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- čas přidán 21. 09. 2023
- A response video to the channel Lang Focus on language matters.
Check out this video on Vulgar Latin
• Why “Vulgar Latin” isn...
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms, and may also be conveyed through sign languages. The vast majority of human languages have developed writing systems that allow for the recording and preservation of the sounds or signs of language. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time.[1] Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects.[2] Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli - for example, writing, whistling, signing, or braille. In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures.
Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.
The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Critical examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the relationships between language and thought, how words represent experience, etc., have been debated at least since Gorgias and Plato in ancient Greek civilization. Thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) have argued that language originated from emotions, while others like Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and logical thought. Twentieth century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) argued that philosophy is really the study of language itself. Major figures in contemporary linguistics of these times include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.Latin (lingua Latīna [ˈlɪŋɡʷa ɫaˈtiːna] or Latīnum [ɫaˈtiːnʊ̃]) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in Latium (also known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome,[1] but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italic Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage. For most of the time it was used, it would be considered a "dead language" in the modern linguistic definition; that is, it lacked native speakers, despite being used extensively and actively.
Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative, and vestigial locative), five declensions, four verb conjugations, six tenses (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three persons, three moods, two voices (passive and active), two or three aspects, and two numbers (singular and plural). The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets.
By the late Roman Republic (75 BC), Old Latin had been standardized into Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form with less prestigious variations attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights Plautus and Terence[2] and author Petronius. Late Latin is the written language from the 3rd century, and its various Vulgar Latin dialects developed in the 6th to 9th centuries into the modern Romance languages.
#language #langfocus #latin
I always considered the term "vulgar Latin" to refer to the different regional Latin accents or dialects that eventually morphed into the Romance languages.
It's not. Vulgar Latin refers to late period Latin. It's a time scale thing. Latin eventually lost a lot of its sufixes which became separate words preceding them, such as articles, it lost the effect of its cases and its third gender. And modern romance languages come from that late period, very different Latin. That's what people have been calling "vulgar latin", it's just Latin from centuries in the future.
Like French or English have, languages evolve in time it's a fact. But it's still Latin in my opinion..@@Altrantis
@@Altrantisthere's a basic confusion between "sermo vulgaris", which was the commonly spoken Latin from Caesar's time to the IV-V century, and the late forms of Latin anticipating proto-Romance forms.
@@senbonzakurakageyoshi662 Ironically, what makes modern romance languages not latin is that there's several non-mutually ineligible versions of the latin language, rather than the fact they're different from classical latin. Late period Latin is more different from classical latin than it is to modern romance languages, yet both late period and classical are both latin, and modern romance languages are not.
@@AltrantisI am skeptical of this hypothesis that romance languages descended from late latin so discreetly. I think in classical latin as Metatron explains there were multiple registers of latin like any language. I suspect romance languages were formed way back then from common register of latin and then evolved every century forth. There is too much commonality in syntax and lexicon I see between Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French. If these evolved from latin latin as the basis then identical structures would have had to evolve in parallel at the same time and rate. And that is just 4 romance languages. Add Romanian, 21 dialects of Italy, Catalan, Galian, Occitan, etc. I think the romance languages were alive in early Roman imperial period as dialects of common latin that were likely mutually intelligible then diverged every century after the fall of Rome. I am sure I dont have every aspect here correct, but I just think it is a gross oversimplification that romance languages from from late latin (not a criticism, just my opinion from reading other’s work in the subject).
I thought "vulgar" simply meant "common". But I realize that there is the conception that there were two different forms of latin. And that your point is that it was all latin. Your example of the various forms of English is an excellent case in point. One can only imagine what will evolve from those forms of English 2000 years from now.
It does just mean “common”. It’s silly to object to the application of “vulgar”. It’s completely synonymous with the term Late Latin.
@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 I don't think his objection is direct to the word "Vulgar". As he explained in the video, why not just use the tem "Latin". It confuses people.
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 As I mentioned in my other response to you, it is not synonymous with the term Late Latin. Late Latin is a period of Latin literature, and more broadly, of the language. 'Vulgar Latin' is an imprecise designation for lower registers of Latin of all periods. Eutropius, Augustine and Jerome are late Latin, but they are absolutely not 'vulgar Latin'.
I don't think they will evolve into entirely different languages as the world is a lot more globalized and interconnected now than 2000 years ago. People from the UK, Australia and Canada can speak whenever they want on the internet and exchange ideas, vocabulary and lexicon. If the internet didnt exist they would probably evolve to be very different
@@renatorusso256 Because using the term "Latin" alone confuses people... Metatron suggestion to use the term "Latin" alone to conglomerate all the Latin-based languages spanning 2000 years (~800 BC-1200 AD or even further) is stupid and doesn't help anyone.
I think the term "Vular Latin" does have a place and can be used appropriately to refer to non standard later varieties of Latin, not one single form. Id say it might be more accurate to say Late Latin and subsequent regional varieties of Medieval Latin as the link between Classical and Romance.
I think you should read your own comment again.
i too, can language
It's not even non-standard. It was standard Latin in the late roman empire. Latin from the time the Huns arrived is very similar to modern Italian and Spanish (less so with French and Portuguese which had a lot of pronunciation drift). Romanian is also not based on "vulgar", late empire Latin, but in an earlier version, closer to classical (that is, from the classical period) Latin.
@@Altrantis The split between Romanian and Latin is the earliest known split among European languages, it's true to say that French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan, and all of the minor Romance Languages, are derived from Latin, but to say that about Romanian, is wrong, Romanian split from before Classical Latin. That doesn't mean it wasn't mutually intelligible with Classical Latin, after all, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, they're still not the same. The same cannot be said about Italian and Sicilian for instance, or Neapolitan or Venetian, Look at Polish and Russian they used to be the same language, but Ukrainian, Russian and Rusyn diverged from the Central Slavic languages several hundred years ago...
And if you really want an eye opener, look at Icelandic and Gothic, here's a huge difference, Faðer vs Atta. Both meaning Father. One being North Germanic and the other East Germanic, the most famous person in history, which we know their "name" is Attila the Hun, meaning little father. And the guy who wrote the Gothic Bible, Wulfila little Wolf.
In Swedish Fader Lilla and Ulf Lilla respectively if translated.
Languages diverge always, and historians will always use terminology to distinguish different times of the same language.
Old English, Middle English and Modern English... I mean, everyone from when the Angles went to England to this day, have called the language they spoke, English.
To say Vulgar Latin is stupid, the people's Latin, come on, everyone spoke Latin, there's no distinction between Latina Vulgaris and Lingua Latinæ.
And Vulgar Latin isn't even defined in a certain time period either.
If we were like that Dutch and German and Swedish must all originated in some Vulgar Germanic. I speak a dialect older than Swedish, yet Swedish is the language I speak officially on paper, that doesn't mean I speak some Vulgar Swedish.
I despise the term vulgar latin because it doesn't make sense. Sound changes occur, French and Spanish was the same language for the longest time, Iberian Latin, it then split into French, Spanish and what would be Catalan and Occitan, and here's the kicker Portuguese.
Vulgar Latin is a pretty vague term that isn't especially useful since people will have completely different concepts of what it means.
Yeah, we might as well say today that the Italian government speak "High Italian", and that the lower Italian population speaks "Vulgar Italian", and so on for the other languages. In any case, it's Italian.
if we go back in time, the government use standard italian, and the people spoke completely different languages, only the educated spoke italian, since it was a language constructed from Renaissance period florentine and all of the regions of Italy continued evolving past the point of mutual intelligibility (the region it derived from continued evolving but perhaps theyd understand it). Only 10% of people could speak italian at the time of unification of italy in the late 1800s.
Of course, now everyone speaks italian and regional languages are dying in some regions
Which is why Metatron is wrong on this part. And it's not the first time he spew this.
Even the Florentine from which Italian has been defined, it wasn't used by the volgo in Florence.
It's not just a matter of high/low register for the kind of words used in a sentence, it's also a matter of using features of the language, like all the tenses. There is a reason why in Italian there are 4 extra tenses.
Changing things in a lower registers is what allows for the fastest change in a language.
Except most politicians speak highly regional varieties of Italian, and tend to have a very average (as in, partial) use of the vocabulary and grammar theoretically available
@@bacicinvatteneaca Nowadays, yes, but that's true for all Politicians throughout the world these days, no one runs a democracy even a fake one, without it's citizens understanding you... If I ran for Politics in Sweden, do you think I'd speak Jyngsk? a Dialect only about 10000 people on Earth can understand... or do you think I'd speak an accented version of Swedish? If you want to be understood, you speak to everyone, and yes of course you do it in as comfortable manner for you the speaker as possible, that means you have inflections typical of your region. One does not get around that. Of course I could change my accent to the General Stockholm accent, or go "accentless" and speak Rikssvenska, but no.
And if we jumped back to the times before the 70s, in Sweden, speaking any regional variety of Scandinavian in Sweden unless you were a Danish or Norwegian Citizen, was considered improper, back then everyone spoke Rikssvenska, and if we go further back, to the 1600s when Sweden got it's modern borders, not speaking Swedish was punished by lashing.
You guys don't look at stuff from any historical point of view. The modern day stuff, doesn't matter at all, when we're talking about things from a historical perspective.
Quite right. It's like RP vs all English dialects. It's still English, just as Latin was and always is Latin. Vulgar Latin is just not very useful of a term since it's meaning varies so much. Absolutely you can class Latin into different periods, Old, Classical, Late etc.
This is very similar to Arabic. Many people think that modern Arabic dialects came from classical Arabic,which is not the case,it came from different tribal versions of old Arabic,the equivalent of vulgar Latin. You can say that classical and the different kinds of old tribal Arabic are still the same language, Which is true,but it's still isn't totally the same,and definitely not after centuries of cultural changes. It's a complicated topic.
No, the situation is more like Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian etc. Those Arabic dialects are today their own respective languages which simply derived from Arabic which is not a language that has any native speakers.
Actually the term “Old Arabic” just refers to ANY language spoken in the Arabian Peninsula.
Arabic is one of the most complicated languages out there. Modern Standard Arabic, which is the modified version of Quranic Arabic, is basically the Arabic that the tribe Quraish spoke 1400 years ago. THIS same language, is more similar to HEBREW, than any other ancient South Arabian language, just to put it into perspective.
@@SchmulKrieger
No, these Arabic dialects are not their own languages. They are merely dialects.
1. They don’t have specific grammatical clear rules
2. They are NOT standardised anywhere.
3. They are extremely mutually intelligible (not like what some youtube videos try to tell you, I am an Arab and I tell you we can understand each other well. Lol).
4. Arabic dialects can even differ based on your upbringing, are you urban, rural, nomadic, mountainous.. etc.
5. And all these dialects derived from the same main source: Quraishi Arabic/Standard Arabic whatever you want to call it.
@@Ahmed-pf3lgThe first point is incorrect. There are easily identifiable grammar rules in all the dialects which are not part of MSA/Quranic Arabic. The second point is irrelevant, standardization is not a criteria for being a unique language. Thirdly, the fact that there is variation within each ‘dialect’ of colloquial Arabic does not mean the whole thing is one language, variety is normal within every language, what matters is if there is more commonality within than outside of the grouping. And finally, there is very little evidence that modern Arabic varieties descended from Quranic Arabic, the reality is no one knows which dialects of Arabic at that point (and there is plenty of evidence that there were several) spread where.
Mutual intelligibility is the only thing you mentioned which could be used to argue they are all one language. I’ve seen many speakers of colloquial Arabic say their variety is not the same language as others. Derija speakers have a hard time speaking with Shasmi speakers without making use of the standard language, for example. MSA is what makes the question of mutual intelligibility hard to answer, since it’s hard to find people who know only the local variety and have never learned MSA or a different local variety. If we could find such speakers and do tests of intelligibility then we could know with more certainty whether these are very different dialects or very similar languages.
@@Ahmed-pf3lg old Arabic is any Arabic language that was spoken in post Nabatean Arabia,before that we had the ancient Arabic. Arabs didn't live in the peninsula only,they lived in the Levant, Iraq, Sinai and Eastern Egypt too. Ancient Arabic had different forms,mainly the north Arabic which had many different languages and south Arabic languages OTOH,all of them used the proto Sinaic script which includes the musnad except the Nabateans,but at one point the Nabatean version of Arabic became for some reason the dominant version of Arabic,from which the current form of Arabic script came from.
From one version of old Arabic that was spoken in hijaz region came the classical Arabic,the language of Quran and Islamic theology,and also science and philosophy and higher literature in the middle ages,at the same time other versions of old Arabic became the modern dialects.
No Arabic language is more closer to Hebrew than others, because Hebrew is from a totally different branch of the Semitic languages than the different form of Arabic.
Not necessarily about class division, but rather a time evolution. Vulgar Latin refers more to the Latin varieties or dialects that started to develop and differ from what we denote as Classical Latin overtime, eventually leading us to the Romance languages.
At least that’s my understanding of it. I don’t have a linguistics background.
@@jebacc4447that's why the term late Latin sounds more correct than vulgar Latin when referring to proto-romance
@andredharo, It’s completely arbitrary and subjective to say it “sounds more correct”. Anyone with more than a passing interest and 10 minutes of a web search on the topic knows what it means. Vulgar Latin is synonymous with Late Latin. Both work perfectly to describe the topic.
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 The issue is that it's actually not at all used synonymously with Late Latin, nor should it be. Late Latin is a period of the language, not a register - it includes all Latin from after the classical period and before the medieval period, which for our purposes mainly means the preserved literature. Said literature is sometimes extremely classicizing (e.g. Eutropius), sometimes fairly innovative or ideosyncratic (e.g. Jerome's vulgate), and sometimes somewhere in between (e.g. Augustine), but **all** of these are still literature, heavily reliant on the existing Latin literary tradition, and cannot in any capacity be considered 'vulgar Latin'.
On the other hand, the term 'vulgar Latin' has been used to refer specifically to the colloquial registers of Latin from all periods, which of course means drastic differences - colloquial Latin in the classical period was just colloquial classical Latin. By the end of the 8th century, when nobody yet considered romance to be a distinct language from Latin (nor did they consider it to be multiple languages), it already had many of the features modern romance languages have. Because of this, when you look at the academic literature, you can see consistant acknowledgement that the term is problematic and probably shouldn't be used at all.
Some people have attempted to rehabilitate the term to refer to the colloquial registers of the late Latin period, but this is both incoherent (why dub the colloquial Latin of this particular period 'vulgar Latin' and no other?) and useless, because it feeds into the false idea that this is a branch distinct from 'classical Latin' from which the romance languages developed. This simply isn't the case - the romance languages did not branch off of late colloquial Latin - they developed together as one massive dialect continuum all the way from before the classical period until the present, with many changes occuring first in vernacular speech, sure, but tons of influence also being exerted from higher registers as well. Romance is the result of Latin being spoken in all registers by all speakers developing gradually over the past ~2200 years, and then finally being codified into distinct national standard languages in the early modern period.
@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 but then there are those with just a passing interest, who don't bother to do any research at all. And I believe they greatly outnumber the more educated ones.
I believe the word "vulgar" is just misused but the concept of Latin evolving into other languages necessitates a "missing link" between them, and that is common use Latin like you said, deforming through contact with local languages in the different parts of the empire, or drifting through isolation over long periods of time. Romans who weren't receiving a standard education likely had no concept of a neutral accent or an established vocabuliary to their own language to know they weren't speaking it the "right way", it only makes sense Latin started separating as soon as its speakers began living in opposite ends of a whole continent.
In the "different register" case, in some Southeast Asian languages, the lower and higher registers are totally different languages. In Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese for example, the lower register spoken by the common people, most words came from Austronesian origin. The higher register, spoken by the monarch or when we speak to the elderly has a completely different set of words, which mostly came from Sanskrit.
"Aku mangan lima endog" (lower register) -> "Kula dahar gangsal tigan" (higher register). Both mean "I eat five eggs". *Each* word has three versions for lower, medium, and higher registers. Man, learning them was madness.
Greece up until 1976 had 2 official languages katharevousa (καθαρεύουσα) and demotic (δημοτική).
Katharevousa, meaning purifying language,
was a compromise between the contemporary vernacular (demotic= language of the people) and ancient Greek. It was conceived by greek scholars during the 18th century as a means of promoting greek national identity. This language was used both for literary and (mainly) official purposes.
A situation of the co-existence of both forms of the Greek language had been around long before 18th century. The 12th century female author Anna Komnene of the "Alexiad" wrote in a very stylized "Attic" form of Greek, appropriate for her education. From around the same period, we have a variety of language forms in the epic poems and songs of "Digenes Akritas", which seem closer to the vernacular. I don't know any particular medieval texts in vernacular Greek, but I am certain it had been spoken throughout the ages. In my opinion, 800 years ago, someone should get to know some Koine Greek like in the Bible, in order to be able speak with the local authorities, but for the highest level of the court, a full education in ancient Greek would be necessary, even if classical or Koine Greek were not everyday speech. So not everything was understood between the different social classes of the Greek speakers, is my point.
Katharevousa was introduced in 19th century education systems, not so as a compromise, but to promote an "ancient glory" revival, deemed necessary for the national pride, and a hate for Dimotiki with a passion. While a subject of political debates, in practice everyone understood Katharevousa as just a "high register" to climb on the social ladder. So it converged to its rival eventually, as by the late 20th century effectively resembled a purified Dimotiki. But at the same time Dimotiki, initially considered a vulgar and degraded way of speech, adopted most Katharevousa standards with contributions from scholars.
Of course Vulgar Latin was still Latin (it’s right there in the name), it simply recognizes that in the intermediary time between the “collapse” of Western Rome and the development of the modern Romance languages there were phonemic and dialectic shifts that were particular to regions. This being fostered by the fracturing of administration and communication after the “fall” of the Empire. I don’t get why Metatron wants to quibble over this. To me it’s simply more precise terminology, and more likely to align with the observable processes of language development than simply calling all of it, in different geographic locations and over centuries, just Latin.
Late Latin sounds more correct than vulgar Latin when talking about the time period when proto-romance varieties were still evolving/further fragmenting in pre medieval times after the fall of the western Roman empire.
This comment must be typed in high English then and not vulgar English.
@huguesdepayens807, No I’m definitely using “vulgar English”. Vulgar, in the sense it’s used, is not deprecative. It simply means “common; ordinary; of the multitude”.
The term isn’t held in the sense of “corrupted” that it had when first used during the Renaissance, and hasn’t been used in that way in academic circles for the better part of a century.
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 Amazing, you're bilingual
I believe one might look at "Classical Latin' as being 'frozen' in time' after the 'classical era' and the so called vulgar would be the living language as it evolved toward romance,factoring in geographic variances. English from Shakespeare's time,while very intelligible to a modern speaker,also has differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. I am by no means trained in linguistics. This is my take as an 'armchair expert' . Both you and Paul are very good in explaining language.
Piggybacking off of your comment, I think "frozen in time" can consistently be used to refer to a dead language that maintains official or liturgical significance. Standard Arabic is one such language. As an Arab, it's profoundly sad.
@@AKnightofIslamicArabia same with Classical Greek. Yes, it was the form that was spoken by the masses at some point, but after that point it became the form of Greek spoken and written by the educated while the local form kept evolving. It was a thing in the post-Classical antiquity, the medieval ages up till the modern period. It still exists today as Katharevousa. But yeah, I think both Atticism in Greek and Standard Arabic as opposed to Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi etc. are perfect examples
@@achilleuspetreas3828Absolutely true, that is a great example. I will say that the modern form of Standard Arabic doesn't exactly map 1:1 onto any singular 7th dialect, being instead a distillation of several closely-related ones (kind of like Standard Italian, as it's been explained to me). I wonder if that is the same with Classical Greek?
@@AKnightofIslamicArabia Classical Greek is based strictly off of Attic Greek, specifically the Attic of Athens. But "Atticism" is on a spectrum (the same with Katharevousa) where it can be added to common Greek or 100% Athenian Attic of the classical period. But Attic Greek is the main body from which Modern Greek and all of its dialects evolved (outside of one) Would you say that Standard Arabic is the original Classical Arabic that spread with the advent of Islam and that the dialects of Arabic today are branches stemming from that original Arabic?
@@achilleuspetreas3828 Thanks for the clarification. I'll try to answer as briefly as I can, but forgive me if it drags a little. Arabic was widespread across much of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant (the latter being the language's Urheimat) long before Islam, with many highly divergent dialects. When Islam came into the picture, it raised a set of Hejazi (and other surrounding Saudi) dialects to prominence. The Qur'an, since its advent, may permissibly be recited in seven different dialects, which had some pronunciational (and very rare diction/grammatical) differences. All of these are acceptable recitations (and only these), and you may mix and match dialects for each verse while reciting. Different scholars preferred different combinations from among them. Classical Arabic is a loose standardization of all of these. During the Ottoman Empire, one particular recitation became popular, one that was preferred by a scholar named 'Aasim al-Asadi, transmitted through his student, Hafs, though it was different from the pronunciation of Quraysh in many regards, instead taking after some of the others from among the original seven. It became popular because it was apparently easier for non-Arabs to learn (and the Ottomans, not being Arabs, pushed it hard), though, being an Arab, and now thoroughly entrenched in MSA, I cannot confirm this myself. Then, when the printing press became popular, the first Qur'an produced through it was in the recitation of Hafs and 'Aasim, so it became by far the most popular "dialect" in the world. Modern Standard Arabic is a standardization of the same Classical Arabic, but only the conventions of Hafs and 'Aasim are now considered standard. So essentially, it doesn't map onto any *one* 7th century Arabic dialect 1:1, and is rather a somewhat artificial, prescriptive amalgamation constructed from a combination of those original seven. But the differences are so minor (innovation of umlaut in certain positions, maintenance of an older phonemic glottal stop, etc., neither of which were present in the Prophet's dialect) that none of the Arabs would consider it a different language. If I were to speculate, I'd think they would probably have thought it was just another nearby tribe's dialect that they hadn't previously encountered.
EDIT: As for the second part of your question, I'm pretty sure most dialects are definitely descended from Classical Arabic, especially in Hejaz, and in areas where Arabic wasn't spoken before Islam. However, if in the areas outside the Kingdom where Arabic *was* previously spoken, whether it is an influence or superstrate situation, I'm not sure.
As a linguist, myself , I was not expecting such a video from you Metatron.... I think there is a slight confusion here in what you say. What we generally mean when we say:Romanche languages come from vulgar Latin is not that there was a diglossia in the classical period, although there are indeed some linguistic variation during that era both stylistic and regional, as exist in every single natural language since the dawn of time. We say it to clarify that Romance languages did split after the classical latin period so they have evolutions in common that brings them at odds with classical Latin.They dont come directly from classical Latin in the same sense that Modern Greek comes from medieval Greek and not directly from Hellenistic Koine but do ultimately come from Latin . The notion of them existing since 1st BC is the most extreme of the theories for them and it hides most other theories that were less extreme and more accurate. Of course diglossia(that is totally different from bilingualism, as I am sure you know)between Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin did exist but probably not in the Classical period, after all Latin in written texts follow the Classical Latin grammar and syntax,(or at least try to, well into the Medieval Period. So I do think that vulgar Latin do have a scientific reason to be acknowledged as a distinction.
Great video. I am a Patron of both you and Paul and I’m glad to see a small community forming amongst my favorite CZcamsrs. I hope Paul responds to this. You did mention Latin being a “dead” language and then said “more on that later”. Did you mean in another as yet unmade video or did I miss something in this one?
Yeah, I tend to think of it this way: Classical Latin was a standardized register with the benefit of a very regularized written form that didn't really change much. It remained more or less fixed even as that standardized register might have changed with the times along with everyone else's language: things like simplified case endings and using demonstratives as definite articles just wasn't done because "you just don't write that way". I imagine the spoken version of that register (which was probably still divergent from the way it was written, it was just a common register for the cosmopolitan types, like RP or Mid Atlantic English) slowly merged with the more common local registers as the Empire fragmented as those local registers diverged more and more from the written language and the "spoken" version became what we call "classical Latin". Basically Romance language speakers didn't really know they were speaking a different language from their forebears until the process had progressed far: about the time of Charlemagne or perhaps "The Oaths of Strasbourg".
I don't think they regard "Vulgar Latin" as a separate language, it's just the everyday language of ordinary people within Latin. Let me give you a good example with another language - Sanskrit and Prakrit. Sanskrit is that version of the language which is related to high culture and wisdom, the language of the most educated Brahmin and the most high-class Kshatriya, while Prakrit is the form spoken by the peasants, artisans, etc. It's two forms/versions of the same language.
The comparison doesn't work well - Classical Sanskrit was never exactly anyone's speech, and the prakrits differ noticeably from Sanskrit in phonology and morphology. During the Latin classical period, Classical Latin was basically just a standardized written form of urban Latin speech, and even regional dialects at that time had relatively minute differences. Much later spoken low register Latin became more distinct from written Latin, but they were always conceived of as one language, while the idea of Sanskrit as a distinct linguistic variety from Prakrit was established early.
Also, the Prakrits were themselves literary languages, not necessarily colloquial peasant speech.
@@Philoglossos I see. Thank you for sharing your insight on this subject!
Now, when It comes to a language that was used (spoken or written) from Portugal to Syria, from Egypt to France... How can we be sure that they ALL used the same language? I mean, it's a huge territory encompassing many different people who already had their own languages before the Roman invasions, and they probably kept using their own languages for a long time, even after becoming part of the Roman territory. Also, Rome was not only huge in space, but also in time. If we are talking only about the Roman empire (not the republic) we are talking about something around 400 years. How many transformations can a language undergo within such a huge time frame? Is it possible that, by the 4th or 5th century AD, the formal classical Latin was so obsolete that not even the elites were speaking it, and it was reserved only for written documents or poetry due to tradition and a desire to keep alive an ancestral form of the language? After all, a spoken language is always changing, whereas its written form is an attempt to freeze that language in time, an attempt that will be successful only until the spoken version has changed so much that it can no longer be considered a "version", but something else entirely, and the written version has to be updated in order to match the spoken version. So, I'm not a schollar, and I may be wrong, but I think that Vulgar Latin is a good name to define the mix of Latin and the local languages spoken around the Italian peninsula, not necessarily the difference between the elites and the common people. What we call romance languages can also be considered a dialect continuum (or something like that), and in some places is hard to tell if people are speaking Portuguese or Spanish, Spanish or French, French or Italian. What we are talking about here is "What is a language?" and "when does a language become another language?". When did Latin become Italian? Is Occitan a form of French? Is Galego a form of Portuguese or Spanish? Is Catalan a form of Spanish or a whole different language? These are all difficult questions to answer, and they all depend on the criteria we use for defining a language.
Thanks for the video and I love your work.
My problem is: If we’re gonna go down the path of differentiating Vulgar Latin, ”as a separate language”; we should take note that there was not ”1 Vulgar Latin”. I mean, obviously, someone from the Iberian Peninsula is gonna speak differently from someone from Rome is gonna speak differently from someone from Asia Minor, or the Levant, or Africa. But, to be fair; I never considered Vulgar Latin as a different language from Classical Latin. I always imagined their relationship to be like that of Cockney and RP. So, different registers/sociolects. Just like you wouldn’t consider Ecclesiastical Latin, as a separate language from Classical Latin. They’re just 2 different forms of the same language. Thus, I think it’s fine to use those terms; as long, as we’re all on the same page; as to, what they mean. Of course, I also see no need to overemphasize the terms: *_”VULGAR_* Latin”, and: *_”CLASSICAL_* Latin”.
I tuoi contenuti mi piaciono tanto, soppratutto le rue reazioni al Portoghese! Spero che tu stia imparando!
When you use the comparative method of historical linguistics to reconstruct the common ancestor of the Romance languages, pretending that you don’t know anything about Latin or about the history and development of the modern romance languages and working only with the pattens of similarities among the modern languages and the phonological rules you discover in the cognate lexical items, you then reconstruct an idiom that is extremely close to classical language but still differs from it a little, notably in vocabulary. So you’d reconstruct caballus, but not equus for horse. You’d reconstruct casa but not domus for house. It is this variety of Latin that can properly be called Vulgar Latin and it is therefore not wrong to say that the modern Romance languages developed from Vulgar Latin, insofar as it is understood that Vulgar Latin is just a form of Latin.
It’s funny because i feel like a lot of people would think it was a simplification if you said they just derrived from latin, but I guess the simple answer is the more correct one in this case, and a myth was born somewhere that sounds more believable because it’s a bit more complicated
As far as changes in English, Indians on tech service lines sometimes have difficulty understanding me. I can understand them, but they have difficulty with my California/Texas accent, particularly in reading letters, as with serial numbers.
Latin in AD 500 probably had even more regional variations, especially as there was no recorded or transmitted sound.
Love your take on it. I’ve thought a lot about that topic, maybe they meant to describe a version of Latin from the late-Roman era. Just like we have old, middle and modern English. It’s all English, but they’re unintelligible at best and unrecognizable at worst.
Remember St Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin was called the "Vulgate" - yes it is all Latin but the language was changing and the people at the time were aware of it
In Brazil we learn the same thing in schools, that there were two Latin languages. But yeah, with age and more learning, this started to bother me, it is just coloquial or formal way of speech, but it is the same language, you just use different words and phrase constructions.
Is the term "Vulgar Latin" used to differentiate textbook from colloquial, in a sense, like how an English text book would say "Good morning, sir", but in real life you would hear "Alright, mate"? The linguistic point being that the Romance languages came from different regions having their own variations of Latin to the point that accents and pronunciations took them in very different directions from the source language over time (like how different the Newcastle accent and dialect is from Texas), so none of them are actually textbook English.
Yeah, for some reason people don't get that part. What happened to Latin is no different to what we see in modern languages, excepting that at some point new kingdoms started using literary languages based on how the upper class spoke (with some clear Latinization mixed in)
So we have a language called English then. Just as have a language called Latin. Or should be say Vulgar and Classical English?
@@nutyyyy No, what we have is textbook English that students will learn in class, then we have vulgar English which is what they would encounter in the real world. G'day Mate is vulgar English compared to Good day, sir. It doesn't make it wrong, but it makes the distinction between what it is supposed to be and what it actually is. Vulgar is not taught in classrooms, just as when English speakers learn foreign languages in a formal way through lessons, textbooks, etc they are taught a very rigid and "proper" way to say and write things that in reality would not be the way that they are done by native speakers in their native country. By definition, what appears in the textbooks is correct, what people encounter in real life is vulgar. I think that is the point that Langfocus was making. Modern romance languages come from the regional "vulgar" variations of Latin and not from textbook Latin.
To put it into ancient Roman times, people in Spain might be talking in a way that would be similar to how people in Johannesburg speak English today, the same basic language, but with a very heavy and different accent and a lot of very colloquial words and phrases. A Rome native would understand the language for the most part, but might be hearing pronunciations and words that don't sound right to them.
Great video. I don't think I have ever believed that there was a common "Vulgar Latin" - as evidenced by the modern languages. I think those diagrams with "Vulgar Latin" confuse people a lot more. Languages don't evolve that way. "Vulgar Latin" was never one common language. There was a great deal of diversity of speech that was primarily influenced by Latin. Comparing it to "Classical Latin" doesn't make it a separate language. It was the literary language to many, but not a separate language or language standards spoken.
"Sermo vulgaris" was Latin, period. The late forms of Latin morphing into proto-Romance during Late Antiquity and the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages were (relatively) different beasts.
I could be completely wrong on this because as I recall I only had one source that said this and I can’t remember which. But I heard that Latin used a case system yet Vulgar Latin never has. This surprised me because I figured at some point like you are saying it all had to be the same language. Is this incorrect? Or did the Romance languages lose the case system?
I've started working through a French grammar book (in French, intended for natives), and it describes 'vulgar Latin' as a 'hellenised' variety. I would interpret this to be Latin with acquired loanwords from Greek and other cultures swallowed into the empire.
Always had my suspicions on vulgar latin, confirmed it all with Luke's video and now I'm extremely glad you're spreading the word that latin is not arabic.
I think it is still worth mentioning the variety of Latin, even if the background understanding could be changed.
esperanto ruined my life
Hey Metatron, in light of all this...how do you feel about Jamaican Patois or Haitan Creole? Honestly curious now
I always thought of “vulgar Latin” as any common regional dialect of Latin, influenced by people indigenous to the land and/or invaders. Obviously the people in Italy didn’t just go from speaking Latin to Italian in a night. I always imagined vulgar latin as being whatever language existed in between Latin and what could be recognized a language we speak today. France, for example, would have spoken some version of Latin during the Roman Empire that was influenced by the Gauls, but still recognized as Latin, before the empire collapsed. The vulgar part comes in when Latin is no longer the lingua franca and other forces are more able to make it “vulgar”. As a non-linguist, that was my impression when hearing about origins of languages in Europe.
These transitional languages of the aptly named transition from Latin to Romance languages properly, a period roughly going from the second half of the 5th Century to the end of the 7th Century or even to the end of the 1st half of the 8th Century, with many local or regional variations, are mostly known as 'proto-romance' languages.
Let's put it this way: Latin at it's 'Golden Era' during the waning decades of the Roman Republic, Latin was still in flux with older grammar and regional variations were quite great, it wasn't even long ago from that point that Latin was still very Italic and not heavily influenced by Greek. After the Roman Empire conquered much of the world and centuries of Romanization, Latin during the 5-6th centuries was at it's most homogeneous and standard, so Latin supplanted almost all local languages save for Greek and a few smaller others; so if there were changes, it was mostly uniform. It was only until plagues, Arab invasions, education breakdown, and heavy invader influence of the Lombards and Franks did Latin start to really fragment and get the older medieval precursors to the modern Romance languages.
@@joaquimdantas63 Yeah I'm pretty sure that's what I'm thinking of
Paul, your rebuttal?
Just joking 😆 The two of are the best, and among my faves. Love the videos and content, ciao amici!
Kind regards,
Vincenzo dePaolo
Aspiring Noble
I wonder what would happen if African American Vernacular English had its named changed to African American Vulgar English. Both are still English in vocabulary but rather different in construction. But people would be mad because "vulgar" is an adjective that usually gives bad connotation to what it preceded.
Then let's change Vulgar Latin name to Vernacular Latin. I guess anybody can get the idea.
I'm curious how closely a language reconstructed from modern Romance languages would actually resemble attested Latin.
That would be a fascinating experiment to test the accuracy of the reconstructive method
Look up Proto-Romance. I'm not an expert so I don't know if it's accurate, but I think it basically looks like an undifferentiated Romance language, i.e., what you would expect. It's Latin without declensions, more reliant on prepositions, simpler phonotactics, etc.
It's been done, it's possible to reconstruct all the way to classical Latin but you miss some information, such as what the difference is between the two members of each vowel pair (we know from descriptions and transcriptions of the time that it was a purely quantitative difference, or at least as far as the untrained ears of the time could tell, but our reconstructions are compatible with scenarios in which the long and short for differed in timbre as well)
@@AKnightofIslamicArabia Absolutely not without declension, because we can still see four cases and three genders across the romance languages.
Vulgar Latin is a term I heard before; but is always use by English speaker to say Languages that are not Latin but had a lot of influences from it. I guess is a scholar term use in English. Same thing with the term Latino; to me the Latinos were the Romans, in the USA they use the the term Latinos to mean people from South America, Central America and the Caribbean mostly Spanish and Portuguese speakers.
latino is specifically anyone who came from or whose ancestors came from a region of the Americas that speaks a language derived from latin. Sometimes the people of Quebec are explicitly excluded for some reason. I think creoles might count as well but I'm not sure.
interestingly the often conflated term of hispanic refers to any spanish speaking country, so Spanish people are counted.
I never thought of Vulgar and Classical Latin as separate languages, but different strata of Latin. Like how Common English is separate from the Queen's English, so too is Vulgar Latin from its more formal version spoken by Roman elites.
I agree with you. I always say the romance languages come from Latin. I never feel the need to clarify they come from vulgar latin. By the way, in this context vulgar means something like common or from the street. I mean, how people informally spoke Latin.
Hi Metatron and friends. I like your positive and collaborative approach to others like Luke Ranieri and Paul. That is a good way to go forward.
I'm reminded of discussions with people who don't fully define their terms prior to discussing the theory of evolution, "Are you saying that we all used to monkeys? I don't remember waking up being a monkey this morning being a monkey."
I like Paul and have subscribed to his channel for over 10 years. That said, the Vulgar Latin moniker always bugged me as I always thought, and agree with you, there is no such thing as Vulgar Latin. Just Latin. What they had are different accents, and maybe some slang that differed between classes and towns and such. Still Latin.
As I understand it, Vulgar Latin was similar to non-Standard English dialects today. We use Standard English in formal contexts but don't use it consistently. By the time the Western Roman Empire fell, and the Franks moved into Gaul, then it's possible that not everybdy spoke classical Latin consistently. The same may apply when the Visigoths moved into what are now Spain and Portugal.
There is one thing to consider though, when we look at the modern Romance languages and the differences to classical Latin, we see the differences are consistent between the Romance languages, both grammatical and lexicalic. All Romance languages use some form of "cosa" to say thing and not classical Latin "res", they all use some form of "caballus" to say horse, and not "equus", they all form the futur bei using the infinive of the verb and adding the conjugated form of to have.
Since all these changes are consistent across the Romance languages, it is only reasonable to assume they all have a common ancestor that also featured these changes, and this common ancestor is called Vulgar Latin. The term is problematic because it could also simply refet to a lower register of Latin, but regardless this common ancestor must have existed.
The other question is then, do you consider this common ancestor a different language? Or is this just a late stage in the evolution of Latin? You can argue for either position really. My problem is that Metatron made it look like it is just about registers and that is in my opinion not quite correct, the differences go deeper than that.
So, the same thing said in this video about Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin could also apply to Classical Greek and Koine Greek?
To me it's just an adjective to say that the other languages came from the Latin spoken by the people and not standard "BBC Latin". The problem isn't the use of the word vulgar, the problem people not knowing what the word means.
Just arguing semantics. The simplified case system, alternate verb conjugations, and different vocab are what we refer to when we say "vulgar latin." No serious linguist would say it's a different language. But the average person on the street didn't speak like Cicero. But sure, you can argue that "it's all just Latin" but VL is just linguistic shorthand.
I always thought, and I think some other people are echoing the same sentiment, vulgar Latin referred to regional dialects in let's say Spain or France, just like we refer to different regions in the UK as using, for example, Scots, Scouse and Geordie. The specific mention of vulgar latin in this context I thought was always meant to emphasise that widely different varieties of Latin turned into their respective languages, and not so much the same Latin that may have been spoken in Italy.
Studying Portuguese I discovered that there is the "Standard Portuguese" used for formal situations, like news, government, books, scientific texts... and there is the "Oral Portuguese" the informal spoken language, the main difference being vocabulary and slang.
So my point is that the texts are in "Standard Latin" the one that everyone know and understand and "Oral Latin" the one that was spoken, including different pronounciation, vocabulary and slang.
For example a Mexican and an Argentinian both speak Spanish, both know the same rules, but the way they speak, their expressions and pronounciation change.
Coloquial Brazilian Portuguese grammar also deviates from Standard in grammar, as in the placing of pronoun particles: European varieties and Standard Brazilian Portuguese place them after the verb as a norm, while colloquial BP places before the verb.
Even modern Russian has different words for formal or informal use, example being to say "you" formally you'd say "Вы" but to say it informally you'd say "Ты" yet it's all still a single language.
I'm brazilian and sometimes it's difficult to understand the dialect of other brazilians from regions further away from mine. for example "northeasters" have an accent so different from my "southern" one that I often find myself not understanding. now imagine if brazil fell and another foreign people settled in the north-east. Certainly in a thousand years I would not understand a word they said.
I think the concept of Vulgar Latin is valuable. The word "vulgar" is an adjective modifying "Latin". That is, Vulgar Latin is a variety of Latin, not a separate language. I particularly like thist2v as a point to emphasize to prescriptive grammarians in English, who so often slam those who break their precious rules. The kind of English they promote is analogous to Classical Latin. This means that, logically, they should condemn every Romance language spoken today because it descends from a kind of Latin equivalent to the kind of English that they condemn. Yet, these prescriptivists accept the validity of the Romance languages. At least the more intelligent among them should be able to grasp that it was the "inferior" (vulgar) street Latin that gave rise to languages spoken by close to a billion people today. That puts the rapidly evolving street English also prevalent today in some pretty good company.
vulgar is just an adjective like british or american to english. Furthermore it makes a lot of sense to say that romance languages comes from "vulgar latin" or "countryside" latin becuse then you can explain why house, fire and horse in romance languages don't come from domus, ignis and equus the "real words" but they come from words that meant farmhouse, domestic fireplace and fieldhorse. SO it makes sense to use this adjective in my opinion.
I understand and hear what you say. It does make sense. However, consider that Latin has something that Old English, for instance, doesn’t have; Present cultural visibility. If, in Western countries at least, you haven’t grown up speaking a Romance language natively or in a country whose official language is not a Romance language, chances are, that you still have been exposed to Latin to some degree. For instance, I grew up in East Germany with German as my native language. I never took any classes in Latin, but due to historical relics and the influences of Latin being spoken in religious and scientific contexts, I have been exposed to Latin far more often than I was to Old High German. And the Latin that I, and probably many many many other people, have been exposed to is the “Classical” Latin, which we just see as Latin. But since most (but not all) countries have established a standard for their language and the “common” language are merely seen as dialects (which, yes, actually evolved to a form of diglossia in Germany where people switch between dialects and the standard High German), it makes it absolutely clear without further explanation, that The Romance language have developed from the dialects rather than the standard of Latin. So making the distinction between “classical” and “vulgar” Latin I find not only appropriate but important to stress and tells me more accurately about how the Romance languages evolved from it, rather than just saying, oh it comes from Latin. I think just calling it Latin would ignore that people’s relationship to Latin, which is that Latin by itself seems like this prestigious scholar’s language… so actually giving this distinction, classical and vulgar, is just very helpful to picture what Latin was actually like.
And I suspect that LangFocus is fond of the distinction because he’s a native English speaker and like me, probably has a similar relationship to Latin.
As an Iraqi I totally understand Paul when he says "an X language was derived from volgar latin" and I consider it as an accurate expression because it gives me the full image of latin.
It is just like how we have the modern standard form of Arabic which is the formal form that contains many different characteristics that are not present in the different dialect of Arabic e,g noun cases and the highly influence of genders, while the different dialects of Arabic languages which are considered less formal than the the modern standard Arabic and they are spoken in the different Arabic speaking countries.
So I can get that the classical Latin was the formal form of the language while the vulgar latin was spoken among the people of the empire and formed a dialect continuum, and these different dialects that were spoken in the different regions of the empire just developed and formed the modern romance languages
I never thought what Paul said implied a diglossia
My understanding was that over time there was eventually a diglossia. Classical latin is the language of Caesar. vulgar latin was the language spoken by the people at the end of the empire 5 centuries later.
Originally what happened is that everyone spelled like we spell English or French: etymological, preserving distinctions that don't exist in speech, etc. But in the time of Charlemagne the idea of classical latin was established and church leaders were told to pronounce latin the way it was reconstructed instead of speaking the language of the people which had evolved into some proto romance. So now the HRE is telling them they aren't speaking latin. This may have solidified the idea that the romance languages are not latin (as opposed to greece where I've been told that teachers incorrectly say both ancient greek and modern greek are the same language).
Given the story about Charlemagne being another few hundred after the fall of the western roman empire, I guess I would agree vulgar and classical latin were not two languages spoken at the same time, until Charlemagne, when the vulgar latin was so different that it might as well be called proto romance. I think the distinction could have use, because we tend to mean classical latin when we say latin, but the common understanding of it makes me question that utility. of the term.
I think the idea is that the romance languages evolved from the colloquial and regional registries, and yes its latin but what evolves most and what matter most is the spoken registries not the written one which is what its use in daily context, and this was particularly so when most people were illiterate. So many of the formalized words would evolved at a rate that seem to have indicated that latin was barely evolving where in reality the spoken language evolved faster so that eventually the average individual could no longer understand it. Point is just like today in English we have several words based on region and or everyday speech vs formal language (all English) these forms are the ones seeing language evolution simply because are the ones being used. So vulgar Latin refers to the compendium of average words that seeded the foundation and evolution of the separate romance languages.
Dunno. Could be true. I'm starting to learn latin. Personally, on the surface, Latin reminds me a lot more of German instead of Spanish or Catalan, romance languages I have been learning. For one, it has cases. Secondly, the verbal forms feel more like german besides the first person forms. There's something seriously missing in the connection between latin and modern romance languages. Vulgar latin, ie. the dialects, is a good explanation for why as any. You call one language italian, but there are many italian languages in reality. Either way, I doubt they would start having such different grammar without calling it another language.
I think one argument that can be made for Vulgar Latin is that ecclesiastical Latin attempts to follow "Classical." I doubt you can say ecclesiastical Latin is Classical, because its vocabulary use appears to be influenced by modern Romance languages. Ecclesiastical Latin is easy to read compared to Classical. But grammatically, it follows Classical. That shows an awareness that Classical was something different. Apparently Classical in, say, the time of Caesar and Cicero preserved some archaic features, such as the fifth declension, that dropped out of Vulgar and later Romance languages.
An example of Ecclesiastical Latin: the papal encyclical Gaudiam et spes. Spes is a fifth declension word. All Romance languages, as far as I know, use the first declension Sperantia.
Completely agree with you there and the examples and points you give really made it make sense and explainable to people
It’s really a question of point of view, I think.
Either you consider that the basic term Latin encompasses all forms of the language, either that it refers to the specific form of Latin from which all other forms derived… which could be nearly impossible to define (was there such a thing as a basic « Roman » Latin ?).
Even with modern languages, there are distinctions made like talking about UK English vs American English or Metropolitan French vs Quebec French. Of course if you live in one of those countries, you will only refer to those languages as English and French without adding any precision (in China, Chinese food is simply called food). As to saying that Metropolitan French is the most adequate form of the language that could qualify as being the reference for all other French languages, or UK English the reference for all English languages, it’s very debatable because all forms languages continue to evolve as long as they live independently from their time and place of origin.
So saying that all Romance languages derived from Latin is correct, but more specifically from the spoken version aka Vulgar Latin over the literacy written version aka Classical Latin is also correct. It only depends on how precise you want to be about it.
The thing I find incorrect to convey though is the idea that Vulgar Latin derives directly from Classical Latin.
Those are brothers, not father and son.
Well, I'm a native English speaker (American), so one might say that I can't comment on this. But I don't believe that to be the case. No one speaks Latin anymore anyways. Furthermore, I do speak French (I've made some videos in French, in fact). And I agree with your conclusion. Nonetheless, your reasoning leaves something to be desired.
When you imply that "vulgar Latin" refers to a different language from Latin somehow, that's where I have issues. Vulgar is an adjective. It's essentially the same as if one were to say "The Romance languages are derived from some commonly spoken variety of Latin." That's true. Both Latin spoken in the Iberian peninsula and Latin spoken in the region previously occupied by the Gauls are both (albeit being different varieties of) Latin. Specifically, a common form of it-a vulgar form. I feel that you are resorting to a form of strawman. Don't get me wrong; I get the misunderstanding you're trying to correct. But don't go too far with correcting it.
Just wanted to point that out. I'm not formally educated, but I'd love to have a longer-form discussion on this if, by some chance, you would be interested lol even though I'm a nobody.
ok but there were differences in lexicon. It is a register but due to the fact the territory was very wide this lexicon changed very much. I woldn't use the "elite" acception more the "istitution" concept. There is to keep in mind there was the form "equuus" for horse but colloquial was "caballus"
Metatron, I've had this same discussion before, and I agree. I actually go so far aa to say, IF there was a 'vulgar Latin' (a certain amount of concession to my 'debate opponent', here) it would actually be spoken by those that wanted a more 'globally accepted' language, which is a bureaucratic act of control. Now, to further validate this, me being 2nd generation American, when I spoke Italian, I was told it (Italian) wasn't a language I'd need, to learn proper english, and stop try to learn Italian from gran' mama.
I see your frustration, but just to offer the alternative view in favour of some kind of distinction between “Classical Latin” and “Vulgar Latin”. I am an Anglophone and to me, although both sentences are “English’, there is a clear distinction between “Did you like the food?” and “Was the food to your satisfaction?” - even to the extent that I suspect languages derived from English centuries from now will probably demonstrate more obvious links to the less formal (but more common) first sentence than to the more formal (but less common) second sentence.
With regards to Latin, here is another point. I would estimate that almost half the changes between Golden Age Latin and modern Romance languages *had already occurred* by the time Latin ceased to be a coherent, single language. Therefore it is entirely reasonable to point out that Romance languages are derived from “Late Latin” rather than from “Golden Age Latin”, to note that some changes occurred during the “still Latin” period and others did not.
I think most people are using “Classical” as shorthand for “Golden Age” and “Vulgar” as shorthand for “Late”. That probably isn’t ideal, as “Classical” and “Vulgar” are registers, not time periods. But, to be frank, I suspect this is a losing battle, like trying to insist “crucial” means “decisive” not just ‘very important” (grrrr!!)
Well, I guess the term makes quite a lot of sense, since there is som kind of continuity in the development of spoken (vulgar latin) to the modern romance language. For the written form this is not quite the case. There has been some kind of discontinuity during the renaissance.
I'd like to add that there certainly was diglossia in the Roman Empire... much in the same way it still exists in Greece; but that does not mean there actually are two different languages being spoken, but rather that there are different parts of the vocabulary used by different people, that the same words may be pronounced differently by people with different educational levels or origins (that's considerably common among native English speakers, incidentally), using different turns of phrase, etc. It's two ways of using the same language, rather than there actually existing two contemporaneous languages, one of which being a degenerate derivative of the other.
There was no diglossia during the classical period. In later periods the lowest registers of Latin drifted further from the highest literary registers, but there's no evidence that speakers thought of these as distinct systems like Katharevousa in Greece (which is no longer standard by the way, now there is no diglossia in Greece).
To have a final say on the topic, I think it would be required to bring some evidences. Do we have any actual prove that in Britannia or in Gaul the Latin spoken was substantially different (perhaps mixing celtic grammar and lexicon in a preponderant way) from the Latin spoken in the Balcans or in Italy or in North Africa? If there are no such proves, than we have to assume that the colonised spoke the language of the colonisers, as it often happens in history (just look at all the former British, French, Russian, Spanish or Portuguese colonies)
I’d be interested to see an English vs Scots comparison, similar to the Italian vs Sicilian comparison of dialect vs language
But Paul says clearly that they developed from different varieties of Vulgar Latin, which is to me that people spoke Latin dialects and from there they developed their respective languages. Vulgar Latin can also mean colloquial speech among common people.
The idea of dialects branching out into languages isn't correct, nor is the idea that the romance languages just descend from colloquial latin. Rather, the romance languages are one massive dialect continuum which only relatively recently has been politically split into multiple languages, and this dialect continuum developed out of Latin of all registers, like any other language.
@@Philoglossos so new languages don't evolve but simply appear by God's hand?
@@SchmulKriegerme when the tower of babel:
@@SchmulKrieger Read carefully. Who mentioned anything about languages simply appearing? Languages absolutely do evolve, what I just explained to you is the *way* in which they evolve. Here is what I wrote again:
this dialect continuum *developed* out of Latin of all registers, like any other language
If something is unclear ask for clarification, but don't just invent things I didn't say...
@@Philoglossos why isn't it correct?
Given that it has its own Wikipedia page, there must be enough people supporting the existence of vulgar Latin as its own thing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin
Wikipedia also talks a lot of bs.
Oh please don't use the Wikipedia argument. Open any page, switch the language and you'll get different "facts". I tested it myself in Mandarin, Japanese, Italian and English. Completely unreliable.
If you bothered to read the lead section, Wikipedia establishes Vulgar Latin as "controversial and imprecise" as well as "vague and unhelpful". In the next section about the controversy, it says "'Vulgar Latin' is regarded by some modern philologists as an essentially meaningless... term".
@@metatronacademy please tell me that’s a video. It sounds both educational and hilarious!
@@insanemakaioshin It actually is, on my main channel but it's a veeeeery old video.
I do think he doesn't fully say Vulgar Latin is a "different language" perse, since you can hear in the first example you gave where says "Vulgar Latin, the colloquial varieties of Latin". I think a better critique would be that the term vulgar Latin is a term that academics made up to try to put all the minor varieties of Latin under an umbrella to explain how they diverged so drastically from each other when they became different languages. Just like how academics used the term Byzantine when it was just the Eastern Roman Empire to the inhabitants.
I always thought of Vulgar Latin as the dialectal or regional variations spoken in the "streets" as opposed to the standard formal Latin of the documents. Those living in Gaul would speak a blended Gallic/Latin whereas those speaking in Athens would speak an Greek/Latin blend etc. Much like English in the UK is based on where folks invaded from. Encyclopedia Britannica says it can be a confusing term because it has varying interpretations. I think perhaps you and Paul are just using different interpretations?
I cannot fathom how anyone could not "get" that there was "Latin" (classical Latin), and "latin accents" (a plethora of varyingly different "vulgar latins" across space and time.)...
For me,what I personally think about "derived from Vulgar latin" means is that the variations of romance languages came from people less educated at the time of "colonization".
Speaking of my country, Brazil,we were introduced to the "worst type" of portuguese people: Prostitutes,almost deathbed persons,death sentenced criminal,etc. who were given "a second chance" to have a further live among native indigenous,people who were used to have a lifestyle of constant fight for survival and,thus, having less or almost none social skills,meaning a very poor vocabulary,full of slangs and "defects".
Combined with indigenous,African slave languages and later, European people escaping wars, created our actual Portuguese variant.
On the other hand,I can bet some high clerical people never came in contact with the natives nor the less educated refugees,so the latin had a separatation,creating two "sub genres".
I can be wrong, in fact,I'm not a linguist nor an anthropologist,nothing related to these areas,just an entusiasta for languages.
Having listened to your and Luke Ranieri's point, I feel like agreeing that caveat should be explicitly made in textbooks that Vulgar Latin was in fact the same language as literary Latin studied in (some) schools. I, for myself, thought that there would be some form of diglossia in Ancient Rome. However, this misconception came from my interpretation, nor was it anywhere explicitly written in my Latin textbooks.
I think there is nothing wrong in referring to Vulgar Latin rather than Latin. It is just being more specific, provided you're aware that Latin language was one. In fact, even today one may regard British and American English as different. Sure, it is English at the end of the day, but the vocabulary and lexicon are slightly different. Then, for example, think of the Italian emigrants' "English", or rather a curious mix of English words and other words from several Italian vernaculars. Would you say it is related to British English, because it is just as English as American English?
i agree with your point very much , i would like of instead of calling it vulgar latin reffer to this as REGIONAL VARIATIES/DIALECTICS of latin , would be more accurate
Diglossia doesn't necessarily imply two completely different languages, nor is the only alternative different registers. There is a wide spectrum in between when the two lects have mutual intelligibility. In any case, since “Vulgar Latin” is not defined relative to the Romance languages, what Paul perhaps should have said is Proto-Romance. There is compelling linguistic evidence to believe that all modern Romance languages share a more recent common ancestor than Latin as usually defined. Historically there might not be much evidence, but within a linguistic framework we must work within the bounds of, and discuss Romance evolution relative to, this theoretical construct. Neither historical records nor comparative linguistics alone is identical to the whole reality; it is unscientific to lump them together and pretend they fully agree, just to fit the presumption (however reasonable) of a single reality.
oh no it's burger latin
Like Latin would sound in U.S.
You mean Germany?@@thibaultsardet7399
You are right, there was no such language as "vulgar" Latin. This "Vulgar Latin" thing was developed as a theory in the 19th century by the French dramatist and linguist François Just Marie Raynouard. He came up with that erroneous idea in an attempt to explain to himself why the French language is what it is and it is not like Italian or Spanish Castilian or Catalan. What is quite clear is that from Portugal to Romania there was once a _dialect continuum_ . Then the "Vulgars" and the Vandals came and ruined it all! :)
PS: There was and is such a thing as Bulgars and once upon a time they did try to speak Latin, badly. It didn't stick. ;)
Given the geographical spread of the Portuguese, Romanians, French, Italians etc. these would result in local variants of Latin. Much the same as 'pidgin' English spoken in the far reaches of the British empire.
"It's English, Jim, just not as we know it."
I don't know to what extent I agree with your take here. To compare the particularities of the varieties of vulgar Latin spoken all around the former Roman empire when compared to official Latin with English register variations is misleading. There were several fundamental differences in how the language was structured between those two forms of Latin, and only when we look to the particularities of the former, are we really able to see how the language was evolving and from what basis did it came into being the contemporary varieties we know.
"Classical" Latin and "Vulgar" Latin btw are just similar as Standard Indonesian and Colloquial Indonesian (known as Bahasa Gaul).
And an earlier definition for “Vulgar” was “a characteristic of or belonging to the masses”.
It has diverged to mean “lacking sophistication” or “explicit or offensive”
Plsss. Video about interlingua.
well, it could be right to say it depending on how he uses the term "Vulgar Latin", like spoken varieties of "Classical Latin" for instance, so saying that Romance languages derived from "Vulgar Latin" is like saying that they derived from late registers / regional varieties of "Classical Latin", I see no problems saying it, I think u're exaggerating, it's a very convenient term depending on how u use it
I'd even continue to argue by saying that u can force ur prefered terminology onto other people, I remember back in the day I would try to make people say "Aryo-European languages" instead of "Indo-European languages" cause "what about Persian?", many just thought I was a nazi 😂
I think it would be akin to a language evolving far in the future from say, AAVE, instead of standard American English. It would take features like "I be working". So eventually that future language wouldn't use any conjugations of the verb "to be". Thus that future language evolved from AAVE, not standard English. IOW, evolved from the vulgar English spoken by a certain segment of the population. So I don't see the problem in specifying that Spanish, Italian etc. evolved from the vulgar variety of Latin spoken locally.
I had a science teacher who spoke Pig Latin. I haven't come across any farmyard animals who speak Latin though. Sigh. To quote Otto from A Fish Called Wanda " Dis APPOINTED! "
I fully agree on this topic and have always had this point of view. Finally someone that agrees with me 😄
I think there were accents of latin back then like a citizen from Coninbriga as opposed to one from Rome. But they would understand each other.
I agree to what you said, except one thing. For me as a non-English native, it's unbelievable that what the Scots use for communication is English. I usually don't understand a word of it.😂
As far as I know people say "vulgar Latin" with the meaning of "spoken Latin" as opposed to people also being privileged to how the language was written and what the grammar was.
I was taught that "vulgar" was a derogatory adjective, describing speech that decent people simply did not use, not even in private. This caused me some confusion in the past, with the term "Latin Vulgate," one of many original biblical sources. How could the Bible be vulgar? Reading the book of Genesis in its entirety would lend some credibility to vulgarity, but it wasn't originally written in Latin. Anyway, I agree, Latin is Latin, even if you use the naughty words from time to time. Even the British swear and cuss, but it's still English. French doesn't suggest any sort of vulgarity to me; it's usually treated as one of those upper-class languages. I learned Spanish from my Mexican co-workers, and it's far more vulgar, believe you me! But let's just call it "Latin" and be done with it.
But does not Vulgar Latin just mean colloquial Latin?
The dialects.
And did not all modern romance descend from late colloquial Latin, which sometimes is called Proto-Romance which has all ready changed considerably from the Classical Latin which was still written?
I love this guy. Great video🎉
100% agree!
When I was in school we were taught that Spanish ( my mother language) was made of Latin and Greek. No just latin. 😊
Indeed. The Latin of the common people had many Greek loans phonetically changed to suit its needs.
Over 70% Latin with some Greek vocabulary, the rest is a mix of Celt-Iberian, Basque, Germanic loan words etc
@@andredharoover 80% latin/greek… then celtiberian, arabic, germanic loans…
"Vulgar latin"/"classical latin" distinction is commonly accepted amongst linguists, not just Paul. While your vid is an interesting take, it looks more opinion-based (granted: there may be hidden assumptions) rather than sourced-based.
As a roman language speaker, the similarity & relatedness of portuguese, spanish, french, and italian is obvious, but it never was for classical latin (to me). Hence this notion of "vulgar latin" is appealing.
Maybe then the debate is whether we should consider them as two separate languages. My understanding of linguistic would make me think that they were mutually intelligibles (very important assumption), and thus, are the same language, albeit used very differently.
The point being that there were several "Vulgar Latins", and all the Romance languages actually ARE different Vulgar Latins