Vulgar Latin

Not to be confused with Latin profanity and the Vulgate, 2 Origin of the term
the Latin translation of the Bible used by the Catholic
Church. The term common speech (sermo vulgaris), which later
became Vulgar Latin, was used by inhabitants of the
Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris (common speech) Roman Empire. Subsequently it became a technical term
is a generic term for the nonstandard (as opposed to from Latin and Romance-language philology referring
classical) sociolects of Latin from which the Romance to the unwritten varieties of a Latinised language spo-
languages developed. Works written in Latin during clas- ken mainly by Italo-Celtic populations governed by the
sical times used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Traces of their
with very few exceptions (most notably sections of Gaius language appear in some inscriptions, such as grati or
Petronius' Satyricon). Because of its nonstandard nature, advertisements. The educated population mainly respon-
Vulgar Latin had no ocial orthography. Vulgar Latin sible for classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar
is sometimes also called colloquial Latin,[1] or Common Latin in certain contexts depending on their socioeco-
Romance (particularly in the late stage). In Renaissance nomic background. The term was rst used improperly in
Latin, Vulgar Latin was called vulgare Latinum or Lat- that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philol-
inum vulgare. ogy: Franois Juste Marie Raynouard (17611836) and
Friedrich Christian Diez (17941876).
In the course of his studies on the lyrics of songs writ-
ten by the troubadours of Provence, which had already
been studied by Dante Alighieri and published in De vul-
gari eloquentia, Raynouard noticed that the Romance lan-
guages derived in part from lexical, morphological, and
1 Proto-Romance syntactic features that were Latin, but were not preferred
in classical Latin. He hypothesized an intermediate phase
and identied it with the Romana lingua, a term that in
[2] countries speaking Romance languages meant nothing
Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance.
Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e., the latest stage more or less than the vulgar [3]
speech as opposed to literary
common to all of the Romance languages. Because some or grammatical Latin.
of the less familiar Romance languages branched o ear- Diez, the principal founder of Romance-language philol-
lier than others (Sardinian in particular), followed by ogy, impressed by the comparative methods of Jakob
Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages, it is Grimm in Deutsche Grammatik, which came out in 1819
also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g., Proto and was the rst to use such methods in philology, de-
Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched o); cided to apply them to the Romance languages and dis-
ProtoItalo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Ro- covered Raynouards work, Grammaire compare des
manian branched o); and ProtoWestern Romance (af- langues de l'Europe latine dans leurs rapports avec la
ter the branching-o of Sardinian, Romanian, and the langue des troubadours, published in 1821. Describing
central and southern Italian languages, including standard himself as a pupil of Raynouard, he went on to expand the
Italian). concept to all Romance languages, not just the speech of
Proto-Romance and the other proto-languages are theo- the troubadours, on a systematic basis, thereby becoming [4]
retical, unitary linguistic constructions. Vulgar Latin, on the originator of a new eld of scholarly inquiry.
the other hand, is the actual speech of the common peo- Diez, in his agship work on the topic, Grammatik
ple during the late Roman Empire. As a result, it is not der romanischen Sprachen, Grammar of the Romance
simply theoretical but actually attested (if thinly), and is Languages, rst published in 18361843 and multiple
not unitary, with dierences over both time and space. times thereafter, after enumerating six Romance lan-
Hence, it is possible to speak of, for example, the loss guages that he compared: Italian and Wallachian (i.e.,
of initial /j/ in unstressed syllables in the Vulgar Latin Romanian) (east); Spanish and Portuguese (southwest);
of Cantabria (an area in northern Spain), whereas it is and Provenal and French (northwest), asserts that they
meaningless to speak of a similar change in the Proto- had their origin in Latin, but nicht aus dem classischen
Romance of Cantabria. Latein, not from classical Latin, rather aus der rmis-

1
2 4 HISTORY

chen Volkssprache oder Volksmundart, from the Roman 1. Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts.
popular language or popular dialect.[5] These terms, as
he points out later in the work, are a translation into Ger- 2. Mention of it by ancient grammarians, including
man of Dantes vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and prescriptive grammar texts from the Late Latin pe-
the Italian of Boccaccio, latino volgare.[6] These names in riod condemning linguistic errors that represent
turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman spoken Latin.
republic.
3. The comparative method, which reconstructs Proto-
The concepts and vocabulary from which vulgare latinum Romance, a hypothetical vernacular proto-language
descend were known in the classical period and are to be from which the Romance languages descended.
found amply represented in the unabridged Latin dictio-
nary, starting in the late Roman republic. Marcus Tullius 4. Some literary works written in a lower register of
Cicero, a prolic writer, whose works have survived in Latin provide a glimpse into the world of Vulgar
large quantity, and who serves as a standard of Latin, and Latin in the classical period: the dialogues of the
his contemporaries in addition to recognizing the lingua plays of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with
Latina also knew varieties of speech under the name many characters who were slaves, and the speech
sermo. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was of freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius
a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo Arbiter.
plebeius and sermo quotidianus. These modiers inform
post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed,
which was used by the masses (vulgus) in daily speaking 4 History
(quotidianus) and was perceived as lower-class (plebeius).
These vocabulary items manifest no opposition to the
written language. There was an opposition to higher-
class, or family Latin (good family) in sermo familiaris
and very rarely literature might be termed sermo nobilis.
The supposed sermo classicus is a scholarly ction unat-
tested in the dictionary. All kinds of sermo were spoken
only, not written. If one wanted to refer to what in post-
classical times was called classical Latin one resorted to
the concept of latinitas (latinity) or latine (adverb). If
one spoke in the lingua or sermo Latinus one merely spoke
Latin, but if one spoke latine or latinius (more Latin-
ish) one spoke good Latin, and formal Latin had latinitas,
the quality of good Latin, about it. After the fall of the
empire and the transformation of spoken Latin into the
early Romance languages the only representative of the
Latin language was written Latin, which became known
as classicus, classy Latin. The original opposition was
Extract of the Oaths of Strasbourg, the earliest French text.
between formal or implied good Latin and informal or
Vulgar Latin. The spoken/written dichotomy is entirely Vulgar Latin developed dierently in the various
philological. provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to
the dierent Romance languages. Jzsef Herman states:

It seems certain that in the sixth century,

3 Sources
It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a dis-
tinct and persistent language so that the citizens of Rome
would be regarded as bilingual. Instead, Vulgar Latin is a
blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects
of the Latin language throughout its range from the hy-
pothetical prisca latinitas of unknown or poorly remem-
bered times in early Latium to the death of Latin after the
fall of the empire. Although making it clear that sermo
vulgaris existed, the ancients said very little about it. Be-
cause it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indi-
rectly. Knowledge comes from these chief sources:[7]
and quite likely into the early parts of the sev-
enth century, people in the main Romanized
areas could still largely understand the bibli-
cal and liturgical texts and the commentaries
(of greater or lesser simplicity) that formed
part of the rites and of religious practice, and
that even later, throughout the seventh century,
saints lives written in Latin could be read aloud
to the congregations with an expectation that
they would be understood. We can also deduce
however, that in Gaul, from the central part of
the eighth century onwards, many people, in-
cluding several of the clerics, were not able to
6.2 Consonant development 3

understand even the most straightforward reli- a process of syncope, the loss of unstressed vowels
gious texts.[8] in medial syllables ("masculus non masclus");

As early as 722, in a face to face meeting between Pope
Gregory II, born and raised in Rome, and Saint Boni-
face, an Anglo-Saxon, Boniface complained that he found
Pope Gregorys Latin speech dicult to understand, a
clear sign of the transformation of Vulgar Latin in two
regions of western Europe.[9]
At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered
to preach in the vernacular language either in the rustica
lingua romanica (Vulgar Latin), or in the Germanic ver-
naculars since the common people could no longer un-
derstand formal Latin. Within a generation, the Oaths of
Strasbourg (842), a treaty between Charlemagne's grand-
sons Charles the Bald and Louis the German, was prof-
fered and recorded in a language that was already distinct
from Latin.
From approximately this point on, the Latin vernaculars
began to be viewed as separate languages, developing lo-
cal norms and, for some, orthographies of their own, so
that Vulgar Latin must be regarded not as extinct since
all modern Romance varieties are its continuation but
as replaced conceptually and terminologically by multiple
labels recognizing regional dierences in linguistic fea-
tures.
5 Vocabulary
Main article: Vulgar Latin vocabulary
Further information: Reichenau Glosses
the merger between pre-vocalic /e/ and short /i/
("vinea non vinia");
the levelling of the distinction between /o/ and /u/
("coluber non colober") and /e/ and /i/ ("dimidius
non demedius");
regularization of irregular forms ("glis non glirus");
regularization and emphasis of gendered forms
("pauper mulier non paupera mulier");
levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /w/ be-
tween vowels ("bravium non brabium");
the substitution of diminutives for unmarked words
("auris non oricla, neptis non nepticla")
the loss of syllable-nal nasals ("mensa non mesa")
or their inappropriate insertion as a form of
hypercorrection ("formosus non formunsus").
the loss of /h/, both initially ("hostiae non ostiae")
and within the word ("adhuc non aduc").
Many of the forms castigated in the Appendix Probi
proved to be the productive forms in Romance; e.g., ori-
cla (Classical Latin auricula) is the source of French or-
eille, Catalan orella, Spanish oreja, Italian orecchia, Ro-
manian ureche, Portuguese orelha, ear, not the Classi-
cal Latin form.

6.2 Consonant development

Vulgar Latin featured a large vocabulary of words that
were productive in Romance.
See also: Romance languages Consonants

6 Phonology The most signicant consonant changes aecting Vulgar

Latin were palatalization (except in Sardinia); lenition (in
areas north and west of the La SpeziaRimini Line); and
See also: Latin spelling and pronunciation and Latin
loss of nal consonants.
regional pronunciation
Main article: Romance languages
6.2.1 Loss of nal consonants
There was no single pronunciation of Vulgar Latin, and
the pronunciation of Vulgar Latin in the various Latin- The loss of nal consonants was already under way by the
speaking areas is indistinguishable from the earlier his- 1st century AD in some areas. A grato at Pompeii reads
tory of the phonology of the Romance languages. See quisque ama valia, which in Classical Latin would read
the article on Romance languages for more information. quisquis amat valeat (may whoever loves be strong/do
well).[12] (The change from valeat to valia is also an
early indicator of the development of /j/ (yod), which
6.1 Evidence of changes played such an important part in the development of
palatalization.) On the other hand, this loss of nal /t/
Evidence of phonological changes can be seen in the was not general. Old Spanish and Old French preserved
late 3rd-century Appendix Probi, a collection of glosses a reex of nal /t/ up through 1100 AD or so, and mod-
prescribing correct classical Latin forms for certain vul- ern French still maintains nal /t/ in some liaison envi-
gar forms. These glosses describe: ronments.
4 6 PHONOLOGY

6.2.2 Lenition of stops word parietem (wall) turning into: Italian parete, Ro-
manian prete>perete, Portuguese parede, Spanish pared,
Areas north and west of the La SpeziaRimini Line or French paroi.[15]
lenited intervocalic /p, t, k/ to /b, d, /. This phenomenon
The cluster [kw] qu was simplied to [k] in most in-
is occasionally attested during the imperial period, but
stances. In 435, one can nd the hypercorrective spelling
it became frequent by the 7th century. For example,
quisquentis for quiescentis (of the person who rests
in Merovingian documents, rotatico > rodatico (wheel
here). Modern languages have followed this trend, for
tax).[13]
example Latin qui (who) has become Italian chi and
French qui (both /ki/); while quem (who) became quien
6.2.3 Loss of word-nal m (/kjen/) in Spanish and quem (/k/) in Portuguese.[15]
However, [kw] has survived in front of [a] in most ar-
The loss of the nal m was a process which seems to have eas, although not in French; hence Latin quattuor yields
begun by the time of the earliest monuments of the Latin Spanish cuatro (/kwatro/), Portuguese quatro (/kwatro/),
language. The epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Bar- and Italian quattro (/kwattro/), but French quatre (/kat/),
[15]
batus, who died around 150 BC, reads taurasia cisauna where the qu- spelling is purely etymological.
samnio cepit, which in Classical Latin would be tau-
rsiam, cisaunam, samnium cpit (He captured Taura-
sia, Cisauna, and Samnium). This however can be ex- 6.3 Vowel development
plained in a dierent way, that the inscription simply fails
to note the nasality of the nal vowels (like in the estab- See also: Romance languages Vowels
lished custom of writing cos. for consul).
In general, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin, which
relied on phonemic vowel length, was newly modelled
6.2.4 Neutralization of b and consonantal u into one in which vowel length distinctions lost phonemic
importance, and qualitative distinctions of height became
Confusions between b and u show that the Classical con-
more prominent.
sonantal u, or {IPA|/w/}}, and intervocalic /b/ partially
merged to become a bilabial fricative //. Already by the
1st century AD, a document by one Eunus writes Iobe for 6.3.1 System in Classical Latin
Iouem and dibi for diui.[14]
Classical Latin had 10 dierent vowel phonemes,
grouped into ve pairs of short-long, , ,
6.2.5 Consonant cluster simplication , , . It also had four diphthongs, ae, oe, au,
eu, and the rare diphthong ui. Finally, there were also
In general, many clusters were simplied in Vulgar Latin.
long and short y, representing /y/, /y/ in Greek borrow-
For example, /ns/ was changed to /s/, reecting the
ings, which, however, probably came to be pronounced
fact that /n/ was no longer consonantal. In some in-
/i/, /i/ even before Romance vowel changes started.
scriptions, mensis > mesis (month), or consul > cosul
(consul).[13] Descendants of mensis include Portuguese At least since the 1st century AD, short vowels (except
ms, Spanish and Catalan mes, Old French meis, Italian a) diered by quality as well as by length from their long
[16][17]
mese.[13] In some areas (including much of Italy), the counterparts, the short vowels being lower. Thus
clusters [mn], [kt] ct, [ks] x were assimilated to the the vowel inventory is usually reconstructed as /a a/, /
second element: [nn], [tt], [ss]. [13]
Thus, some inscrip- e/, / i/, / o/, / u/.
tions have omnibus > onibus (all [dative plural]"), indic-
tione > inditione (indiction), vixit > bissit (lived).[13]
6.3.2 Monophthongization
Also, three-consonant clusters usually lost the middle el-
ement. For example: emptores > imtores (buyers) [13] Many diphthongs had begun their monophthongization
Not all areas show the same development of these clus- very early. It is presumed that by Republican times, ae
ters, however. In the East, Italian has [kt] > [tt], as in octo
had become // in unstressed syllables, a phenomenon
> otto (eight) or nocte > notte (night); while Romanian that would spread to stressed positions around the 1st
has [kt] > [pt] (opt, noapte).[13] By contrast, in the West, century AD.[18] From the 2nd century AD, there are in-
the [k] was turned into [j]. In French and Portuguese, this stances of spellings with instead of ae.[19] oe was
caused the diphthongization of the previous vowel (huit, always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin (in Old Latin,
oito; nuit, noite), while in Spanish, the [t] was palatalizedoinos regularly became unus (one)) and became /e/ dur-
and became [t] (*oito > ocho, *noite > noche) [15] ing early Imperial times. Thus, one can nd penam for
[18]
Also, many clusters including [j] were simplied. Sev- poenam.
eral of these groups seem to have never been fully stable However, au lasted much longer. While it was monoph-
(e.g. faciunt for facunt). This dropping has resulted in the thongized to /o/ in areas of north and central Italy (in-
 5

cluding Rome), it was retained in most Vulgar Latin,

5th centuries. Around then, stressed vowels in open sylla-
and it survives in modern Romanian (for example, aur
bles came to be pronounced long (but still keeping height
< aurum). There is evidence in French and Spanish that
contrasts), and all the rest became short. For example,
long venis /*v.nis/, fori /*f.ri/, cathedra /*ka.te.dra/;
the monophthongization of au occurred independently in
those languages.[18] but short vendo /*ven.do/, formas /*for.mas/.[24] How-
ever, in some regions of Iberia and Gaul, all stressed
vowels came to be pronounced long: for example, porta
6.3.3 Loss of distinctive length and near-close /*pr.ta/, tempus /*tm.pus/.[24]
mergers

Length confusions seem to have begun in unstressed

vowels, but they were soon generalized.[20] In the 3rd 7 Grammar
century AD, Sacerdos mentions peoples tendency to
shorten vowels at the end of a word, while some po- 7.1 Romance articles
ets (like Commodian) show inconsistencies between long
and short vowels in versication.[20] However, the loss of
It is dicult to place the point in which the denite arti-
contrastive length caused only the merger of and while
cle, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages,
the rest of pairs remained distinct in quality: /a/, / e/,
arose, largely because the highly colloquial speech in
/ i/, / o/, / u/.[21] which it arose was seldom written down until the daugh-
Also, the near-close vowels /j/ and // became more ter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts
open in most varieties and merged with /e/ and /o/ in early Romance show the articles fully developed.
respectively.[21] As a result, the reexes of Latin pira Denite articles evolved from demonstrative pronouns or
pear and vra true rhyme in most Romance lan- adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative
guages: Italian and Spanish pera, vera. Similarly, Latin adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, be-
nucem walnut and vcem voice become Italian noce, coming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la,
voce, Portuguese noz, voz. and Italian il and la. The Portuguese article a ultimately
There was likely some regional variation in pronuncia- comes from the same source, while o is derived from hoc.
tion, as the Romanian languages and Sardinian evolved Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article
dierently.[22] In Sardinian, all corresponding short and from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan di-
long vowels simply merged with each other, creating a alects have articles from the same source. While most of
5-vowel system: /a, e, i, o, u/. In Romanian, the front the Romance languages put the article before the noun,
vowels , , , evolved like the Western languages, but Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after
the back vowels , , , evolved as in Sardinian. A few the noun, e.g. lupul (the wolf) and omul (the man
southern Italian languages behave like Sardinian (such from lupum illum and *homo illum),[22] possibly a result
as southern Corsican, northernmost Calabria, southern of its membership in the Balkan sprachbund.
Lucania) or Romanian (such as Vegliote (partially), west- This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in
ern Lucania).[23] some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin
demonstrative was losing its force. The Vetus Latina
Bible contains a passage Est tamen ille daemon sodalis
6.3.4 Phonologization of stress
peccati (The devil is a companion of sin), in a context
that suggests that the word meant little more than an ar-
The placement of stress did not change from Classical
ticle. The need to translate sacred texts that were orig-
to Vulgar Latin, and words continued to be stressed on
inally in Greek, which had a denite article, may have
the same syllable they were before. However, the loss of
given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute.
distinctive length disrupted the correlation between sylla-
Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam
ble weight and stress placement that existed in Classical
(through the middle of the valley), suggesting that it too
Latin. Where in Classical Latin the place of the accent
was weakening in force.[12]
was predictable from the structure of the word, it was no
longer so in Vulgar Latin. Stress had become a phono- Another indication of the weakening of the demonstra-
logical property and could serve to distinguish forms that tives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, le-
were otherwise homophones. gal and similar texts begin to swarm with praedictus,
supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, afore-
said), which seem to mean little more than this or
6.3.5 Lengthening of stressed open syllables that. Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatis-
simus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus (Blessed
After the Classical Latin vowel length distinctions were Anianus was bishop in that city.) The original Latin
lost in favor of vowel quality, a new system of allophonic demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specic
vowel quantity appeared sometime between the 4th and enough.[12] In less formal speech, reconstructed forms
6 7 GRAMMAR

suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made declension have an ending derived from -um: -u, -o, or-
more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally . E.g., masculine murum (wall), and neuter caelum
an interjection: behold!"), which also spawned Italian (sky) have evolved to: Italian muro, cielo; Portuguese
ecco. This is the origin of Old French cil (*ecce ille), cist muro, cu; Spanish muro, cielo ', Catalan mur,cel; Roma-
(*ecce iste) and ici (*ecce hic); Spanish aquel and Por- nian mur, cieru>cer; ; French mur, ciel. However, Old
tuguese aquele (*eccu ille); Italian questo (*eccum istum), French still had -s in the nominative and - in the ac-
quello (*eccum illum) and obsolescent codesto (*eccum cusative in both words: murs, ciels [nominative] mur,
tibi istum); Spanish ac and Portuguese c, (*ecce hic), ciel [oblique].[25]
Portuguese acol (*ecce illic) and aqum (*ecce inde);
For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique
Romanian acest (*ecce iste) and acela (*ecce ille), and stem became the productive; for others, the nomina-
many other forms.
tive/accusative form, which was identical in Classical
On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, no Latin. Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was un-
demonstrative appears even in places where one would der pressure well back into the imperial period. French
clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian (le) lait, Catalan (la) llet, Spanish (la) leche, Portuguese
poblo for the Christian people). Using the demon- (o) leite, Italian language (il) latte, Leonese (el) lleche
stratives as articles may have still been considered overly and Romanian lapte(le) (milk), all derive from the non-
informal for a royal oath in the 9th century. Consider- standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuter
able variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars lacte or accusative masculine lactem. Note also that in
as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be Spanish the word became feminine, while in French,
suxed to the noun, as in other members of the Balkan Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Roma-
sprachbund and the North Germanic languages. nian it remained neuter, lapte/lpturi). Other neuter
The numeral unus, una (one) supplies the indenite article forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and
in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero French nom, Leonese, Portuguese and Italian nome, Ro-
writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo (with a most im- manian nume (name) all preserve the Latin nomina-
moral gladiator). This suggests that unus was begin- tive/accusative nomen, rather than the oblique stem form
ning to supplant quidam in the meaning of a certain or *nominem (which nevertheless produced Spanish nom-
some by the 1st century BC. bre).[22]
Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA;
some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such
7.2 Loss of neuter as gaudium (joy), plural gaudia; the plural form lies
at the root of the French feminine singular (la) joie, as
well as of Catalan and Occitan (la) joia (Italian la gioia
is a borrowing from French); the same for lignum (wood
stick), plural ligna, that originated the Catalan feminine
singular noun (la) llenya, and Spanish (la) lea. Some
Romance languages still have a special form derived from
The genders the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically
as feminine: e.g., BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA arm(s)"
The three grammatical genders of Classical Latin were Italian (il) braccio : (le) braccia, Romanian bra(ul) :
replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance lan- brae(le). Cf. also Merovingian Latin ipsa animalia ali-
guages. quas mortas fuerant.
The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases ab- Alternations in Italian heteroclitic nouns such as l'uovo
sorbed by the masculine both syntactically and morpho- fresco (the fresh egg) / le uova fresche (the fresh eggs)
logically. The confusion starts already in the Pompeian are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and fem-
grati, e.g., cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum inine in the plural, with an irregular plural in -a. However,
(dead body), and hoc locum for hunc locum (this it is also consistent with their historical development to
place). The morphological confusion shows primarily say that uovo is simply a regular neuter noun (ovum, plural
in the adoption of the nominative ending -us (- after - ova) and that the characteristic ending for words agree-
r) in the o-declension. In Petronius' work, one can nd ing with these nouns is -o in the singular and -a in the
balneus for balneum (bath), fatus for fatum (fate), plural. Thus, neuter nouns can arguably be said to persist
caelus for caelum (heaven), amphitheater for amphithe- in Italian, and also Romanian.
atrum (amphitheatre), vinus for vinum (wine), and
In Portuguese, traces of the neuter plural can be found
conversely, thesaurum for thesaurus (treasure). Most
in collective formations and words meant to inform a
of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimal-
bigger size or sturdiness. Thus, one can use ovo/ovos
chion, an uneducated, Greek (i.e., foreign) freedman.
(egg/eggs) and ova/ovas (roe, a collection of eggs),
In modern Romance languages, the nominative s-ending bordo/bordos (section(s) of an edge) and borda/bordas
has been abandoned, and all substantives of the o-
7.4 Wider use of prepositions 7

(edge/edges), saco/sacos (bag/bags) and saca/sacas de + noun as early as the 2nd century BC. Exceptions
(sack/sacks), manto/mantos (cloak/cloaks) and of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, many
manta/mantas (blanket/blankets). Other times, it fossilized combinations like sayings, some proper names,
resulted in words whose gender may be changed more and certain terms related to the church. For example,
or less arbitrarily, like fruto/fruta (fruit), caldo/calda
French jeudi Thursday < Old French juesdi < Vulgar
(broth), etc. Latin jovis dis; Spanish es menester it is necessary <
These formations were especially common when they est ministeri; terms like angelorum, paganorum; and Ital-
could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the ian terremoto earthquake < terrae motu as well as names
like Paoli, Pieri.[27]
names of trees were usually feminine, but many were
declined in the second declension paradigm, which was The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even
dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latin pirus though Plautus, in the 2nd century BC, already shows
("pear tree), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking some instances of substitution by the construction ad +
ending, became masculine in Italian (il) pero and Roma- accusative. For example, ad carnucem dabo.[27][28]
nian pr(ul); in French and Spanish it was replaced by The accusative case developed as a prepositional case,
the masculine derivations (le) poirier, (el) peral; and in displacing many instances of the ablative.[27] Towards the
Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations (a) end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used
pereira, (la) perera. more and more as a general oblique case. [29]
As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently However, despite increasing case mergers, nominative
used forms. From the fourth declension noun manus and accusative forms seem to have remained distinct
(hand), another feminine noun with the ending - for much longer, since they are rarely confused in
us, Italian and Spanish derived (la) mano, Romanian inscriptions.[29] Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th
mnu>mna pl (reg.)mnule/mnuri, Catalan (la) m,
century rarely confuse both forms, it is believed that both
and Portuguese (a) mo, which preserve the feminine cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire,
gender along with the masculine appearance.
and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia.[29] Nowadays,
Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, Romanian maintains a two-case system, while Old French
other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter and Old Occitan had a two-case subject-oblique system.
nouns, but still have neuter pronouns. French celui-ci / This Old French system was based largely on whether or
celle-ci / ceci (this), Spanish ste / sta / esto (this), not the Latin case ending contained an s or not, with
Italian: gli / le / ci (to him /"to her / to it), Catalan: the s being retained but all vowels in the ending being
ho, a, aix, all (it / this / this-that / that over there); lost (as with veisin below). But since this meant that it
Portuguese: todo / toda / tudo (all of him / all of her was easy to confuse the singular nominative with the plu-
/ all of it). ral oblique, and the plural nominative with the singular
In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the def- oblique, along with the nal s becoming silent, this case
inite articles el, la, and lo. The last is used with nouns de- system ultimately collapsed as well, and French adopted
noting abstract categories: lo bueno, literally that which one case (usually the oblique) for all purposes, leaving the
is good, from bueno: good. Romanian the only one to survive to the present day.

7.3 Loss of oblique cases 7.4 Wider use of prepositions

The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of
several case endings in the nominal and adjectival
declensions.[26] Some of the causes include: the loss of
nal m, the merger of with , and the merger of with
(see tables).[26] Thus, by the 5th century, the number of
case contrasts had been drastically reduced.[26]
There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse
dierent forms even when they have not become ho-
mophonous (like in the generally more distinct plurals),
which indicates nominal declension was not only shaped
by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.[26] As
a result of the untenability of the noun case system af-
ter these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a
markedly synthetic language to a more analytic language.
The genitive case died out around the 3rd century AD,
according to Meyer-Lbke, and began to be replaced by
Loss of a productive noun case system meant that the
syntactic purposes it formerly served now had to be per-
formed by prepositions and other paraphrases. These
particles increased in number, and many new ones were
formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Ro-
mance languages are full of grammatical particles such as
Spanish donde, where, from Latin de + unde, or French
ds, since, from de + ex, while the equivalent Span-
ish and Portuguese desde is de + ex + de. Spanish de-
spus and Portuguese depois, after, represent de + ex
+ post. Some of these new compounds appear in liter-
ary texts during the late empire; French dehors, Spanish
de fuera and Portuguese de fora (outside) all represent
de + foris (Romanian afar ad + foris), and we nd
Jerome writing stulti, nonne qui fecit, quod de foris est,
etiam id, quod de intus est fecit? (Luke 11.40: ye fools,
did not he, that made which is without, make that which
8 7 GRAMMAR

is within also?"). In some cases, compounds were cre- 7.7 Verbs

ated by combining a large number of particles, such as
the Romanian adineauri (just recently) from ad + de +
in + illa + hora.[30]
As Latin was losing its case system, prepositions started
to move in to ll the void. In colloquial Latin, the prepo-
sition ad followed by the accusative was sometimes used
as a substitute for the dative case.
Classical Latin:

Marcus patr librum dat. Marcus is giving

[his] father [a/the] book.

Vulgar Latin:

Marcus da libru a patre. Marcus is giving

[a/the] book to [his] father.

Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin

sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with
the preposition de followed by the ablative.
Classical Latin:

Marcus mihi librum patris dat. Marcus is giv-

ing me [his] fathers book.
The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish
Vulgar Latin: text.

Marcus mi da libru de patre. Marcus is giving Main article: Romance verbs

me [the] book of [his] father. See also: Romance languages Verbal morphology

7.5 Pronouns In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages

changed less from Classical Latin than did the nominal
Unlike in the nominal and adjectival inections, pronouns system.
kept great part of the case distinctions. However, many The four conjugational classes generally survived. The
changes happened. For example, the /a/ of ego was lost second and third conjugations already had identical im-
by the end of the empire, and eo appears in manuscripts perfect tense forms in Latin, and also shared a common
from the 6th century.[31] present participle. Because of the merging of short i with
long in most of Vulgar Latin, these two conjugations
grew even closer together. Several of the most frequently-
7.6 Adverbs
used forms became indistinguishable, while others be-
Classical Latin had a number of dierent suxes that came distinguished only by stress placement:
made adverbs from adjectives: carus, dear, formed These two conjugations came to be conated in many of
care, dearly"; acriter, ercely, from acer; crebro, the Romance languages, often by merging them into a
often, from creber. All of these derivational suf- single class while taking endings from each of the original
xes were lost in Vulgar Latin, where adverbs were in- two conjugations. Which endings survived was dierent
variably formed by a feminine ablative form modifying for each language, although most tended to favour second
mente, which was originally the ablative of mens, and conjugation endings over the third conjugation. Span-
so meant with a _____ mind. So velox (quick) in- ish, for example, mostly eliminated the third conjugation
stead of velociter (quickly) gave veloci mente (originally forms in favour of second conjugation forms. French and
with a quick mind, quick-mindedly) This explains the Catalan did the same, but tended to generalise the third
widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance conjugation innitive instead. Catalan in particular al-
languages: add the sux -ment(e) to the feminine form most completely eliminated the second conjugation end-
of the adjective. This originally separate word becomes ing over time, reducing it to a small relic class. In Italian,
a sux in Romance. the two innitive endings remained separate (but spelled
7.7 Verbs 9

identically), while the conjugations merged in most other
respects much as in the other languages. However, the
third-conjugation third-person plural present ending sur-
vived in favour of the second conjugation version, and
was even extended to the fourth conjugation. Romanian
also maintained the distinction between the second and
third conjugation endings.
In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui end-
ing most frequently found in the rst conjugation. This
led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending
was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a
semivowel /awi/, and the /w/ sound was in many cases
dropped; it did not participate in the sound shift from
/w/ to //. Thus Latin amaui, amauit (I loved; he/she
loved) in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and
*amaut, yielding for example Portuguese amei, amou.
This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes
in conjugation preceded the loss of /w/.[22]
Another major systemic change was to the future tense,
remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. A
new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb
habere, *amare habeo, literally to love I have (cf. En-
glish I have to love, which has shades of a future mean-
ing). This was contracted into a new future sux in West-
ern Romance forms, which can be seen in the following
modern examples of I will love":
French: j'aimerai (je + aimer + ai) aimer ["to
love"] + ai ["I have"].
Portuguese and Galician: amarei (amar + [h]ei)
amar ["to love"] + hei ["I have"]
Spanish and Catalan: amar (amar + [h]e) amar
["to love"] + he ["I have"].
venio >Sp vengo (I come). In French, however, all the
endings are typically homophonous in the spoken lan-
guage except the rst and second person (and occasion-
ally also third person) plural, so the pronouns are always
used (je viens) except in the imperative and in a few ex-
pressions like allons-y! (we go there!").
Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the
active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years
of known evolution, the synthetic passive voice was ut-
terly lost in Romance, being replaced with periphrastic
verb formscomposed of the verb to be plus a passive
participleor impersonal reexive formscomposed of
a verb and a passivizing pronoun.
Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments
there were many cases of verbs merging as complex sub-
tleties in Latin were reduced to simplied verbs in Ro-
mance. A classic example of this are the verbs express-
ing the concept to go. Consider three particular verbs
in Classical Latin expressing concepts of going": ire,
vadere, and ambulare. In Spanish and Portuguese ire and
vadere merged into the verb ir, which derives some con-
jugated forms from ire and some from vadere. andar
was maintained as a separate verb derived from ambu-
lare. Italian instead merged vadere and ambulare into the
verb andare. And at the extreme French merged all three
Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriv-
ing from vadere and ambulare and the future tense deriv-
ing from ire. Similarly the Romance distinction between
the Romance verbs for to be, essere and stare, was lost
in French as these merged into the verb tre. In Italian,
the verb essere inherited both Romance meanings of be-
ing essentially and being temporarily of the quality of,
while stare specialized into a verb denoting location or
dwelling.

Italian: amer (amar + [h]o) amare ["to love"] +

ho ["I have"]. 7.7.1 Copula

A periphrastic construction of the form 'to have to' Main article: Romance copula
(late Latin habere ad) used as future is characteristic of
Sardinian:
The copula (that is, the verb signifying to be) of Classi-
cal Latin was esse. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin
App'a istre < appo a istre 'I will stay'
by attaching the common innitive sux -re to the classi-
App'a nrrere < appo a nrrer 'I will say' cal innitive; this produced Italian essere and French tre
through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old French es-
An innovative conditional (distinct from the subjunctive) tre as well as Spanish and Portuguese ser (Romanian a
also developed in the same way (innitive + conjugated derives from re, which means to become). However,
form of habere). The fact that the future and conditional in Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the
endings were originally independent words is still evident verb stare, which originally meant (and is cognate with)
in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows clitic to stand to denote a more temporary meaning. That
object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of is, *essere signied the essence, while stare signied the
the verb and its ending: I will love (eu) amarei, but I state. Stare evolved to Spanish and Portuguese estar and
will love you amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + (eu) Old French ester (both through *estare), while Italian and
hei = amar + te + [h]ei = amar-te-ei. Romanian retained the original form.
In Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, personal pronouns can The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more
still be omitted from verb phrases as in Latin, as the end- or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might
ings are still distinct enough to convey that information: have said: vir est in foro, meaning the man is in/at the
10
marketplace. The same sentence in Vulgar Latin should
have been *(h)omo stat in foro, the man stands in/at
the marketplace, replacing the est (from esse) with stat
(from stare), because standing was what was perceived
as what the man was actually doing. The use of stare in
this case was still actually correct assuming that it meant
to stand, but soon the shift from esse to stare became
more widespread. In the Iberian peninsula esse ended
up only denoting natural qualities that would not change,
while stare was applied to transient qualities and location.
In Italian, stare is used only for location and the em-
inently transient quality implied in a verbs progressive
form, such as sto scrivendo for I am writing. (Although
it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish la cat-
edral est en la ciudad, the cathedral is in the city this
is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed
through estar in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed
the sense of the cathedral stands in the city).
8 Notes
[1] Posner, Rebecca (1996). The Romance Languages. Cam-
bridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 98.
[2] (French) Robert A. Hall, Jr. : Proto-Romance Phonology
(review by Michael Herslund). Revue Romane, Bind 13
(1978) 1.
[3] Meyer (1906), p.239.
[4] Meyer (1906), pp. 2445.
[5] Diez (1882), p. 1.
[6] Diez (1882), p. 63.
[7] Grandigent (1907), p.5.
[8] Herman (2000), p.114.
[9] Mann, Horace, The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle
Ages, Vol. I: The Popes Under the Lombard Rule, Part 2,
657795 (1903), pg. 158
[10] Rickard, Peter (April 27, 1989). A History of the French
language. London: Routledge. pp. 2122. ISBN
041510887X.
[11] Les Serments de Strasbourg. Retrieved February 20,
2016.
[12] Harrington et al. (1997).
[13] Herman 2000, p. 47.
[14] Horrocks, Georey and James Clackson (2007). The
Blackwell History of the Latin Language. Malden: Black-
well Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-6209-8.
[15] Herman 2000, p. 48.
9 SEE ALSO
[16] Allen (2003) states: There appears to have been no great
dierence in quality between long and short a, but in the
case of the close and mid vowels (i and u, e and o) the long
appear to have been appreciably closer than the short.
He then goes on to the historical development, quotations
from various authors (from around the 2nd century AD),
and evidence from older inscriptions in which e stands
for normally short i, i for long e, etc.
[17] Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 11.
[18] Palmer 1954, p. 157.
[19] Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 118.
[20] Herman 2000, p. 28-29.
[21] Palmer 1954, p. 156.
[22] Vincent (1990).
[23] Michele Loporcaro, Phonological Processes, The Cam-
bridge History of the Romance Languages: Structures, vol.
1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 112-4.
[24] Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 125.
[25] In a few isolated masculine nouns, the s has been ei-
ther preserved or reinstated in the modern languages, for
example FILIUS (son) > French ls, DEUS (god)
> Spanish dios and Portuguese deus, and particularly in
proper names: Spanish Carlos, Marcos, in the conserva-
tive orthography of French Jacques, Charles, Jules, etc.
(Menndez Pidal 1968, p. 208; Survivances du cas sujet)
[26] Herman 2000, p. 52.
[27] Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 82.
[28] Captivi, 1019.
[29] Herman 2000, p. 53.
[30] Romanian Explanatory Dictionary (DEXOnline.ro)
[31] Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 238.
9 See also
Oaths of Strasbourg
Romance copula
Romance languages
Veronese Riddle
Proto-Romanian
Daco-Roman
Thraco-Roman
10.2 Transitions to Romance languages
9.1 History of specic Romance languages
Catalan phonology
History of French
History of Italian
History of Portuguese
History of the Spanish language
Latin to Romanian sound changes
Old French
10 References
10.1 General
Allen, W. Sidney (2003). Vox Latina a Guide to
the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd ed.). Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-
37936-9.
Boyd-Bowman, Peter (1980). From Latin to Ro-
mance in Sound Charts. Washington DC: George- 10.2.1 To French
town University Press.
Kibler, William W. (1984). An Introduction to Old
Diez, Friedrich (1882). Grammatik der romanis- French. New York: Modern Language Association
chen Sprachen (in German) (5 Auage ed.). Bonn: of America.
E. Weber.
Grandgent, C.H. (1907). An Introduction to Vulgar
Latin. Boston: D.C. Heath.
Grandgent, Charles Hall (1882). Introduccin al
latn vulgar (in Spanish) (Spanish translation by
Francisco de B. Moll ed.). Consejo Superior de In-
vestigaciones Cientcas.
Harrington, K. P.; Pucci, J.; Elliott, A. G. (1997). 10.2.2 To Italian
Medieval Latin (2nd ed.). University of Chicago
Press. ISBN 0-226-31712-9.
Herman, Jzsef; Wright, Roger (Translator) (2000).
Vulgar Latin. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press. ISBN 0-271-02001-6.
Meyer, Paul (1906). Beginnings and Progress
of Romance Philology. In Rogers, Howard J.
Congress of Arts and Sciences: Universal Exposition,
St. Louis, 1904. Volume III. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Miin and Company. pp. 237255.
Palmer, L. R. (1988) [1954]. The Latin Language.
University of Oklahoma. ISBN 0-8061-2136-X.
Pulgram, Ernst (1950). Spoken and Writ-
ten Latin. Language 26 (4): 458466.
doi:10.2307/410397. JSTOR 410397.
11
Sihler, A. L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of
Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
Tucker, T. G. (1985) [1931]. Etymological Dictio-
nary of Latin. Ares Publishers. ISBN 0-89005-172-
0.
Vnnen, Veikko (1981). Introduction au latin vul-
gaire. Troisime dition revue et augmente. Paris:
Klincksieck. ISBN 2-252-02360-0.
Vincent, Nigel (1990). Latin. In Harris, M.; Vin-
cent, N. The Romance Languages. Oxford Univer-
sity Press. ISBN 0-19-520829-3.
von Wartburg, Walther; Chambon, Jean-Pierre
(1928). Franzsisches Etymologisches Wrter-
buch: eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprach-
schatzes (in German and French). Bonn: F. Klopp.
Wright, Roger (1982). Late Latin and Early Ro-
mance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool:
Francis Cairns.
10.2 Transitions to Romance languages
Pope, Mildred K. (1934). From Latin to Mod-
ern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-
Norman Phonology and Morphology. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Price, Glanville (1998). The French language:
present and past (Revised ed.). London: Grant and
Cutler.
Maiden, Martin (1996). A Linguistic History of Ital-
ian. New York: Longman.
10.2.3 To Spanish
Lloyd, Paul M. (1987). From Latin to Spanish.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Lan-
guage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pharies, David A. (2007). A Brief History of the
Spanish Language. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Pountain, Christopher J. (2000). A History of the
Spanish Language Through Texts. London: Rout-
ledge.
12 11 EXTERNAL LINKS

10.2.4 To Portuguese

Williams, Edwin B. (1968). From Latin to Por-

tuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of
the Portuguese Language. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.

10.2.5 To Occitan

Paden, William D. (1998). An Introduction to Old

Occitan. New York: Modern Language Association
of America.

11 External links
Batzarov, Zdravko (2000). Orbis Latinus. Re-
trieved 19 September 2009.
Norberg, Dag; Johnson, R.H. (Translator) (2009)
[1980]. Latin at the End of the Imperial Age.
Manuel pratique de latin mdival. New York:
Columbia University Press, Orbis Latinus.
Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum. Paris: Lab-
oratoire d'Histoire des thories linguistiques. 2008.
Retrieved 19 September 2009.
 13

12 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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giusca, Djnjwd, Kimiko, Nikai, Susurrus, JamesReyes, Crissov, Vanished user 5zariu3jisj0j4irj, Marco Neves, DJ Clayworth, Furrykef,
Morwen, VeryVerily, Nricardo, Raul654, Bcorr, Donarreiskoer, Ke4roh, Benwing, Moncrief, Altenmann, Romanm, Modulatum, Chris
Roy, Ashdurbat, PedroPVZ, Hippietrail, Jondel, Wereon, Benc, BovineBeast, Jleedev, GreatWhiteNortherner, David Gerard, Clementi,
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Kwamikagami, Sietse Snel, Pablo X, Circeus, Sicboy, Meggar, Superking, Geocachernemesis~enwiki, Wikipedius, Man vyi, Nk, Pretender,
Oliver Mundy, Nsaa, Wdshu, Orzetto, Enirac Sum, ThePedanticPrick, Improv, Logologist, Alex '05, Rosbach, Zantastik, Blahedo, Max
Naylor, Oghmoir, Gpvos, IJzeren Jan, Kbolino, Angr, Woohookitty, StradivariusTV, Ilario, Miss Madeline, Bowman, Umofomia, Doric
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14 12 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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