Talk:Vulgar Latin/Archive 1

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It was used to write the Vulgate and ...

As far as I know, Vulgar Latin was a strictly spoken language. Vulgate was written in late Latin (as opposed to classical of the 1st century B.C. - 1st century A.D.), but it has very little to do with Vulgar Latin (except, perhaps for the name). Am I correct? --Uriyan

I'd say your statement was highly debatable, just as the statement that vulgar Latin "was used to write the Vulgate" is over-simplistic. The term "Late" Latin can also cover a multitude of sins. The point about the Vulgate was that it was written in the language of the people, ie. a language an ordinary person could understand. It's true that the average person probably couldn't have written "classical" Latin. However, all varieties of "late" Latin, including "vulgar" Latin (which also means the language of the people), were spoken forms only until such time as they were written down - in documents such as the Vulgate. --user:Deb

Well, I'm only a beginning student of Latin, so I can't say for sure, of course, but I'd gotten the impression that the dialects called "Vulgar" are the more extreme versions (e.g. in the version that gave rise to French, the nouns ceased being inflected on most of the cases, the accusative being used as the basis rather than the nominative). Vulgate, however, is written down in very literary, ordered Latin that would have kept Virgil (mostly) happy if he had seen it. --Uriyan

I think what you're saying is that Jerome used more "correct" Latin than the spoken dialects normally referred to as "vulgar" Latin - which did, as you say, form the basis of the Romance languages - so I'd go along with that. --user:Deb

Some thoughts I had prepared before, but I had really bad connecting troubles

Vulgata was in late Latin, this is commonly agreed, even if it was copied in several versions with slight linguistic differences too, despite its original goal of becoming an absolutely unique reference text.

The point is the definition of Vulgar Latin, which I have seen in the article described as limited to 3rd century: effectively, an idiom usually called "Vulgar Latin" was used until its direct merging with the early romance idioms - we could say, until some time before Langue d'Oil and Langue d'Oc appeared, 11th century, first complex examples of writing in "popular" language; let's allow some delay for the evolution, but still it's not 3rd c., unless we are talking about the evolution in the German and English areas, which is another matter.

Looking at italian and french areas, if Latin was officially spoken, Vulgar Latin was then popularly spoken until the popular language turned to localised forms. Obviously we stop talking about a Vulgar Latin when the local dialects start collecting a certain amount of local carachteristics that make them become a different idiom, and it becomes simply a "Vulgar", sometimes with a geographical attribute: Vulgar Italian, Vulgar Gaulish. Then they will evolve into romance languages when an independent value will be recognised them (Oil, Oc, Sì). The word "Romance" comes indeed from "romanicae loci", of a place in the Roman Empire, this still ideally includes all the dialects as a part of the whole latin family.

St.Jerome's Vulgata was written (or, if you wish, translated) around 400 AD (I don't precisely remember, but I know it was started a few years before 400 and ended maybe a couple of years after). At that time a difference with Vulgar should have been well concrete, indeed. But, of course, they still merely were two forms of Latin, so perhaps (in response to Uriyan's first question) it wasn't "very little" what they shared.

Certainly, it was the age in which, apart form declensions, many roots were changing (i.e., "equus" > "caballus", etc.). Recently, some studies (which IMHO need anyway a more scientific development) suggest that pronounciations too started to make diverse, supposedly with already a similarity to modern local pronounciations, with the most spectacular (alleged) effect in the area of Naples. However, these changes were obviously not uniform in the Empire's territory, so the greatest differences were perhaps to be found among different forms of Vulgar Latin in different areas (also due to the acquisition of newer "local" roots), even if we ought to remember that most of theory is based on reconstruction a posteriori rather than, evidently, on texts (poor people > poor supports > poor remains > poor direct knowledge). It was in the Council of Tours (800AD?) that priests were ordered to preach in vulgar to be comprehensible. This could be a documented moment of the evolution. Late Latin, still based in Rome, presumedly reflected these acquisitions, recording what was changing in a nearer area - we could fairly say, in Italy. Formal Latin was "frozen" by the codifications of roman law on one side (Justinian) and of the Church on the other side, finally unified by the medieval copysts and since then forever separated from already independent romance vulgar idioms. Italian Dante (14th c.) based his personal success in describing Latin as a language that had become quite "artificial" (De Vulgari Eloquentia- BTW, written in Latin :-).

Due to this lack of uniformity, or of unity, I effectively am with those who are not convinced that Vulgar Latin really "is the ancestor of Romance languages": Latin is a language, while Vulgar Latin is simply a collective name for a group of derived dialects with local - not necessarily common - carachteristics, that don't make a "language", at least in a classical sense. It could perhaps be described as a sort of "magmatic" undefined matter that slowly locally developed in the single earlier forms of each Romance language, that consequently find their proper ancestry in formal Latin. Vulgar Latin was an intermediate point of the evolution, certainly not a source. Maybe a formalistic theory, but more logical, IMHO. --Gianfranco

Due to all the above, I have removed the Vulgate Bible related external link. It already existed in the Vulgate article anyway. Rocinante9x 13:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought the Council of Tours provided for preaching in the vernacular???JHK

Uhh, yes...? Isn't that what he said? (It really would be better if we could just throw away that word "vulgar" and replace it with the much less confusing "vernacular".) Brion VIBBER

I believe the two terms are indicating the same thing to us, here. Now, I don't know if in English it's the same, but in my language (and I dare suppose in Latin too) "vulgar" is better used to indicate a minor, popular form of the main language, therefore it focuses on the language (not considering users), while "vernacular" refers to what in detail people commonly speak, therefore it focuses on people and their native dialect (not considering the language, this time). They would then be used depending on two different points of view: vulgar when referring to the language, vernacular when referring to the dialect. Here we are talking about a minor form of latin language, so I believe "vulgar" might be more proper (if, as in premise, this is how it goes in English too)

BTW, I loosely remember that vernaculus had also a meaning of christian servant (sort of sacrist), and in this sense was also in Vulgata, therefore it might be confusing, since we are talking about the whole latin language (seen in its minor popular form) and not about the latin used by the Church - anyway, the root of this word was more widely used in later times than the root of vulgus. --Gianfranco

The primary meaning of "vulgar" in English is roughly equivalent to "obscene" (see definition in American Heritage Dictionary); people often have to be explicitly taught when they first hear of it that "vulgar Latin" does not mean "dirty words used by the Romans", which is why the "vulgus" derivation gets cited. "Vernacular" in English (AHD definition) has no connection to Christianity or Church Latin that I'm aware of. I'm not sure what you mean by the difference between "a minor, popular form of the main language" and "what in detail people commonly speak"...? "Vernacular" covers both as far as I know, while "vulgar" brings neither to mind except as a learned alternate meaning. --Brion VIBBER

Ummm...I'm not debating meanings -- I'm actually questioning the word used at the council of Tours, because my understanding was that the vernacular (whether or not a form of vulgar Latin) was what was specified...JHK

Hmm, did it apply to non-romance-speaking areas? Ah, wait, here's a reference: « it was decided "that all bishops, in their sermons, give necessary exhortations for the edification of the people, and that they translate these sermons into rustica Romana lingua, or into German, so that all be able to understand what they say." » [1] Okay, better make that "vernacular". --Brion VIBBER

Could we perhaps focus on the fact that "Vulgar Latin" is a specific phrase coined by philologists to refer to this form of Latin (using the word "vulgar" of course in its original sense, not the contemporary definition quoted above), whereas the expression, "the vernacular", is not restricted to Latin? I don't think there's any real dispute. Deb

Agreed. --Brion VIBBER

Moving on to other strange things in this article: can anybody explain what this statement means? "Vulgar Latin developed differently in two principal directions: italian-french on one side, and anglo-saxon (german-english) on the other side." I'm not too clear about this "anglo-saxon" or "german-english" Vulgar Latin; what is it? Where is it evidenced? What happened to it? And where do Iberia and Romania (to the west and east of the areas mentioned) fit in? Brion VIBBER, Thursday, May 30, 2002

That's a new one on me, and I didn't spot it in the article. It's true that Vulgar Latin did develop differently in different geographical directions - more than two, I would have said - but I've never heard of any Anglo-Saxon version. On the contrary, the Germanic languages are a quite separate sub-group of Indo-European. My guess is that someone has their wires crossed. Deb

May 30

The other possibility is that he was trying to say something about Vulgar Latin as spoken in Roman-occupied Britain... but that would likely be prior to the invasion by the Germanic-speaking Angles and Saxons, so I'm left even more confused! --Brion VIBBER

I take the point, but if that's what is meant, then it's quite wrongly expressed and still begs the other questions you asked. Yes, Latin did survive in Britain in the context of the Celtic church - I've seen a pidgin form on Celtic Christian monuments - but not in England. I doubt the Saxons would have had more than a nodding acquaintance with the language, until they were converted by an emissary from Rome in about 600AD. Obviously their attempts to use Latin would have been flawed, but the important point is that, for them, it would not have constituted the vernacular, but would have been a literary language, as used by Bede and others of that period. I don't think this falls within our definition of Vulgar Latin. Deb

Are you sure that sive has no descendants in Romance? I think Romanian sau "or" comes from it. -phma 04:05, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A couple of possibilities

I have not had the chance to check the following two brief comments carefully, but I thought that I'd submit them before I forget them.

Are you sure that domus and magnus do not have any Romance reflexes (via Vulgar Latin)? I should have thought that domus is reflected in Sp. domo, Fr. dôme, and Italian duomo (obviously the sense has become more specific, viz. referring to [ecclesiastical] architecture) as well as in the titles (Sp.) mayordomo and (It.) maggiordomo (and Fr. majordome?). As for magnus, Old French has maigne and maine (though there's always an outside possibility that these reflect a Germanic word).

Of course it's always tricky to tell without thorough research that Romance languages have not reborrowed the words later, but these two examples seem worth checking to me. -- A. G. Kozák

I think that the duomo in Italian may be a Germanic borrowing. In Swedish, a cathedral is a domkyrka, literally a "judgment church," i.e. the church where the bishop held his court. Most Romance do keep some forms of magnus for comparison, Spanish has mayor and so forth. It's sometimes hard to tell whether these words are preserved or reborrowed. I have expanded the section on vocabulary with some different Classical and Vulgar parallelisms with examples I think are a bit less ambiguous. Smerdis of Tlön 14:09, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/generic/affiche.exe?32;s=2473386015;d=1;f=2;t=2;r=3; says: (1)I. DÔME n. m. XVIe siècle, domme. Emprunté de l'italien duomo, « église cathédrale » (XIIIe siècle), du latin domus, « maison », employé dans domus (Dei), « maison de Dieu », domus (episcopi), « maison de l'évêque », d'où « église épiscopale ». —Casey J. Morris 18:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I have noticed the same two words. Italian duomo is from Lat. domus, with change of gender, m. to f. The sense is "house of the Lord" (domus Domini), i.e. church. In contemporary use, it means the main church of a town and competes with cattedrale, e.g. Duomo di Milano, Duomo di Firenze. The Oxford English Dictionary concords with this view.

Sardinian certainly preserves both: unu polatu est una domo manna meda 'a building is a very big house' (Example from www.ditzionariu.org, the online version of Mario Puddu, Ditzionàriu de sa limba e de sa cultura sarda, Cagliari 2000). Sprocedato 22:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Romance

The article says the term "Romance" comes from ROMANICAE LOCI.

I had read that it comes from the adverbial form of ROMANICVS, as in ROMANICE PARABOLARE > hablar romance (with the typical loss of unstressed vowels in the middle of words).

This seems more likely to me. In Spanish at least, we can see that the abverbial form was used for talking about the language, e.g. hablar latín < LATINE PARABOLARE (to be contrasted with the adjective latino from LATINVS. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 17:04, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That may be; it also might represent (lingua) romanica, the language of the Roman empire. Might want to alter that to say simply that it comes from ROMANICU(M) / ROMANICA, "of the Roman empire;" that paragraph is not one of mine, though, so whoever wrote it first might want to step in. Smerdis of Tlön 19:05, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how it would have come from any form of ROMANICVS, A, VM except for its adverb. Modern Spanish has idioma románico from IDIOMA ROMANICVM and lengua románica from LINGVA ROMANICA, and romance from ROMANICE. I'm sure the old French form romanz (which gave us the English word) is the same. The adjectival forms would have given *romanique.

I've consulted my Diccionario Esencial Santillana de la Lengua Española ISBN 84-294-3415-1 and under romance is says "(del lat. romanice, en románico)". I'm going to alter the article. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 21:10, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The article is somewhat poor

The best was to gather speakers of the main Romance languages to help build it. And compare them, to Vulgar Latin. I've read documents from Portugal of the 12th century and Vulgar Latin and Classical latin where seem as separeted languages. How can you explain why Latin Grammar was so different from Vulgar Latin? Equus and caballus were two words for the two separated languages from Rome. If Vulgar Latin evolved from Classical, why the Romance languages evolved in grammar and lexicon in the same way and from that same way they shifted the sounds? The language brought to Portugal in the 150 BC was the same that it is spoken today but modified by the dust of time. Classical Latin was until very recently the language of high-society and since allways (in Portugal) a country with almost 1000 yrs of independence, seen has two very different latin languages (but related). Portuguese was adopted in Portugal, not because it wasnt inteligible, but because Portuguese language (Portugal's Vulgar Latin) became very popular for poetry, earlier it happened with provençal, and sometime later, the same with languages, like Spanish. Please see the evolution of Portuguese from vulgar latin: Portuguese language#From Latin to Portuguese. Why not build the same for Spanish, Italian, French and Romanian, at least, for comparation and evolution? -Pedro 15:23, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, it's actually quite a good article. Some changes do need to be made, however. I'm making them right now:

More consistency with the "Latin in capitals, Romance in italics" rule.
Wiki tables instead of HTML ones
Fixing grammar, punctuation etc.
Filling in a few gaps
More consistency with transcriptions
etc

— Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 16:46, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, the distinction I've tried to follow, and which seems to be followed in several books I've seen, is that Latin words considered as etymological roots appear in capitals; Latin texts or attested forms from authors appear as any other foreign language texts, in italics. This is what I went by in my edits; of course, consistency being the hobgoblin that it is, I doubt I applied it in every case. Smerdis of Tlön 17:04, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree that is the normal academic practice. I'm implementing it right now. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 17:08, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Has allways I contributed with Portuguese. As for pronunciation of céu (Sky) in Portuguese, is \sEw\ the sound \sew\ (seu) means "yours". -Pedro 20:17, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Spelling and capitalisation conventions

I vote we should be as accurate as possible in this article. This means we shouldn't support the fiction that letters such as U existed, or that lower-case letters were used in Latin.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should abandon English standards. I know that it is normal, for example, to write "curriculum vitae" in English, even though in actual Latin the "v" was not something separate from the "u", and "curriculum uitae" would be more correct, and "CVRRICVLVM VITAE" even better still. But I'm not saying we should change usage. I understand that these words have become part of the language. I don't want ordinary people to have to write like the Romans, or pronounce [ku'rrikulu^m 'wi:tae] instead of [k^hə'ɹɪk^hjələm vaɪt^hi:] or however they like to say it. I get the idea of English usage. I get that quotations that people repeat in order to sound learned, such as alea jacta est! are best written and pronounced the way people usually do.

It's just that in a serious description of Latin, such English usage has no bearing whatsoever. To say in all seriousness that, for example, jugamos came from jocamus is to lie. It came from IOCAMVS. This principle applies generally: I think we should always tell the truth.

Because of this, I advocate the use of Latin orthography (as close to the real thing as practical) in this article and certain others, and I'll revert any change to this unless it is backed up with arguments. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 19:22, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm backing this up with an argument, so I don't expect that you will revert these changes, based on your statement above.

I take issue with your position that the standard contemporary manner in which Latin is rendered is "inaccurate." In addition, I don't believe that this is "support[ing] the fiction that letters such as U existed, or that lower-case letters were used in Latin."

Any Latin textbook, as well as my copies of Latin histories and poetry in Latin are all rendered with the v/u distinction (but not with j's, and not with macrons over the vowels outside of textbooks) and with lowercase letters, capitalization for the beginning of sentences and proper nouns, and with basic punctuation. It would be counterproductive and nonstandard (and not just for English text with the periodic Latin phrase thrown in now and then) for us to decide that any use of lattin must be in the 24 letter alphabet and in all caps.

And, by the way, I don't think it's very good form to set terms that must be met by others or else you plan to revert the article, since this isn't your article, Chameleon.

Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 21:03, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well it's definitely not yours! All you've done is revert work. It's more User:Ihcoyc's baby. But anyway, that's irrelevant. Stick to the subject, which is that the way you have put the article gives the false impression that Latin was written like modern languages. Readers are better served by having the truth told, I contend. It may be standard in some sense to pretend that Latin was written in a certain way, but at the end of the day it wasn't. It just wasn't. So why pretend? Why are readers better served by being told something that isn't true?

"Counterproductive"? How? How can the truth be counterproductive? You have to consider different the different purposes: a book of poetry in Latin published in the 21^st century has the clear aim of entertaining non-native speakers of Latin in the 21^st century. To do this, it is appropriate to adopt certain conventions that readers will be shocked to find broken. An article on etymology has a completely different goal. It aims to highlight and not white-wash the differences between a source language at one point in time, and a receiving language at another point. With this objective, it is clearly counterproductive to artificially minimise the difference between the two language variants in question.

You take issue with my position, but you can't deny it. Chameleon 22:35, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Quamquam litterae U et u non classicae sunt, Vicipaedia Latina tamen eis utitur. Or... although U and u are not used in classical Latin, they are used on the Latin Wikipedia. I think demonstrates that it is not "wrong" to use them. It is very common for both lower case letters, and for letters not traditionally used in Latin, to be used now. I don't think the article should be changed just to reflect a view that the way the majority of textbooks write these words is wrong. Angela . 21:44, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Come on, that is quite a laughable argument. I took a look at the Latin Wikipedia a while ago. I saw they weren't even capable of discussing on the Village Pump in Latin. They were writing in English! What a farce! I would love the Latin WP to be a vibrant community, and I'd participate in it, but the fact is that it is basically on the same level as the Klingon WP: a bunch of geeks pretending to be speakers of a language nobody speaks. The way of writing of such people, who can't even communicate fluently in the language in question (I'm not claiming fluency in Latin either, but I don't presume to edit on that WP) is wholly irrelevant and should definitely not be taken as a standard. In any case, even if Latin were revived as a spoken language, and became the mother tongue of millions in the modern world, being used in online projects, I would obviously expect them to modify the language to a great degree, adding numerous neologisms to describe the world they were in, and using modern typography, and probably L33t and emoticons to boot! But all this has no bearing on statements we make in encyclopaedia articles about the language of Rome two millennia ago.

Following your argument that modern Latin usage must prevail, even when the point is the describe Classical Latin, one could say that Linnaeus' names for species were the correct names to use in etymologies. For example, saying that Spanish león comes from Panthera leo rather than the Classical accusative LEONEM. After all, Panthera leo is what we see in all the most respected textbooks, isn't it? It is indeed the modern, international standard. If asked for the Latin name for the lion, nobody would come out with LEONEM, would they? Who cares about the truth, eh? Only what most people do counts, doesn't it? Chameleon 22:35, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's not only the Latin Wikipedia doing this though, so your claims about it not being a worthy enough reference are irrelevant. As I already said, the standard in academic works and Latin textbooks is to include the letter u. This article is not the place for opinions on what the "truth" is to be pushed. By the way, the Maori language Wikipedia also use English on their village pump, as do a lot of new Wikipedias, including Arabic when it was smaller so clearly that is no sign of being some sort of joke language. Angela . 00:32, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

They are of course relevant, because that was your example. If it is irrelevant, you made the irrelevant point.
Use of English is definitely a sign that the contributors are non-native and not even proficient in the language in question, and that this language may be a bit of a joke or dead, even if it is not the case with Arabic. I trust there are actual Arabic speakers on that WP now.
The article obviously is the place to push forward the truth, upon which we previously agree here, as with any article.
You need to go to bed. So do I. Goodnight. Chameleon 01:04, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that the V was U, they simply wrote the U that way. In the article there should be info that the V is in fact the modern U. Camaleão, you also changed it in the Portuguese lang. article. Although I do not disagree, I think that will mislead people.

FWIW, my preference is that (Vulgar) Latin words used as etymological roots be capitalized, while ordinary Latin text appear in italics like any other foreign language text. This is the way a number of books on the subject I've seen have it, inlcuding the two I cited in the article in chief. I frankly have no strong feelings on the matter, provided that hypothetical roots are always *asterixed. Smerdis of Tlön 03:08, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In Portuguese dictionary states: "Aquele" (that one –to people, animals and sometimes things) comes from "eccu elle"

Is "Port. aqueste (*ecce iste)." Portuguese? in modern Portuguese we only use "este" (this one, from ipse) or aquilo from eccu + illud. (means that one – to things). Hugs.-Pedro 23:07, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, aqueste must be mediaeval Portuguese. It certainly occurs in mediaeval Castilian, as well as modern Catalan. Change the article. Chameleon 23:31, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

yes, it is mediaeval Portuguese. I saw it in a medieval poem. -Pedro 00:51, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oath of Strasbourg translation

"d'ist di en avant" is translated as "till that day". Shouldn't it be "starting today", or literally "from this day on" ? Bogdan | Talk 20:31, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're slow! I corrected that earlier! — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 21:44, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

aquele, aquela, etc.

I've written in the article all the Portuguese "look" that I remember and searched in the diccionary. For further development of that:

aquele (*eccu ille): that male (person or animal)
aquela (*eccu illa): that female (person or animal)
aquilo (*eccu illud): that thing
cá (*eccu hac): in here
aqui (*eccu hic): in here
acolá (*eccu illac): in there
aquém (*eccu + inde): to here.

-Pedro 12:24, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

what is this article about?

If the title were simply "Late Latin" it would be clear what the article covers; but doesn't the name "vulgar Latin" suggest that using the 2nd century as our starting-point is a little unfair? What about the vulgar speech during the classical era? What article is that covered in? Well, a lot of it is covered here, after all, since (as only tangentially mentioned in the article right now) much of this stuff dates back that far. (Indeed, some can be found in Plautus and Terrence, ca. 200 BCE, two names conspicuously absent from the article.) So shouldn't the article be pushed back earlier in its scope? Or alternatively, divided into two: "Vulgar Latin" and "Late Latin"? Doops 05:20, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you're quite right, "Vulgar Latin" and "Late Latin" are not synonymous. Somewhere in the history of this article, someone decided (wrongly) to set an arbitrary start date on Vulgar Latin. I now think that's unreasonable, and I've amended the introduction accordingly. Deb 21:50, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In Portuguese we call vulgar latin has "língua vulgar" (people's language - name given to the language in the 12th century) and Late Latin has "latim macarrónico" (I dont know how to say it in English but it is something like Modern Portuguese-influenced Latin), and it is still used in Portuguese Universities by students, we use it in college in praxis traditions). For example, when an Academic meeting/dinner is proposed, a paper is written in Macarronic Latin. it is also used (spoken) among older students gatterings to make a sentence or an academic baptism. It is used because it is perfectly understood, while Classical Latin couldnt always be. I believe that Late Latin has nothing to do with Vulgar latin! Vulgar latin is a natural language while Late Latin is not. -Pedro 19:29, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Macaronic Latin is also a term understood in English, where it's also sometimes called dog Latin. Not sure if we have an article on either of them, but if not we should. I agree fully that a cut-off date is inappropriate, and that many of the features of late Latin may have been present in ordinary speech for centuries before they were attested, precisely because literary Latin had so clearly defined norms. Palmer's The Latin Language, which I don't have in front of me at the moment, goes into detail about the variety of early attested forms that were pruned to create the rather narrowly defined literary norms. The very nice work that's been done recently on Saturnians as a verse form contained an instance of loss of final -M that dates to around 150 BC; I added a reference to that as well. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:55, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Even Don Quixote de La Mancha was translated to Macarronic Latin:

Historia / Domini / Quijoti Manchegui / Traducta in Latinem Macarrônicum / per / Ignatium Calvum / (Curam misae et ollae).

It was published in Madrid, in 1905. José Leonardo (Brazil).

Vowels

I wrote some comments on vowels in the article under the  . -Pedro 19:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What's with the Breves? I've never seen latin transcriptions use any more than macrons and it seems fairly redundant. AEuSoes1 01:12, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

pot as metaphor for head

Interestingly enough, this metaphor is present in Hungarian as well, at least in the ironic intimidation "kupan vaglak", meaning approximately "I will hit your cup/bowl", ie, your head:).--Tamas 09:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually the metaphor is in English too, roughly: mug = face. —Muke Tever 17:29, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Breach of NPOV?

"As such, their phonetic erosion was hindered." To speak of phonetic erosion rings with a non-neutral prescriptivist-biased vibe to me.

Go and change all the articles on glaciers, valleys, mountains and rivers first. Chameleon 17:16, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Neuter gender

Apart from a remnant in Italian (le uova fresche), the neuter gender has been kept as a very distinct category in Astur-Leonese, where adjectives have three endings: bonu, bona, bono. The neuter gender in this Romance language has an interesting grammatical usage; see for example http://www.uniovi.es/aal/archivos_pdf/neutro_materia.pdf (in Spanish). Uaxuctum 18:04, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There are traces of a similar fenomenon in Italian dialects. It affects some uncountable nouns meaning substance and material. In those dialects the singular article has a third, "neuter" form, used with these nouns. They are all masculine nouns under any other respect.

Such dialects span a vast area, from Southern Umbria and Southern Marche to Campania, Basilicata and Northern Puglia. The forms vary from place to place but all come from m. lu < illu(m), n. lo* < illud. The asterisk means that the next consonant, if possible, is pronounced as double. For example, in Naples, o cane 'the dog' is masculine and o ppane 'the bread' is neuter. My source is Gerhard Rohlfs, Grammatica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti, Torino 1966-1968.

As for le uova fresche, I don't like the way the article treats this subject. It certainly is a clear remnant of Latin neuter but, as accord shows, it is no more a grammatical gender. It is a declension. To say that in Italian exists a neuter gender is descriptively cumbersome and historically misleading. If neuter grammatical gender had been retained, there would have been no phonetic or analogical reason for *la uova fresca to evolve into something else.

There are subtleties not completely solved, as far as I know, in the historical development. Put it simply, it is not clear why *la uova fresca became le uova fresche and not, say, **le uove fresche or **li uova freschi. Sprocedato 00:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Kopf example?

'In Vulgar Latin, classical caput, "head", yielded to testa (originally "pot," a metaphor common throughout Western Europe ? cf. English cup with German Kopf) in most forms of western Romance, including Italian.'

German Kopf is generally recognized as being derived from Latin caput, replacing the original German Haupt (which shares the same root with English head). "Pot" would be Topf, not Kopf, though I guess this is just a coincedence :-) --172.176.226.120 23:23, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I quote from Grimm's Wörterbuch here.

a) es ist erst seit der mhd. zeit allmälich in gebrauch gekommen, und zwar ohne zweifel aus dem vorigen kopf entwickelt, hat aber dann das alte wort dafür, haupt, immer mehr zurückgedrängt und behauptet im eigentlichen sinne nun so gut wie allein den platz. es ist übrigens auszer dem hd. nur noch nd. und nl., kop, während in schwed. hufvud, dän. hoved, engl. head der alte ausdruck den platz behielt (doch vgl. e).

It clearly claims "indeed, without a doubt" developing from the former "kopf".(Cup)

(Actually, the germanic words probably(?) shares the same root as latin Caput. Websters seem to claim otherwise.)

From what I could find out, topf seems related to english deep, dip, dive, and german taufen(baptize).

You seem to confuse etymology and cognates, with words' modern meanings. =S

- Caput doesn't mean pot, testa did. Testa, pot, later meant head. It's the opposite for the examples given in English and German. And Webster is correct etymologically.75.64.224.80 08:23, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Fungo

There is no fungo in Spanish, if that's what the article means.

The word appears in my Spanish-English dictionary. Smerdis of Tlön 16:33, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Majorcan

The Majorcan dialect also takes its articles (es, sa) from ipse, ipsa. But since I guess Majorcan diverged from other Catalan dialects quite later, I didn't dare to include it with the Sardinian mention.

The "es", "sa" form existed in all Catalan dialects, but was lost during the Middle Ages, remaining only in some dialects.

Fear of the irrealis

Could the auxliarization of the future be caused by fear of the irrealis? I mean, using the standard future could be seen as a bad omen, like imposing your will on fate. In several languages (and several times), the future has been replaced by a form with "I want to", "I go to", "I have to". See the English will and gonna. I suppose it's a studied phenomenon.

Yes

What is the origin of the word, "Sí", meaning "yes" in spanish, italian and (sometimes) in french? Sic - thus, so? (According to the page about Romanian Language, Latin does not have a word for "yes". Is this true?)

Classical Latin did not have a word for 'yes'. They would have used rough equivalents such as 'Certe'. (Decius)

Yes, "sí" comes from "sic". And more strictly correct would be that Latin had several words used for agreement, but not one that corresponds exactly to English "yes". Apparently the most ordinary word though was "etiam" [2]: Cicero says "aut 'etiam' aut 'non' responde" ("answer either 'yes' or 'no'"). Other yes-like words are ita, sic, sane, maxime, admodum, oppido, certe, plane, and planissime. (source: ISBN 086516438X ) —Muke Tever 15:23, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

S lost

Shouldn't there be something about how the S in middle of words got laxer? In french, it seems basically gone, and in spanish I believe it has often turend into a very lax s-sound...

Caput

The Classical Latin word caput has survived with the same original meaning in the Romanian word cap, which means the 'head' in the anatomical sense, not metaphorical. Capul Meu means 'my head' in Romanian, showing the article attached to the end of the word (cap-ul). The fact that caput survives as cap in Romanian must be stated in the body of the article. Vulgar Latin testa is not used for the 'head' in Romanian in polite speech, because it resonates with the meaning 'skull' that it has in Romanian.

Wrong. "Ţeastă" is still used, but mostly with the meaning of "skull", but also as "head". Bogdan | Talk 19:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Classical Latin word testa (which meant pot, jug, shell) entered Romanian and again preserved some of the Classical meanings: ţest means either a type of bell-shaped vessel used to cover hot bakeries or it can mean 'shell'. ţestos means 'having a shell' and ţestoasa means 'shelled'. A turtle or tortoise is often called a broasca ţestoasa which literally means 'shelled frog'. (Decius)

It. capo is used in many metaphorical senses, but also in anatomical sense, competing with It. testa. It is a matter of regional habits and personal taste. 'Headache' is mal di testa and, less frequent but equally correct, mal di capo. Sprocedato 01:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The word CAPVT originated both the French "chef" and the Portuguese "cabeça" (i.e. head) and "cabo" (i.e. cape [as in Cape Town, "Cidade do Cabo"] or the military rank just bellow sargeant [cape as well?]). "Cabo" is also used in the expression "de cabo a rabo", i.e. "from head to tail", "from the begining to the end". José Leonardo (Brazil).

Albus/blancus

Classical only: albus

Classical and Romance: blancus

English: white

Also - Potuguese: alvo, branco, alvi- (when in composed words, like "alvi-verde", "white-and-green". José Leonardo (Brazil).

Actually, "alb" (<lat. "albus") is Romanian for "white", so it's not "classical only". Bogdan | Talk 20:01, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes indeed that chart was wrong: I fixed it. Spot an error, go ahead and fix it, that's what I say. (Decius)

So it has only survived in Romanian? I believe Romanian is generally the least known Romance language, so it is not strange that it wasn't noted.

Also Romanian is apparently the first language to split from Vulgar Latin as a language of its own, so it's well possible that albus was replaced by blancus after Romanian split off but before any other splits happened. (Normally languages don't split off very neatly, but to my knowledge contacts between what is today Romania and other parts of the late Latin-speaking territory were severed quite suddenly.) But no, Romanian is not the least known Romance language. Occitan and Sardinian, for example, are probably far less known among linguists. Oghmoir 13:35, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'Blancus' (which is a Latinized spelling/form not the actual form) is a Germanic word, and it was not used in the Latin or in the Vulgar Latin that evolved into Romanian, so Romanian never had the Germanic word 'blancus' in the first place. So that's why the Romanian word for 'white' is alb, inherited from classical Latin albus. Yes, Romanian was the first Romance language to split from Vulgar Latin, and it subsequently became cut off from other Romance languages in the Dark Ages. Decius 05:27, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Blancus" is attested in medieval Latin, both as an adjective meaning "white" and, substantively, meaning a silver coin. (source: Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitas Lexicon Minus) —Muke Tever 06:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If it's from Medieval Latin, then it's most likely a consciously Latinized form of a Germanic word, which of course would not have had the form 'blancus'. Decius 07:26, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well... I was responding to the bit about it being "a hypothetical spelling/form not the actual form". (You may have meant it as referring to the Germanic form, but it read to me as referring to the Latin form, and "blancus" is indeed what it was.)

BTW, I don't see how it was "most likely" consciously Latinized from the German — it was probably just an unconcious Romancism creeping in from the native language of the author(s). This is medieval Latin, not the better-educated Humanist Latin of later periods. —Muke Tever 18:13, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I said, "which from what I remember is a hypothetical etc..." because I wasn't sure, because I have one reference (American Heritage Dictionary) that says 'blancus' is unattested, but I didn't rely on one reference, so I left the possibility open. So no error was made on my part (if I had said, "it is definitely unattested", then I would have been wrong). I consider it to have been consciously Latinized (there was conscious Latinzation of words going on even in those texts), and I'm not the only one (though it's not "a fact" that it was consciously Latinized, to my knowledge). The Library of Congress Catalog Card number of the american heritage dictionary I referenced is 76-86995, and on pg. 139 you'll find the erroneous statement that 'blancus' is unattested. Decius 00:23, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Whoa... relax, man. I wasn't intending to correct an "error" on your part, I was attempting to supply information you had admitted not having to hand. —Muke Tever 22:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Decius 22:26, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Another word in several Neo-Romanic tongues that comes indirectelly from Ancient Germanic is "guerra" (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian), related to Modern English "war". José Leonardo (Brazil).

perfect tense formed with auxiliary verbs

This article is very interesting -- but I'm surprised that it doesn't mention/explain the fact that the Romance languages have a perfect tense formed with auxiliary verbs that Classical Latin didn't have. It would seem that this must have developed in Vulgar Latin before the languages became separated? Joriki 23:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

You are right, composite tenses should be treated in this article. And probably also the different coalescence of vowels in Western Romance, Sardinian and Romanian, since this topic is touched without explaining it.

There will unavoidably be some overlap with Romance Languages, but efforts should be made to minimize it. Sprocedato 01:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Lac

In the section "Gender: loss of the neuter", we read:

"French le lait, Spanish la leche, Portuguese o leite, and Italian il latte, "milk", all presuppose a Latin accusative *lacte(m), which in fact did not occur in classical Latin in the neuter noun lac. Note also that Spanish assigned it to the feminine gender, while Portuguese, Italian and French made it masculine."

Oxford Latin Dictionary (1996) cites the following non-standard forms (p. 992):

"nom. acc. lacte Enn. Ann. 352; Pl. Bac.6; Men.1089; Cato Agr. 86; 150.1; Var. R. 2.1.4; Petr.38.1; Plin.Nat.23.126; etc.; lact Var.Men.26; L.5.104; Plin.Nat.11.232;22.116;acc. lactem Petr.71.1;Apul.Met.8.19;8.28; Gel. 12.1.17"

So the form lactem does in fact occur. Furthermore, the neutre lacte is frequent since our earliest texts. Considering that the Romance forms can come from both lacte and lactem, they cannot serve as a testimony of the loss of the neutre. We must find a better example or rephrase the section so that it focuses on the confusions in Classical Latin.

It would also be useful if we distinguished more explicitly morphological confusion (neutre declensions being absorbed my masculine declensions) from syntactical confusion (old neutres being used with adjectives or pronouns in the masculine). Enkyklios 16:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I have separated that paragraph, and amended it to clarify that lacte and lactem are indeed attested non-standard forms. Smerdis of Tlön 16:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Another question about this §: right now it claims

Most neuter gender nouns of the second and third declensions were absorbed by the masculine gender, since the accusative endings -UM or -EM was the same for both.

But of course -em isn't a neuter accusative ending. So what's the sentence trying to say? Doops | talk 20:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Question About Vowel Phonology

In general, the article appears to be very good and factually reliable. One question, however, involves the chart on the development of Vulgar Latin vowel sounds from Classical Latin vowel sounds. The article has:

AV (Cl. L. spelling), /au/ (Cl. L. pronunciation), /au/ (V.L. Pronunciation)

But I had always thought it was:

AV (Cl. L. spelling), /au/ (Cl. L. pronunciation), /o/ (V.L. Pronunciation)

(Thus giving, for example: oro (Span., Ital.) from aurum; orejo (Span.), orecchio (Ital.) from aureculum.)

-- Bob Bob99

The change /au/ > /o/ did in fact occur in just about every Romance language. However, it happened well after other changes from original VL /o/, and as such /o/ resulting from /au/ is treated differently from /o/ that was /o/ in Classical Latin. For instance, short Latin /o/ became "uo" in Old French, often written "oeu" in Modern French: CL ovum > MF oeuf, "egg". And long Latin /o:/ becomes "ou" or "eu" in French: CL florem > F fleur. Similar sequences can be constructed in Spanish, Portuguese, and most other Western Romance languages. But CL aurum, "gold" gets taken into French as or, Spanish oro &c.; the /o/ resulting from CL /au/ is preserved, and does not participate in the changes that original /o/ suffered. It follows, therefore, that the change to /au/ must have happened at some time after the CL /o/ and /o:/ sounds were changed in the spoken language. Does this make more sense? Smerdis of Tlön 04:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

/au/ is preserved in Romanian, South Italian and Provençal (e.g. aurum > Rom., Prov. aur, laudat > Rom. laudă, Prov. lauza), and it becomes /ou/ in [Portuguese language|Portuguese]] (e.g. aurum > ouro, causa > cousa). Furthermore, the monophthongisation of /au/ must be later than the French palatalisation of /k, g/ to /tʃ, dʒ/ (> /ʃ, ʒ/) before original /a/ (e.g. causa > chose, gaudēre > jouir = caballus > cheval, gamba > jambe), and this palatalisation must itself be later than the Frankic conquest (cf. Germ. *kausjan > choisir). However, there was a monophthongisations in certain registers of Classical Latin already, cf. Claudius > Clōdius, auricula > ōricula, and some words have survived with an old monophthong in the Romance languages (cf. cauda > cōda > Rom. coada, Prov. koza, French queue). Enkyklios 15:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Question about meaning of sentence

I'm translating this article and I do not understand the following sentence: thus, I cannot translate it. If it is not explained to me, I will simply remove it from the translation.

Both the diphthongs AE and OE also fell in with /e/.

--Zantastik talk 03:59, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

It means in essence that a phonemic merger obliterated the difference between the sounds written AE, OE, and E itself, and all of them came to be pronounced as /e/.

Smerdis of Tlön 04:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Verbs

I realy don't understand why you choose a verb like amorere (to love), it is true that much of the Romance languages use this verb, except of the romanian language and that's why I think it's better to choose a verb that is used by all the great Romance languages. I say this, because I think that only then you can compare all the 5 languages with each other.

Pronunciation of vulgar Latin

I know of no reason to assume that Latin (either classical or vulgar) had near-close vowels. Romance languages typically do not have them. To be frank, it looks suspiciously as if someone has been attempting to pronounce Latin with an English accent. The pronunciation should be checked. FilipeS 16:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the evidence for near-close vowels is indirect: in the Western Romance languages and Italian at least, Latin long ī and ū remained high /i/ and /u/, while short ĭ and ŭ merged with long ē and ō to become close-mid /e/ and /o/. (Short ĕ and ŏ became open-mid /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. This strongly suggests that the difference between ī/ū and ĭ/ŭ was one of quality as well as quantity, just as the difference between ē/ō and ĕ/ŏ was. User:Angr 10:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I still don't see how that proves that Latin ever had lax vowels, like Germanic languages do. A difference in "quality" can be many things. In most dialects of all Romance languages, you don't find a single lax vowel! (Quebec French is an exception, but its phonology may have been influenced by English). FilipeS 15:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The phonology of the Modern Romance languages is, of course, irrelevant. The facts are that Latin ĭ and ē underwent a phonemic merger, as did ŭ and ō, but ī and ū remained separate. While I suppose it is possible to think up another explanation, the most plausible one remains the hypothesis that ĭ was [ɪ] and ŭ was [ʊ]. User:Angr 15:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that we are misunderstanding each other. I can't see IPA with the browser I'm using right now, so we may be talking past each other. Notice that what I objected to was the claim (present in a previous version of the article, but now corrected) that Vulgar Latin had lax vowels (near-close vowels). I was not referring to close-mid vowels, which medieval Vulgar Latin did have, as do still most Romance languages. FilipeS 20:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I am talking about near-close vowels; if you can't see IPA I'll use the SAMPA character /I/ and /U/. At some point short i merged with long e as a close-mid vowel, and short u merged with long o as a close-mid vowel, but before that merger short i and u must have been /I/ and /U/, because they couldn't have been /i/ and /u/ (or else they would have merged with long i and long u when vowel length was lost), nor could they have been /e/ and /o/ (or else they would have been spelled E and O already in Classical Latin). Now I don't know whether we want to assign /I/ and /U/ to Vulgar Latin or Classical Latin; perhaps the merger of /I/ with /e:/ and /U/ with /o:/ can be taken as one of the sound changes marking the boundary between Classical and Vulgar Latin. But it's clear that at some early point short i and short u were pronounced /I/ and /U/ and only later merged with /e:/ and /o:/. This was certainly the case in British Latin, because the merger didn't happen there, as shown by the treatment of Latin loanwords in Welsh. User:Angr 07:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

/I/ and /U/ s are not just near-close, though. They're also near front, or near back. What evidence is there that the vowels of Latin were ever near-front/near-back? Why would they have been near-centralized, and then decentralized again?

And another objection: you seem to be talking about a short transition period between Classical Latin and "standard" medieval Vulgar Latin. But shound't these articles give the pronunciation of "standard" Classical Latin and of the "standard" period of Vulgar Latin? FilipeS

The IPA symbols for vowels are fairly vague. They have "idealized" values, but in practice they cover whole regions of vowel space. /I/ can be used for any sort of frontish unrounded vowel between a given language's /i/ and its /e/. The English word kit is phonemically /kIt/ in virtually every accent, but the phonetics of how that /I/ is realized differs greatly from one accent to another. An Australian's /I/ is different from an American's /I/ and both are different from a Scot's /I/, but they're all /I/. The same applies to Vulgar Latin: we know there was a vowel between /i/ and /e/, so we use the symbol /I/ to represent it. Doing so makes no claim as to its exact phonetics. Was it like the Australian /I/, the American /I/, the Scottish /I/, or none of the above? No one knows; we just know it wasn't like the Latin /i:/ or the Latin /e:/. To your next point, I'm not talking about medieval Vulgar Latin at all; by the Middle Ages Vulgar Latin had already developed into the early forms of the Romance languages. The time period I'm talking about is late Antiquity, from about the 1st to 4th century AD. Since Welsh treats Latin /i:/, /I/, and /e:/ all differently in loanwords, the three must still have been distinct in Latin speech in the 1st century, at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain. But the merger couldn't have been too much later, either, because it's found in all Romance languages except the notoriously conservative Sardinian and (I think) Romanian. What it comes down to is this: there wasn't one, immutable Vulgar Latin that spanned the eight centuries from Plautus to Gregory of Tours, and when we're discussing whether or not Vulgar Latin had the vowels /I/ and /U/ we need to specify at what point in time (and what geographical location) we're talking about. Plautus's speech probably did have the vowels; Petronius's almost definitely did; but by Gregory's time they had certainly already merged with /e/ and /o/. User:Angr 14:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You note, quite rightly, that "The IPA symbols for vowels are fairly vague. They have "idealized" values, but in practice they cover whole regions of vowel space. /I/ can be used for any sort of frontish unrounded vowel between a given language's /i/ and its /e/", and that "An Australian's /I/ is different from an American's /I/ and both are different from a Scot's /I/, but they're all /I/". But I think you are brushing aside too easily the important fact that, no matter what the exact realization of /I/ and /U/ is, those symbols are normally used for transcribing vowels which are at least a little centralized with respect to /i/ and /e/. Now, where is the evidence that the vowels of Latin ever underwent such centralization proccess?

I don't know much about Welsh, so I feel a bit uneasy discussing your argument, but must say that I don't find the fact that Latin loanwords in Welsh distiguish between Classical Latin's /i:/, /i~e/, and /e:/ persuasive. Perhaps it was Welsh, not Latin, which centralized short /i~e/ to /I/ after the words had been borrowed (or as it borrowed them). This would seem to be in agreement with the general characteristics of the phonology of Welsh.

Finally, according to the Wikipedia's own article, the term "Vulgar Latin" has more than one possible meaning, but it corresponds to a historical period which spanned roughly from the 1st. century AD to the Oaths of Strasbourg, in the mid 9th century, and probably a little later than that, in some parts of Europe. Why should the early part of this period be taken as representative of the whole phenomenon of Vulgar Latin? Particularly considering that, up until the 4th century, Vulgar Latin coexisted with standard Latin? FilipeS

I don't think /I/ and /U/ have to be centralized at all. If a language has a vowel phoneme in between its /i/ and its /e/, the obvious symbol to choose is /I/, regardless of whether it's centralized or not. In the absence of phonetic recordings of VL speakers, there's no reason not to use the symbols /I/ and /U/ for the vowels in question; whether or not they were phonetically centralized is both unknowable and irrelevant. The Welsh facts don't say anything about centralization either; they merely show that at the time Brythonic speakers came into contact with Latin, the Latin short i was different in quality from both long /i:/ and long /e:/; it's additional indirect evidence for the argument that Latin short i was at least lower, if not also more centralized, than Latin long i. Finally, I never said that only early VL should be taken as representative of the whole phenomenon; I'm only arguing that it's incorrect to say VL didn't have /I/ and /U/, because early VL clearly did. User:Angr 18:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem with using /I/ and /U/ is that they are misleading symbols. This is the English language Wikipedia. Most readers are likely be English speakers. If they see /I/, /U/, they will tend to interpret them as sounds like those of English, which the Latin vowels most certainly were not. It's a common mistake of English speakers learning Latin or Romance languages to think that a short "i" in these languages means an English "i" /I/ like in "bit", as opposed to the long "i" /i:/ of "beat". In other words, that a difference in quantity is the same as a difference in quality. The terminology you are defending might support that misconception. It is the reverse situation of native speakers of Romance languages pronouncing "beach" and "bitch" both as /bItS/, or both as /bitS/.

You say you "don't think /I/ and /U/ have to be centralized at all", but the Wikipedia's entries on these vowels describe them as follows:

/I/: "Its vowel height is near-close, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Its vowel backness is near-front, which means the tongue is positioned as in a front vowel, but slightly further back in the mouth. Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded."

/U/: "Its vowel height is near-close, which means the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Its vowel backness is near-back, which means the tongue is positioned as in a back vowel, but slightly further forward in the mouth. Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded. However, no language is known to contrast rounding this place of articulation, so the IPA symbol has not devised separate symbols."

I admit that I did not phrase my objection correctly at first. I should have written "near close near-front, or near close near-back" instead of just "near close". But I think anyone who looked at the version of the article I was criticizing would understand what I meant. And perhaps someone did understand my criticism, since the article has, fortunately, been corrected since I first made the objection. FilipeS

Using /I/ and /U/ to stand for vowels that may or may not have been pronounced differently from English /I/ and /U/ (and I repeat that we don't know they weren't centralized either!) is no worse than using /t/ to describe an unaspirated dental stop in Latin even though most English speakers will interpret it as an aspirated alveolar stop. All phonetic symbols have a certain amount of ambiguity in their actual use, however specific their canonical intrpretation is said to be. And the current state of the article isn't correct at all, as it suggests that the Classical Latin pairs /i: ~ i/ and /u: ~ u/ were distinguished only by length not quality, which is untrue, and that all stages of Vulgar Latin uniformly had /e/ and /o/ corresponding to Classical short /i/ and /u/, which isn't true either. The text of the article doesn't even mention the merger of Classical /i/ with /e:/ and /u/ with /o:/; it's only shown in the chart. User:Angr 19:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

What was Vulgar Latin?

I've changed certain things in this article and I don't think any of them are very important. Parts either weren't very clear or didn't make strict grammatical sense. However I can see my removal of the quotation marks enclosing "mistakes" causing problems. Generally I'm suspicious of such use - speech marks here imply that there's something wrong with the term, in which case it shouldn't be used. In fact the term isn't problematic if it's qualified - a mistake is an inadvertent spelling variation - one that an author would not have wished to appear - and in this context there is no requirement for quotes. The term "variations" covers anything that was not erroneous. In practice it's often impossible to divide the two up but I can't see anything wrong with "errors and variations".

I think the following ought to be removed but I would like to know if people agree/ disagree before I do anything: "Obviously Vulgar Latin is considered lost when the local dialects start collecting enough local characteristics to form a different language. They evolved into Romance languages when an independent value was recognisable in them (e.g. the word for "yes": Oïl, Oc, or Si)." The first sentence seems a bit circular - basically saying that a language becomes a new language when it changes enough to become a new language. In fact the question of what constitutes a separate language is difficult and controversial and cannot be summarised in a short sentence beginning "obviously". It's not made clear what an "independent value" is independent of (the other languages or the original language?) but it really isn't that clear-cut: it's possible, as in the case of Greek and even English, for a language to alter dramatically in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocab and not to be considered a separate language and it's also possible for regional variations to exist (the two Welsh words for "see") without dialects being called languages. This part adds nothing to a perfectly good explanation of the divergence of languages.Lo2u 23:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin

I've just removed a section saying "Vulgar rather than classical Latin is the source of many derivatives in Romance languages" because it's the source of all of the Romance languages and Classical L only really begins to play a big part later on. The "tete" example comes, of course, from original classical words. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 10:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Good call. Not only was tête misspelled in that contribution, its etymology was wrong. (It comes from testa "pot".) User:Angr 10:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Word order

The examples in the "Prepositions multiply" section got me wondering when VL switched from being predominantly SOV to being predominantly SVO. When did ´Jacọmọs ´lẹvrọ a ´ppatre ´dọnat and ´Jacọmọs mẹ ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre ´dọnat become ´Jacọmọs ´dọnat ´lẹvrọ a ´ppatre and ´Jacọmọs mẹ ´dọnat ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre (the normal order in modern Romance languages)? User:Angr 15:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Article is misleading

"It means the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin was an artificial literary language; the Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not necessarily the Latin of Cicero. By this definition, Vulgar Latin was a spoken language and "late" Latin was used for writing, its general style being slightly different from earlier "classic" standards."

I feel this and some other paragraphs gives the impression that classical and vulgar latin were two completely seperate languages which was not the case. Classical Latin was merely a higher register of the same language, and was not unintelligable to speakers of vulgar latin. 11th Oct 2006

I changed that text to the following: "It means the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin represents the literary register of Latin. It represented a selection from a variety of available spoken forms. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero, and differed from it in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar." - Smerdis of Tlön 19:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Verbs section: suggestions for improvement

This section could be improved by adding a discussion of:

What happened to the verb tenses of Classical Latin in Vulgar Latin: several were replaced with periphrases, others began to be confused, or were repurposed. In particular, the whole system of synthetic passive forms was lost.
The new verb forms created by Vulgar Latin / Romance, such as the conditional. FilipeS 20:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Phonology - Vowels: probable error

I suspect there is an error in the "Short Y" row of the table:

Letter		Pronunciation
Letter		Classical	Vulgar
...	...	...	...
Y and y	short Y	[y]	[i]
...	...	...	...

AFAIK, since 2nd-3rd century "y" got the same sound as "i", so its short version got to be pronounced [e] at the same when "i" did -- e.g., italian "dattero" from "dactylus".

However, in some words [y] became [u] before the Christian age, so it regularly became [o] in post-Imperial latin and Romance -- e.g., italian "comino" from "cyminum" (probably pronounced [kumi:nu(m)], rather than [kymi:nu(m)] as the spelling seems to suggest).

If no one has objections within a few days (today being January 25, 2007), I am going to change the second column from [y] into [y], [u], and the third column from [i] into [e], [o].

85.42.220.213 14:42, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we need to include the early borrowings from Greek where Y changed into U. They were never spelled with a Y in Latin. As for the result of short Y, can you give a couple of examples where it became E? Remember that Y only appeared in learned words... FilipeS 15:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I thought actually did give a couple of examples above. :-)

Italian "dattero" comes from Latin "dactylus". I guess I can find more examples for the article, but I'll need a little bit of searching as Latin words with "Y" were relatively few, and even fewer of them have passed down to Romance through popular tradition.

BTW, I don't agree that "Y" always appeared in learned words. Of course, they all were learned words when the loan occurred, but then some of them became popular, maybe, as is the case for "dactylus" ('palm date'), because they indicate once exotic products which at some stage became available to everybody.

I also don't agree that all Greek loanwords where Y changed into U were never spelled with a Y in Latin. This statement is contradicted by the other example I made above: Latin "cyminum" was spelled with a "Y" in Latin, but its pronunciation (and probably its spelling) must have changed to "cuminum" before Romance age, in order to justify the Italian cognate "comino" ('caraway' or 'Persian cumin').

85.42.220.213 16:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. It seems, though, that we're speaking of a relatively minute number of words. Should we get into such detail in an encyclopedia article? I mean, I think it's O.K. to add a note to the effect that "in a few loanwords from Greek that were used in popular language, Latin short Y evolved either as Latin short I (--> E) or as Latin short U (--> O)". But it seems that in the vast majority of cases words that had a Y in Latin were used mostly by the elites, and kept the pronunciation they had in the popular Latin of the classical period, which was I. Is this a fair assessment of the situation, in your view?... FilipeS 16:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is that Greek loanwords in Latin come from a variety of sources: learned coinages, usually based on Hellenistic Attic (dactylus is a likely example); more popular, earlier loanwords based on the Doric spoken in southern Italy and Sicily, that contain marked phonetic differences from standard Attic Greek. (Latin oliva > Doric alai(w)a, Standard Greek ελαια); and finally, a bunch of weirdly transformed words that were borrowed at second remove through Etruscan. (Polydeuces > Pollux; Herakles > Herc(u)le(s) &c.) These phonetic differences may come from different source material. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we are talking of a small number of words (hence my difficulty to come up with examples, especially examples not in the realm of plants or other stuff that could be found on the stalls of a Roman market). In fact, an even simpler solution could be to simply remove the "Y" row from that table... Actually, the [y] sound ceased to be a phoneme in Latin (provided that it ever was, BTW!) much before than the process that brought to Romance starts to be recognizable. In fact, all French words spelled with an "Y" are guaranteed to be either learned loanwords from Latin, modern loanwords from other languages, or words where an "i" turned to an "y" for purely graphical reasons (i.e., to differentiate an "i" occurring in the middle of similar looking letters such as "m", "n" and "u"). 85.42.220.213 17:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

This needs to be thought through, but in principle I am not opposed to removing the letter Y from the vowel table, and instead writing a note about it in the main text. FilipeS 17:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I changed it. See if y'all like it: I expanded an existing note about "Y", stating that [y] turned into [i] before the time which is relevant for this discussion. I also schematically indicated this change into the "Classical" column of the table, and I turned "Y" identical to "I" in the "Vulgar" column. I didn't add any more comments or examples about "Y", as I felt that this would distract the reader from the key points that are being made. 85.42.220.213 15:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Your contribution is appreciated. However, I am still a little uneasy about analysing (late) Latin Y as though it were basically an I. Not in terms of pronunciation, but rather because I get the impression that this letter appeared mostly in learned words that were not generally used by the common man. Are examples of words where classical Latin short Y became Romance E all that common, for instance? Wouldn't it be more representative to treat those as exceptions? FilipeS 18:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

As you say, Greek loanwords were mainly learned terms, so they didn't normally survive in everyday language (those in current use in romance languages were re-imported afterwards as Latinisms when romances become themselves literary languages). However, in the few cases when these learned words did entered in laypeople's language, surviving to our days, Y did follow the same evolution as regular I. I think it is no coincidence the only examples I found are in the realm of plants and food: that's where a learned word has a chance to be popularized, if the plant of food it indicates becomes commonplace. IMHO, the exception here are not that /y/ became /i/ and finally /e/, but rather that a group of words from high-class people's vocabulary (including some containing /y/) passed into poor people's language. It is a socio-economic exception, not a phonetic one.

What do you suggest, anyway? How about adding a note stating that only a very limited number of words containing Y did survive in spoken Latin? or how about removing the Y rows altogether? 85.42.220.213 85.42.220.213 11:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It's an option. I wouldn't object to moving the remarks on Y from the table to the text. FilipeS 19:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

"Neuter" in Spanish

It is correct that, according to Spanish RAE, "lo bueno" or "ello" can be perceived (by a Spanish native speaker) as neuter determinants. But in fact, they are masculine ones. "Ello" substitutes whole phrases, so it works more than a grammatical pronoun than a (neuter) gender determinant. It could be the same as to state that "que" or "cual" ("cuál de ellos") is also a particle of neuter gender. On the other hand, "lo" comes from archaic articles elo, ela, elos, elas (from which accusative pronouns comes from too), only two-gender, not neuter at all, and anomalistic forms (vg. el águila, from ela aguila, since "águila" is femenine) are common. "Lo" is not a neuter article, but a masculine one with stressed vowel (last one) instead of unstressed ones.212.51.52.5 12:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Semantically, it is just as neuter as English "it". FilipeS 13:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. The English "it" refers to neuter terms, I mean, you cannot refer to them with other pronouns than "it". Neither a mountain or a whole can be referred as "he" or "she" (when exceptions, like in ships, you don't use "it" of course). Such Spanish "neuter" is not a neuter at all just for this. "Esto es LO bueno", it is not neuter, it is masculine, you can say "Esta es LA [cosa] buena". I think the difference is clear. "¿Sabes LO tarde que es?" (out of date "¿Sabes CUÁN tarde es?", but more correct form), but "¿Sabes LA hora que es?". Etymologically, you can trace very well since Portuguese has not this problem, "o/a" vs. Spanish "el-lo/la" (<elo/ela). I mean, it is perceived by a native speaker as a rare thing, but it is masculine. The article is very clear (and correct), all of neuter in Western Romances were absorbed by masculine gender.212.51.52.5 13:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

However, you cannot say *Esto es EL bueno or *¿Sabes EL tarde que es? When used as abstract nouns, such words require the neuter article. That's different from English, where using "she" for ships is optional, not required. FilipeS 17:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I see your point of view now. But, you are identifying "lo" with a neuter, and that "lo" is not a neuter ("ello" neither), the accusative pronouns are "lo, la, los, las" and come from the same origin that the articles. That "lo" is masculine, not neuter. It is a curiosity of the evolution of Spanish from Latin such a doublet like "el-lo". You can not say also "se EL di" (for "se LO di"). The origin of those "el-lo" are the same word (vulgar latin "ello"), and it is not the case of Portuguese "isto, isso, aquilo", for instance, which in despite of coming, in fact, from the latin neuter forms, no one say they are marking neuter gender -they do not refer to neuter terms. All Romance languages work like if all were masculine, unless it was clearly stated it is femenine. No neuter exist. I'm saying all this precisely because of Western Romances not to have neuter gender, and I think it is confuse to say Spanish has a neuter gender (and in my opinion all this matter are not neuter, absolutely not like it was in Latin and it is in other indoeuropean languages with neuter gender).212.51.52.4 21:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The RAE says there is a neuter gender definite article in Spanish:

lo¹. (Del lat. illum, acus. de ille). 1. art. deter. n. sing. de el.
Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

This is also how Spanish is taught to foreigners. It does not matter where neuter words came from (the Indo-European feminine likely came from an inanimate gender, but no one says it's "really" an inanimate); what matters is how they're used today. FilipeS 22:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I know what RAE says. RAE cannot can explain (to me) why "sino" ("but") does not mark with tilde ("sinó") and the various Academies (the Spanish and the Latin American ones) cannot agree if "guión" or "guion" (depending on the Academy considering it monosyllabic or bisyllabic), and worse things. I am not questioning anything of this, Academies can sing Masses (in fact they did in the past), I'm only trying to say it is absurd to state in an article that neuter gender did not pass to Western Romances and to say a few after that Spanish has neuter gender. Of course if RAE is the last word on the matter, say no more.212.51.52.5 02:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a better explanation of this issue in another article. What do you think of it? FilipeS 13:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You are right, but it is not the matter. Excuse me if I explain so badly, but the point I'm trying to make clear is that Western Romances has not neuter gender at all, and Western Vulgar Latin (or as you like it) has not too. So, either you say such "neuter anomalies" come directly from Vulgar Latin, and the article is inconsistent, or there is no neuter (or they are "a posteriori" constructions, or as you like it). I hope to explain better this time. Anyway, it is a mere paragraph and this is too much noise for too little, and by the way, if "todo, toda, tudo" is an example of sort-of-neuter, I think it is also the same case of "algum, alguma, alguém", "nenhum, nenhuma, ninguém", "outro, outra, outrem" and the "isto, isso, aquilo" set of invariable (not neuter) words. Thanks a lot for your answers.212.51.52.7 23:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I rewrote the section a bit. Tell me what you think, if you're still around. FilipeS 18:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

-o ending in italian nouns

Howdid it work, that italian nouns like 'amico' (lat. amicus) became its -o ending. Is the ablative responsible ?? ( lat. leo,leonis became ital. leone, and that's the former ablative form of leo) --89.52.74.131 17:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

no, the ablative disappeared, both leone and amico came from the accusative: leonem (the m was alredy weak in latin) and amicum (weak m disappeared and u changed to o) Plch 01:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, thank you.--89.52.21.157 19:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Neuter in Romanian

Neuter fully exists in Romanian. I have no idea why this article says it doesn't. Could anyone explain this to me? Actually, the vast majority of words for objects in Romanian are neuter. Romanian has almost fully inherited neuter from Latin. I would correct this, but I feel others might know better exactly how, because I don't want to mess that section that's already very complicated. Can someone do this? Thanks. Mirc mirc 16:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

If you speak Romanian you have the authority to change the offending sentence. Please name a source, too, if you can. The authors will be grateful for an article free of embarrassing mistakes. RedRabbit1983 07:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Problems

I'd like to call your attention to these sentences:

Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris, "common speech") is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages.

This needs to be made clearer: did Vulgar Latin begin when Latin did?

It means variation within Latin (socially, geographically, and chronologically) that differs from the perceived Classical literary standard.

Why is the Classical literary standard perceived? Isn't this like calling red a perceived colour rather than a real one? The word perceived diminishes the difference between the two types of Latin.

I'd also suggest links to sound files of phonetic symbols.

By the way, why are there so few references? RedRabbit1983 01:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)