western Romance (after the branching-off of Sardinian, Romanian, and the central and southern Italian languages, including standard Italian).
Proto-Romance and the other proto-languages are theoretical, unitary linguistic constructions. Vulgar Latin, on the other hand, is the actual speech of the common people during the late Roman Empire. As a result, it is not simply theoretical but actually attested (if thinly), and is not unitary, with differences both over time and space. Hence, it is possible to speak of (e.g.) the loss of initial /j/ in unstressed syllables in the Vulgar Latin of Cantabria (the area in northern Spain that gave birth to modern Spanish), but it is inaccurate to speak of a similar change in the "Proto-Romance of Cantabria".
[edit] Tags:Roman Empire,Romance Languages,Latin,Proto-language,Sardinian,Romanian,Eastern Romance Languages,Proto Continental Romance,Proto Italo-western Romance,Proto Western Romance,Central And Southern Italian Languages,Italian,Cantabria,Sardinia, | |
| Origin of the term | |
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The term "vulgar speech" later called "Vulgar Latin" was used by the Romans themselves. Subsequently it became a technical term from Latin and Romance-language philology referring to the unwritten varieties of Latin spoken mainly by the uneducated and therefore illiterate populations governed by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Traces of their language appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements. The educated population mainly responsible for classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts depending on their background. The term was first used in that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philology: François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761–1836) and Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876).
In the course of his studies on the lyrics of songs written by the troubadours of Provence, which had already been studied by Dante Alighieri and published in De vulgari eloquentia, Raynouard noticed that the Romance languages derived in part from lexical, morphological, and syntactic features that were Latin but were not preferred in classical Latin. He hypothesized an intermediate phase and identified it with the Romana lingua, a term that in countries speaking Romance languages meant "nothing more or less than the vulgar speech as opposed to literary or grammatical Latin."[2]
Diez, the principal founder of Romance-language philology, impressed by the comparative methods of Jakob Grimm in Deutsche Grammatik, which came out in 1819 and was the first to use such methods in philology, decided to apply them to the Romance languages and discovered Raynouard's work, Grammaire comparée des langues de l'Europe latine dans leurs rapports avec la langue des troubadours, published in 1821. Describing himself as a pupil of Raynouard, he went on to expand the concept to all Romance languages, not just the speech of the troubadours, on a systematic basis, thereby becoming the originator of a new field of scholarly inquiry.[3]
Diez, in his flagship work on the topic, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, first published in 1836–1843 and multiple times thereafter, after enumerating six Romance languages that he compared: Italian and Wallachian (i.e. Romanian) (east); Spanish and Portuguese (southwest); and Provençal and French (northwest), asserts that they had their origin in Latin, but nicht aus dem classischen Latein, "not in classical Latin," rather aus der römischen Volkssprache oder Volksmundart, "from the Roman popular language or popular dialect".[4] These terms, as he points out later in the work, are a translation into German of Dante's vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and the Italian of Boccaccio, latino volgare.[5] These names in turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman republic.
The concepts and vocabulary from which vulgare latinum descend were known in the classical period and are to be found amply represented in the unabridged Latin dictionary, starting in the late Roman republic. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a prolific writer, whose works have survived in large quantity, and who serves as a standard of Latin, and his contemporaries in addition to recognizing the lingua Latina also knew varieties of "speech" under the name sermo. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo plebeius and sermo quotidianus. These modifiers inform post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed, which was used by the masses (vulgus) in daily speaking (quotidianus) and was lower-class (plebeius), although some plebeians were quite wealthy.
These vocabulary items manifest no opposition to the written language. There was an opposition to higher-class, or family, Latin (good family) in sermo familiaris and very rarely literature might be termed sermo nobilis. The supposed "sermo classicus" is a scholarly fiction unattested in the dictionary. All kinds of sermo were spoken only, not written. If one wanted to refer to what in post-classical times was called classical Latin one resorted to the concept of latinitas ("latinity") or latine (adverb). If one spoke in the lingua or sermo Latinus one merely spoke Latin, but if one spoke latine or latinius ("more Latinish") one spoke good Latin, and formal Latin had latinitas, the quality of good Latin, about it. After the fall of the empire and the death of spoken Latin its only representative then was written Latin, which became known as classicus, "classy" Latin. The original opposition was between formal or implied good Latin and informal or Vulgar Latin. The spoken/written dichotomy is entirely philological.
[edit] Tags:Roman Republic,Ipa,Classical Latin,Romance-language,Philology,François Juste Marie Raynouard,Friedrich Christian Diez,Troubadours,Provence,Dante Alighieri,De Vulgari Eloquentia,Jakob Grimm,Boccaccio,Marcus Tullius Cicero,Comparative Method,Cid, | |
| Sources | |
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It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a distinct and persistent language so that the citizens of Rome would be regarded as bilingual. Instead, Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language throughout its range from the hypothetical prisca latinitas of unknown or poorly remembered times in early Latium to the death of Latin after the fall of the empire. Although making it clear that sermo vulgaris existed, the ancients said very little about it. Because it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indirectly. Knowledge comes from these chief sources:[6]
Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts.
Mention of it by ancient grammarians, including prescriptive grammar texts from the Late Latin period condemning linguistic "errors" that represent spoken Latin.
The comparative method, which reconstructs Proto-Romance, a hypothetical vernacular proto-language from which the Romance languages descended.
Some literary works written in a lower register of Latin provide a glimpse into the world of Vulgar Latin in the classical period: the dialogues of the plays of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, and the speech of freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter
[edit] Tags:Blanket Term,Dialects,Sociolects,Latin Language,Transcribed,Solecisms,Late Latin,Prescriptive Grammar,Register,Plautus,Terence,Cena Trimalchionis,Petronius Arbiter, | |
| History | |
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The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text.
Vulgar Latin (proto-Romance) developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to the different Romance languages. József Herman states:
It seems certain that in the sixth century, and quite likely into the early parts of the seventh century, people in the main Romanized areas could still largely understand the biblical and liturgical texts and the commentaries (of greater or lesser simplicity) that formed part of the rites and of religious practice, and that even later, throughout the seventh century, saints' lives written in Latin could be read aloud to the congregations with an expectation that they would be understood. We can also deduce however, that in Gaul, from the central part of the eighth century onwards, many people, including several of the clerics, were not able to understand even the most straightforward religious texts.[7]
At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language – either in the rustica lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic vernaculars – since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. Within a generation, the Oaths of Strasbourg (842), a treaty between Charlemagne's grandsons Charles the Bald and Louis the German, was proffered and recorded in a language that was already distinct from Latin.
Extract of the Oaths, the earliest French text.
From approximately this point on, the Latin vernaculars began to be viewed as separate languages, developing local norms and, for some, orthographies of their own, so that Vulgar Latin must be regarded not as extinct – since all modern Romance varieties are its continuation – but as replaced conceptually and terminologically by multiple labels recognizing regional differences in linguistic features.
[edit] Tags:Extinct,Cantar De Mio Cid,Council Of Tours,Priests,Germanic Vernaculars,Oaths Of Strasbourg,Charlemagne,Charles The Bald,Louis The German, | |
| Vocabulary | |
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Main article: Vulgar Latin vocabulary
Vulgar Latin featured a large vocabulary of words that were productive in Romance.
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| The Reichenau Glosses | |
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Insight into the vocabulary of late Vulgar Latin in France can be seen in the Reichenau Glosses,[8] written on the margins of a copy of the Vulgate Bible (written in Classical Latin though intended for the vulgus), suggesting that the 4th-century words of the Bible were no longer readily understood in the 8th century, when the glosses were likely written. These glosses demonstrate typical vocabulary differences between Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin in Gallo-Romance:
ager > campus "field" (French champ, Italian/Spanish/Portuguese campo, Catalan camp, Romanian câmp, but Portuguese in toponyms and, above all, Galician in common use retain agra and diminutive agrela for "fields of collective ownership" and Romanian sometimes agru "field")
aper "boar" > salvaticus (for (porcus) silvaticus "wild pig", Old French salvage "wild pig")
arena "sand" > sabulo (French sable, Italian sabbia, Catalan sorra, Portuguese saibro "sand"; but Spanish and Sardinian arena, Galician area, Portuguese areia "sand", regional Romanian arină).
canere "to sing" > cantare (French chanter, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan cantar, Italian cantare, Romanian cânta, "to sing", frequentative of canere)
caseum > formaticum "cheese" (French fromage, Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge "cheese", post-classical, from formare, "to form"; but Portuguese queijo, Sardinian casu, Spanish queso, Romanian caş, Galician queixo, Italian dialect cacio "cheese")
clivium "mountain" > montania (French montagne, Spanish/Galician montaña, Italian montagna, Portuguese montanha, Romanian munte)
flare > suflare (French souffler, Italian soffiare, Portuguese/Galician soprar, Romanian sufla, Spanish soplar, "to blow", from flare with prefix sub)
forum > mercatum "market" (French marché, Italian mercato, Portuguese/Spanish/Galician mercado, Catalan mercat "market". Forum gave birth to Italian foro "law court", Spanish fuero "jurisdiction", Portuguese/Galician foro "jurisdiction", Catalan fur "jurisdiction")
gecor (=jecur) "liver" > ficato (French foie, Italian fegato, Spanish higado, Portuguese/Galician fígado, Romanian ficat)
hiems > hibernus (French hiver, Italian inverno, Spanish invierno, Portuguese/Galician inverno, Catalan hivern, Romanian iarnă, "winter", adjective of hiems)
ita > sic (French, sometimes, si, Italian sì, Spanish sí, Portuguese sim "yes", Romanian şi "and")
lamento > ploro (French pleurer, Spanish llorar, Portuguese/Galician chorar, Catalan plorar "to weep", Romanian ploaie "rain". Lamento gave birth to Portuguese/Spanish lamentar, Italian lamentare, French lamenter.)
liberos "children" > infantes (French enfants, Catalan infants "children"; Italian infante "infant"; Portuguese infante "prince"; Spanish infante "child", but as a literary word also "prince")
lebes "boiler" > chaldaria (French chaudière, Italian caldaia, Spanish caldera, Portuguese/Galician caldeira, Romanian căldare)
mares (nom. mas) > masculi (French mâle, Italian maschio, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish macho, Catalan mascle, "male", diminutive of mas, also Romanian mascur "castrated male pig" and mare "big")
necetur > occidetur (Italian uccidere, Spanish occiso, "dead person", Romanian ucide, "to kill". Necetur gave birth to Italian annegare, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish anegar, Romanian îneca "to drown")
pingues > grassi "fat" (French gras, Italian grasso, Romanian gras, Portuguese/Galician graxo, Catalan gras "fat", post-classical, possibly from crassus "fat, thick, stout". Pingues > Italian expression terra pingue "rich soil")
oppidis > civitatibus (French cité, Italian città, Portuguese/Galician cidade, Sardinian tzitade, Spanish ciudad, Catalan ciutat, Romanian cetate, "city")
oves "sheeps" > berbices (Romanian berbec "ram", French brebis "ewes", but Spanish oveja, and Romanian oi "ewes")
pulchra > bella (French beau / belle, Italian/Spanish bello, Portuguese/Galician belo, Catalan bell "beautiful", diminutive of bonus "good". Pulcro gave birth to Spanish pulcro "tidy, neat")
sortilegus "sorcerer" > sorcerus (Latinization from French sorcier)
tenet "boredom" "difficulty" > anoget (Old French anoie > French ennui ; inodio > Italian noia, Spanish enojo)
umo > terra (French terre, Italian/Portuguese/Galician/Catalan terra, Spanish tierra, Romanian ţară, but also humă, "ground")
ungues > ungulas "fingernail" (French ongle, Italian unghia, Spanish uña, Portuguese unha, Galician both uña and unlla, Romanian unghie, Catalan ungla "fingernail", diminutive of unguis)
vim > fortiam (French force, Spanish fuerza, Portuguese força, Galician forza, Catalan força "force", Romanian foarte "very (much); intense", post-classical, from fortis, "strong")
si vis > si voles (French tu veux, Italian (tu) vuoi, Catalan (tu) vols, Romanian (tu) vrei or (tu) vei, "you want", 2nd personal singular of *volere, "to want", regularized form of velle)
viscera "entrails" "guts" > intralia (French entrailles, Spanish entrañas, Portuguese entranhas)
Grammatical changes:
optimos > meliores (Portuguese melhor, Galician mellor, Spanish mejor, Catalan millor, French meilleur, Italian migliore "best", originally "better". Reborrowed Spanish óptimo, Portuguese óptimo, Italian ottimo, French optimal, Catalan òptim, with the sense of "excellent" or "optimal")
saniore > plus sano (French plus sain, Italian più sano, Spanish más sano, Catalan més sa, Portuguese mais são, Romanian mai sănătos)
Germanic loan words:
turbas > fulcos (French foule, Italian folla "mob", but Spanish/Portuguese/Galician/Catalan/Romanian turba "mob")
cementariis (structor) > mationibus (mac(h)io > French maçon > Spanish masón "stonemason")
galea > helme "helmet" (French heaume, Italian/Portuguese/Galician elmo, Catalan elm, Spanish yelmo "helmet")
coturnix > quaccola (French caille, Italian quaglia "quail", but Spanish codorniz, Portuguese codorna "quail")
fulvus > brunus "brown", "dark" (French/Romanian brun, Catalan bru, Spanish/Italian/Galician bruno "brown/dark")
pignus "proof, token, pledge" > wadius (French gage, but Italian pegno)
And words whose meaning has changed:
in ore (nom. os) > in bucca (Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan boca, French bouche, Italian bocca "mouth", originally "cheek", Romanian bucă with the sense of "cheek" and "buttock")
emit > comparavit (Italian comprare, Spanish/Portuguese/Galician comprar, Romanian cumpăra, Catalan comprar "to buy", originally "to arrange, settle")
rerum (nom. res) > causarum (French chose, Italian/Spanish/Catalan cosa, Portuguese/Galician coisa/cousa "thing", originally "cause". Rerum gave birth to French rien, Catalan res "nothing")
rostrum > beccus (French bec, Italian becco, Catalan bec, Spanish pico, Portuguese/Galician bico "beak", post-classical, from Gaulish. Rostro gave birth to Italian rostro "beak", Spanish/Galician rostro, and Portuguese rosto "face", Romanian rost "mouth", "scope, purpose" and a rosti "to pronounce", "to tell")
femur > coxa (Portuguese, Galician and Old Spanish coxa, French cuisse, Italian coscia, Catalan cuixa, Romanian coapsă "thigh", originally "hip", first attested in Silver Latin)
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| Phonology | |
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See also: Latin spelling and pronunciation and Latin regional pronunciation
Main article: Romance languages
There was no single pronunciation of Vulgar Latin, and the pronunciation of Vulgar Latin in the various Latin-speaking areas is indistinguishable from the earlier history of the phonology of the Romance languages. See the article on Romance languages for more information.
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| Evidence of changes | |
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Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Appendix Probi
Evidence of phonological changes can be seen in the late 3rd century Appendix Probi, a collection of glosses prescribing correct classical Latin forms for certain vulgar forms. These glosses describe:
a process of syncope, the loss of unstressed vowels ("masculus non masclus");
the merger between pre-vocalic /e/ and short /i/ ("vinea non vinia");
the levelling of the distinction between /o/ and /u/ ("coluber non colober") and /e/ and /i/ ("dimidius non demedius");
regularization of irregular forms ("glis non glirus");
regularization and emphasis of gendered forms ("pauper mulier non paupera mulier");
levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /w/ between vowels ("bravium non brabium");
the substitution of diminutives for unmarked words ("auris non oricla, neptis non nepticla")
the loss of syllable-final nasals ("mensa non mesa") or their inappropriate insertion as a form of hypercorrection ("formosus non formunsus").
the loss of /h/, both initially ("hostiae non ostiae") and within the word ("adhuc non aduc").
Many of the forms castigated in the Appendix Probi proved to be the productive forms in Romance; e.g., oricla (Classical Latin auricula) is the source of French oreille, Catalan orella, Spanish oreja, Italian orecchia, Romanian ureche, Portuguese orelha, "ear", not the Classical Latin form.
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| Consonant development | |
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See also: Romance languages#Consonants
The most significant consonant changes affecting Vulgar Latin were palatalization (which affected all areas except Sardinia); lenition (which affected the areas north and west of the La Spezia-Rimini line); and loss of final consonants. The loss of final consonants was already underway by the 1st century AD in some areas. A graffito at Pompeii reads quisque ama valia, which in Classical Latin would read quisquis amat valeat ("may whoever loves be strong/do well").[9] (The change from valeat to valia is also an early indicator of the development of /j/ (yod), which played such an important part in the development of palatalization.) On the other hand, this loss of final /t/ was not general. Old Spanish and Old French preserved a reflex of final /t/ up through 1100 AD or so, and modern French still maintains final /t/ in some liaison environments.
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| Vowel development | |
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See also: Romance languages#Vowels
One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its vowel system. Classical Latin had five short vowels, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and five long vowels, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, each of which was an individual phoneme, and four diphthongs, ae, oe, au and eu (five according to some authors, including ui). There were also long and short versions of y, representing the rounded vowel [y(ː)] in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced [i(ː)] even before Romance vowel changes started.
There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except a differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts.[10] So, for example ē was pronounced close-mid /eː/ while ĕ was pronounced open-mid /ɛ/, and ī was pronounced close /iː/ while ĭ was pronounced near-close /ɪ/. The diphthongs ae and oe, pronounced /ai/ and /oi/ in earlier Latin, had also begun their monophthongisation to /ɛ/ and /e/, respectively. Oe was always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin; in Old Latin, oinos (one) regularly became unus.[11]
As Vulgar Latin evolved, three main changes occurred in parallel. First, length distinctions were lost, so that for instance ă and ā came to be pronounced the same way. Second, the near-close vowels ĭ and ŭ became more open in most varieties of Vulgar Latin, merging with the long vowels ē and ō, respectively. As a result, Latin pira "pear" (fruit) and vēra "true", came to rhyme in most of its daughter languages: Italian, French, and Spanish pera, vera; Old French poire, voire (but not Modern French "vrai"). Similarly, Latin nux ("nut", acc. sing nucem) and vōx (voice) become Italian noce, voce, Portuguese noz, voz, and French noix, voix (in some cases the quality of the vowel later changed again, because of regularising tendencies, or other extraneous influences).
There was likely some regional variation in pronunciation, as the Eastern Romance languages and Sardinian evolved differently.[12] In Sardinian, for instance, ĭ and ŭ became more close, merging with their long counterparts ī and ū; as a result, all corresponding short and long vowels simply merged with each other. In Romanian, the front vowels ĕ, ĭ, ē, ī evolved like the Western languages (the majority of languages, as described above), but the back vowels ŏ, ŭ, ō, ū evolved as in Sardinian. There are also small sets of remnant dialects in southern Italy that behave like Sardinian or Romanian.
In general, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin (not counting the Greek letter y), which relied on phonemic vowel length, was newly modelled into one in which vowel length distinctions lost phonemic importance, and qualitative distinctions of height became more prominent.
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| Romance articles | |
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It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in some form in all of the Romance languages, arose; largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.
Definite articles formerly were demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese article a ultimately comes from the same source, while o is derived from hoc. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" – from lupum illum and *homo illum),[12] possibly a result of its membership in the Balkan sprachbund.
This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin demonstrative was losing its force. The Vetus Latina Bible contains a passage Est tamen ille dæmon sodalis peccati ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Greek, which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force.[9]
Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with prædictus, supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough.[9] In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian ecco. This is the origin of Old French cil (*ecce ille), cist (*ecce iste) and ici (*ecce hic); Spanish aquel and Portuguese aquele (*eccu ille); Italian questo (*eccu iste), quello (*eccu ille) and obsolescent codesto (*eccu tibi iste); Spanish acá and Portuguese cá, (*ecce hic), Portuguese acolá (*ecce illic) and aquém (*ecce inde); Romanian acest (*ecce iste) and acela (*ecce ille), and many other forms.
On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the ninth century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be suffixed to the noun, as in other members of the Balkan sprachbund and the North Germanic languages.
The numeral unus, una (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with a Tags:Colloquial, | |
zote monety |