Talk:Vulgar Latin

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[edit] "Va" forms

I noticed that most if not all Romance languages use "va" and similar forms in the present tense of the verb "to go". For instance, the third-person singular form of ir in Spanish, aller in French, and andare in Italian is "va", and Portuguese has "vai" for ir. I'm wondering where this comes from. Do they come from a corruption of Latin ire, or somewhere else? In any case, I think it should be noted in the article since this feature is so common. - furrykef (Talk at me) 11:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The va- forms come from Latin vādō, vādere. CapnPrep 11:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
To go a bit farther: va - 3rd pers.sing.ind, 'andare', 'ir', 'aller', etc: < Lat. vado, -ere. to go; as often happens in Romance, the less common written classical form 'yields' to the more common colloquial form. Cf It. andare: < Lat. Vadere: thus: Vadimus < Arch.Lat. *wandiymus > LL *andyemus > It. Andiamo. And so on. •Jim62sch•dissera! 16:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The "va-" forms and the "and-" forms are related? I didn't know that! I had thought that this illustrated the more general phenomenon called suppletion. English has it: go/went, where went is etymologically the past tense of to wend. Also, the various forms of the verb to be are examples of suppletion. I think it's still the case with Spanish ir. —Largo Plazo (talk) 01:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Andare and aller are usually said to derive from ambulare, and the modern Romance conjugations are presented as textbook examples of suppletive paradigms. I'm not sure how this can be reconciled with Jim62sch's proposal above. CapnPrep (talk) 13:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
That's it—ambulare's the source I'm used to seeing. But are there other examples of Latin mb > Spanish nd? —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
While ambulare is the most widely accepted source, it must also be recognized that it did not undergo regular phonetic development. Here's an article (from 1904!) that argues against this dominant hypothesis, and suggests that adnare ('swim to' > annare, with suffixed forms *annitare, *annulare) might be the correct source: The Etymology of the Romance Words for "To Go". CapnPrep (talk) 16:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The basic issue is that the forms developed differently in the romance languages, in many cases depending on how early Latin was introduced to the area and various geographic and sociologiocal factors. Recall that I mentioned the Italian model andare, and in Italian we find the following forms:
Pres Ind 1PS, vado, 2PS, vai, 3PS, va and 3PP vanno.
Pres Subj 1PS, 2PS, 3PS, vada, 3PP, vadano.
Spanish and Portuguese ir (ostensibly from ire (eo)) are even stranger, with forms derived from eo, vado and sum.
On the other hand, Catalan anar, derives from only two forms see here for those unfamiliar with Catalan.
Ditto for Sicilian annari
Aller, too, is a hodgepodge of forms: eo, vado and, possibly, a very corrupted form of ambulo, although to me that seems unlikely.
Then there's Romanian, with two forms, voi from vado, and a reflexive se duce from duco.
Of course, "to go" is one of the most irregular verbs in IE languages, next to "to be". "to be" is rather interesting in Romance languages as Latin had only one verb, sum (sto meaning stand) yet Romance languages can have between 1 and 3. •Jim62sch•dissera! 19:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
But were you seriously proposing Lat. vadere > It. andare? CapnPrep (talk) 19:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
If you trace back from Old Latin, there is a linguistic reason to assume so. However, I can see no reason for mb becoming nd, and am aware of no such mutation in Romance languages, nor can I posit a mechanism for such a mutation: I could see either the m or b dropping (most likely the b), but not such a shift as proposed. •Jim62sch•dissera! 20:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
You omitted Spanish fui, fuiste, etc., as the preterite for ir, and likewise in Portuguese. These are identical to the preterite for ser = "to be", but is this definitely known to be suppletion by these forms of ser, or might it be a matter of suppletion by Latin fugio = "to flee", which had the preterite fugi, fugisti, fugit, etc.? Of course, Spanish huir = "to flee" took its own path too, but this could have been a parallel development. The dropping of the "g" is normal, as in huir itself, as in rugitus > ruido ("noise"), etc. —Largo Plazo (talk) 19:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I forgot nothing, read again (with emphasis added):
Spanish and Portuguese ir (ostensibly from ire (eo)) are even stranger, with forms derived from eo, vado and sum.
Re fugio -- seems unlikely. •Jim62sch•dissera! 20:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, of course—reading too fast, I didn't connect sum. —Largo Plazo (talk) 23:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
And I was a bit short with you, sorry about that. •Jim62sch•dissera! 19:41, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conjugation tables

  • I think a specific source should be cited for the Vulgar Latin forms, and they should all be marked with "*".
  • Why are conditional forms given as imperfect subjunctive in Italian (with inconsistencies in the stem vowel of amare)?
  • The compound forms of the subjunctive in Spanish ought to be removed or replaced with historical forms.

Would someone who has adequate sources please have a look? CapnPrep (talk) 10:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Agreed about sources.
  • To tell you the truth, I don't think there should be a column for Vulgar Latin in there, since it never had a standard written form, and probably was regionally heterogeneous, at least in its latter stages. I'm still thinking of removing Vulgar Latin from the table, and moving the tables to Romance languages.
  • Maybe the Italian conditional is derived from the Latin imperfect subjunctive. This happened in some Romance languages. See Romance copula.
  • I would keep the compound forms. The article on the Romance copula already has a table for morphological (diacronical) comparison. I've been meaning to make another one, for semantic equivalences between the Latin synthetic forms and the modern Romance (often analytic) forms of the verbs. FilipeS (talk) 14:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I didn't see anything in Romance copula to suggest that some Romance conditionals came from the Latin imperfect subjunctive, only that the Catalan and Sicilian conditional forms in for- come from the Latin pluperfect indicative. On the other hand, the Portuguese inflected infinitives might indeed come from imperfect subjunctives, so they could be added to the table…
  • …except that those rows are are already (incorrectly) occupied by the -ra subjunctive forms for Spanish and Portuguese. These actually derive from the Latin pluperfect indicative (amaveram > amara), which is missing from the tables altogether!
  • The Spanish -se subjunctives should be in the pluperfect subjunctive row (amavissem > amase), in replacement of the compound forms.
  • If Spanish is allowed to have compound subjunctive forms, why not all the other languages? This will enlarge the tables considerably, and irrelevantly, unless someone can prove that such compound forms existed in Vulgar Latin.
  • Removing Vulgar Latin would leave a 1500 year gap in the tables. I assume that there are good sources for Vulgar Latin reconstruction, and I wouldn't be surprised if these exact two tables are available in some published source (minus all the errors).
CapnPrep (talk) 15:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why not accusative?

Why are forms other than the acc used as etymological sources? •Jim62sch•dissera! 00:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] The Vulgata Latina

The Vulgate by Jerome is supposed to represent popular Latin as it was at the time that the translation was made. True or not??? Peter Horn 18:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The Vulgate is a conventional rendition of Latin as written at the time; it is not indicative of spoken Latin. Spoken Latin was already dialectical (and much simplified in comparison to classical Latin) and was already well on the way to becoming the various Romance Languages (all 47 of them). •Jim62sch•dissera! 16:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
So the scheme to make the Bible unintelligible for the ordinary people would already have started by then, unless those ordinary people even moderately literate in Latin could actually (still) read it. Would there have been those who would speak both "proper" Latin and "popular" Latin just as today most, if not all, Germans, Swiss and Austrians are "bilingual" in that they speak both "High German" and their local dialect? The local dialects are mostly mutually unintelligible. I do speak High German and have "bilingual" German friends. As a native Dutch speaker I do understand the dialect(s) of Hamburg and Bremen. Peter Horn 22:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
As the empire was crumbling and the education system was falling apart, the Vulgate might as well have been in Greek as far as the average Roman citizen went (and those citizens trained in Classical Latin would have grimaced at the errors). The case system was already coming apart as the use of prepositions negated the need for declensions beyond the nominative and accusative, and the introduction of ille and the like as definite articles rather than demonstratives took hold (yes, the declining education system played into this, as well).
Interestingly, German still relies heavily on the case system although it is no longer needed: the codification of German by virtue of the publication of various bibles played a large part in maintaing the case system. Ah, but that's another story. •Jim62sch•dissera! 20:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from Latin as written by the Roman elites.
Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from Latin as written by the Roman elites.

What did it say (transliteration & translation) and how would it have been written in classical Latin?. Just curious. Why did ancient Greek not fall appart like Latin? To the extend that I'm able to read the Greek alphabet I'm able to observe that, at least in the definite articles the case endings are alive and well. They appear to be the same as in Koine Greek. What forces kept the Greek language so conservative? What forces kept the Spanish language so conservative so that it is substantially the same as at the time that Columbus sailed? The Spanish language is, except for the cullinary vocabulary, remarcably uniform in all countries where Castellano is spoken. My wife is Mexican & I have had different dealings with some members of the Hispanic community here in Montreal. In times past illiteracy may have been, or was, the norm in Latin America but over some 500 years that did not appear to have had a big impact overall. As Winnie ille Pu said: "Rogo vos et quero id, quid est quod et quod est quid". Peter Horn 00:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, as soon as Christianity reached Rome the NT and the OT (Septuagint) wou;d be rendered from Koine Greek into a number (series) of Latin versions, the Vulgate being only one in that series. I find it hard to believe that the early Chtistians would produce translations that were unintelligible by the ones for whom they were intended. It does not seem likely that they would waste their time that way. "Rogo vos et quero id". Vale Peter Horn 00:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classical only words

Some of the classical only words are not classical only. I found four of them in Romanian:

  • Latin albus -> Romanian alb (white)
  • Latin cogitare > Romanian cugeta (to think)
  • Latin equus > Latin equa (feminine) -> Romanian iapă (female horse); qu -> p is a common phonetic change, cf. aqua -> apă (water)
  • Latin scire -> Romanian şti (to know)

bogdan (talk) 00:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the case, but these words may have survived from the classical vocabulary spoken by the elite. The explanation is probably that the Vulgar latin vocabulary varied. I know for a fact that Rheto-Roman uses a word derived from 'albus' for white. So yes, you are probably right that these words are not classical only, but maybe they were classical only in most of western Europe, rumanian is sort of deviant from the other latin languages anyway, so...--Alexlykke (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Apocope

Unless the definition of this term is different in English than in my language, there's something not quite right here. Apocope is the loss unstressed vowels in the last syllable, not the loss of consonants, as far as I know. I do not know, though, what the appropriate term is. Can anybody help?--Alexlykke (talk) 13:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)