Spoken and Written Latin | Language | Cambridge Core (original) (raw)

1 Cf. Louis Furman Sas, The noun declension in Merovingian Latin 491 (Paris, 1937), who counts nineteen definitions. See also Einar Löfstedt, Philologischer Kommentar zur Peregrinatio Aetheriae 8 f. (Uppsala, 1936).

2 The difficulties were seen, or rather foreseen, nearly a century ago, when Hugo Schuchardt, Der Vokalismus des Vulgärlateins 1.ix (Leipzig, 1866-8), mentioned the complications of the subject, ‘... da der Ausdruck “Vulgärlatein” strenggenommen nicht eine einzige Sprache, sondern eine Summe von Sprachstufen und Dialecten von der Zeit der ersten römischen bis zur Zeit der ersten wirklich romanischen Schriftdenkmäler bedeutet.‘ See also ibid. 1.3.

3 This too had already been said by Schuchardt, Vokalismus 1.47: ‘Der sermo plebeius steht zum sermo urbanus in keinem Descendenz, in keinem Ascendenz, sondern in einem Kollateralverhältnis.‘

4 On the evaluation of written documents see Elise Richter, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Romanismen, ZRP Beiheft 82.4 ff. (1934).

9 Löfstedt, Kommentar 14 and passim. Elise Richter, Der innere Zusammenhang in der Entwicklung der romanischen Sprachen, ZRP Beiheft 27.80 (1911), claims that the Praenestine fibula (duenos med fhefhaked numasioi), the oldest Latin document in our possession (of the late 7th or 6th century b.c.), is already an example of popular Romance speech because of its word order; see also Karl v. Ettmayer's article on Vulgar Latin in Wilhelm Streitberg, Die Erforschung der indogermanischen Sprachen 1.231-80 (Strassburg, 1916).

10 See especially Henri François Muller, When did Latin cease to be a spoken language?, RR 12.318-34 (1921); id., A chronology of Vulgar Latin, ZRP Beiheft 78 (1929); id., L'époque mérovingienne: Essai de synthèse de philologie et d'histoire (New York, 1945); Pauline Taylor, The latinity of the ‘Liber Historiae Francorum’ (New York, 1924); Mario A. Pei, The language of the eighth century texts in northern France (New York, 1932); id., Accusative or oblique? A synthesis of the theories concerning the origin of the oblique case of Old French and the single-case system of the Romance languages, RR 28.241-67 (1937); id., Reflections on the origin of the Romance languages, RR 36.235-9 (1945). Robert L. Politzer, On the emergence of Romance from Latin, Word 5.126-30 (1949), assigns the French language a ‘birthday’ (126), at which occurred ‘the suddenness of the removal of the restraining influence of classical Latin from the popular language’ (130), and wishes to find out, from the written testimony (for if ‘the veracity of the theory cannot be ascertained by written evidence’ [130] it is a weak theory indeed, since he nowhere questions the strength of that evidence itself), exactly when the ‘cleavage of Latin and Romance was accomplished’ (130). What cleavage? See also the review of Muller's Chronology by Jules Marouzeau, Revue des études latines 8.386 (1930).

Pei, Accusative 243, writes as follows: ‘A single sporadic occurrence of a Romance feature in the midst of hundreds of classical forms is to this school of thought [which rejects the uniformity of Vulgar Latin throughout the Empire down to the 9th century] conclusive evidence of the fact that the Romance feature in question held undisputed sway in the spoken tongue, instead of being accepted as evidence of the fact that the language was beginning to change ...‘ I agree with the school attacked, because if the authors had known Classical Latin, they would not have written an unclassical form (cf. Jakob Jud, Probleme der altromanischen Wortgeographie, ZRP 38.58 [1914]; Schuchardt, Vokalismus 1.82, 92); and an intellectual's ignorance in such matters presupposes general, profound, long-established popular ignorance. A medieval Latin writer is no linguistic trailblazer. (Neither is the modern linguist who, though he says that there is nothing wrong with ain't, would never use it, even in speaking, and would not let it pass in a doctoral thesis.)

11 Pauline Taylor, Word 5.96 (1949): ‘Mr. Muller [see fn. 10] demonstrated that the scribes wrote what they spoke and heard ... He found no significant differences in the Latin throughout Romania up to the ninth century and therefore no evidence of dialectalization or the formation of Romance languages before the ninth century.’ Naturally one does not find such things in medieval books. Another writer of the same school takes a more moderate view; Louis F. Sas writes, Word 5.134 (1949): ‘It must be stated ... that the desire to write as one spoke was generally confined to narrative writing, sermons, Lives of the Saints, that is to materials directed to an audience untutored and uneducated by all former standards.’ But in this pre-Carolingian era the untutored and uneducated could read ‘as one spoke’ no better than they could read Latin, which is not at all.

12 Here Meillet errs in believing that ‘au IIIe siècle après J.-C., il y avait encore un latin un, parlé seulement avec des accents un peu différents d'une province à l'autre’ (L'unité romane, Scientia 31.151 [1922]), if he means to say that this was the only Latin current in the provinces. It was a κοινή, which ‘lag vielmehr wie eine Decke auf einer schon vorhandenen regionalen Differenzierung’ (Harri Meier, Über das Verhältnis der romanischen Sprachen zum Lateinischen, RF 54.181 [1940]). The κοινή is the lingua franca of international society and commerce, it is the written language of the so-called Vulgar Latin documents, and belongs to the upper line in the chart. On the natural, inevitable dialectalization of Latin or any other long-enduring, far-spread idiom see Karl Brugmann, Zur Frage nach den Verwandtschaftsverhältnissen der indogermanischen Sprachen, Techmers Zeitschrift 1.254 (1884); Johannes Schmidt, Zur Geschichte des indogermanischen Vokalismus 2.186 (Weimar 1871-5); Karl Sittl, Die lokalen Verschiedenheiten der lateinischen Sprache 1 (Erlangen, 1882); Hermann Hirt, Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der Indogermanen, IF 4.40 (1894); Hermann Hirt, ed. Helmut Arntz, Die Hauptprobleme der indogermanischen Sprachwissenschaft 196, 209 (Halle, 1939); Hermann Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte5 46 (Halle, 1920); Leonard Bloomfield, Language 47 (New York, 1933).

13 See the remarks on hyperurbanisms (hypercorrections) by Leo Spitzer, The epic style of the pilgrim Aetheria, Comparative Literature 1.232 f. (1949).

14 Ferdinand Lot, A quelle époque a-t-on cessé de parler latin?, ALMA 6.98 (1931), writes that ‘... pendant le dernier siècle d'existence de l'Empire d'Occident (383-476), il y avait deux langues, celle de peuple, parlée par l'immense majorité de l'Empire, et celle de l'aristocratie ...‘ Surely Lot is here simplifying and schematizing matters, as I am doing in my sketch. See Albert Guérard, Ten levels of speech, The American Scholar, Spring 1947 148-58; Bloomfield, Language 52.

15 Cicero's letters exhibit a style and a choice of words quite different from his great orations and his philosophical works. No doubt he talked differently in the senate, in the baths, and to his barber. Such intentional differentiation is important, else a man might not sound ‘natural’ or might be accused of using ‘inappropriate’ language. The story goes that when the great classicist Wilamowitz-Möllendorf arrived on his first visit to Athens, the cabby whom he engaged at the station was quite astounded to hear himself addressed as a (Homeric) ‘noble charioteer’.