Chapter 8

Cultural Notes: Colloquial and Vulgar Latin

Colloquial Latin was the everyday language of cultured people speaking with their friends, spouses, children, or slaves. It was characterized by the frequent use of diminutives (manuciolum, misella, filiolus, agellis, martiolum) and interjections (eheu, mehercule, quid). Word order was very free. Greek words and tags were used as we use French ("he has a certain je ne sais quoi," RSVP, "it's just not comme il faut," etc. are some English examples). There was wide use of intensified per- or weakened sub- verb forms (perlegere, permitto, pereo, perterreo, pervenio, persequor, subsequor, sustineo).

Vulgar Latin is not called that because it is full of dirty words (pity), but because it was used by the vulgus, or people. This was the language spoken by uneducated classes in Italy and the provinces. Since it was the Latin the advancing Roman legions spoke, it was the Latin which was learned by the conquered people. By 600 A.D. or so, the Vulgar Latin spoken in what is now France had become an early dialect of French; ditto for Spanish and other modern Romance languages. The Latin that people learned in school in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was actually Vulgar Latin which had become the fancy, high-status language.

Vulgar Latin, you will be glad to know, was characterized by simple, rational word order, a disregard of unnecessary distinctions, and a desire for greater regularity in word forms. There was an increased use of prepositions (tamquam Orcus instead of the ablative of comparison, for example), and clauses with quia, quoniam, or ut were used instead of the infinitive or accusative. Like colloquial Latin, Vulgar Latin used lots of diminutives and intensified verb forms. Sentences were dotted with emphatic words such as valde, nequissimus, facillime, libentissime. Vowels were slurred or confused, and the final m or s of a word was dropped. There is a very early medieval pronunciation guide, which corrects, for example, speclum to speculum. This guide shows us how people actually spoke. Many modern French words come from the Latin accusative form without the final m (seigneur from seniorem, for example).

If you consult a good big Latin dictionary, like Lewis and Short, you can trust that the farther down in the entry you find the example, the later that example is chronologically.