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Vulgar Latin
sermo vulgaris
Latin inscription in the Colosseum
Spoken in	Roman Republic, Roman Empire
Era	developed into Romance languages 6th to 9th centuries
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Vulgar Latin
Writing system	(unwritten)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	lat-vul
The Roman Empire in AD 60
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Vulgar Latin (in Renaissance Latin, vulgare Latinum or Latinum vulgare) refers to any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All works written during classical times in Latin used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, with very few exceptions (most notably sections of Gaius Petronius' Satyricon). It is sometimes also called colloquial Latin,^[1] or Common Romance (particularly in the late stage).

The broad term Vulgar Latin should not be confused with the more specific term Proto-Romance, which refers specifically to the theoretical common ancestor to the modern Romance languages. As such Proto-Romance may have been only one of the Vulgar Latin languages and only a very late stage of that language branch.

Proto-Romance[link]

Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance. Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e. the latest stage common to all of the Romance languages. Because some of the less familiar Romance languages branched off early from the others (Sardinian in particular, followed by Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages), it is also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g. Proto Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched off); Proto Italo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Romanian branched off); and Proto Western Romance (after the branching-off of Sardinian, Romanian, and the central and southern Italian languages, including standard Italian).

Proto-Romance and the other proto-languages are theoretical, unitary linguistic constructions. Vulgar Latin, on the other hand, is the actual speech of the common people during the late Roman Empire. As a result, it is not simply theoretical but actually attested (if thinly), and is not unitary, with differences both over time and space. Hence, it is possible to speak of, for example, the loss of initial /j/ in unstressed syllables in the Vulgar Latin of Cantabria (the area in northern Spain that gave birth to modern Spanish), while being is inaccurate to speak of a similar change in the "Proto-Romance of Cantabria".

Origin of the term[link]

The term "vulgar speech", which later became "Vulgar Latin", was used by inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Subsequently it became a technical term from Latin and Romance-language philology referring to the unwritten varieties of a Latinised language (see Latins) spoken mainly by the uneducated and therefore illiterate populations governed by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Traces of their language appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements. The educated population mainly responsible for classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts depending on their background. The term was first used improperly in that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philology: François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761–1836) and Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876).

In the course of his studies on the lyrics of songs written by the troubadours of Provence, which had already been studied by Dante Alighieri and published in De vulgari eloquentia, Raynouard noticed that the Romance languages derived in part from lexical, morphological, and syntactic features that were Latin but were not preferred in classical Latin. He hypothesized an intermediate phase and identified it with the Romana lingua, a term that in countries speaking Romance languages meant "nothing more or less than the vulgar speech as opposed to literary or grammatical Latin."^[2]

Diez, the principal founder of Romance-language philology, impressed by the comparative methods of Jakob Grimm in Deutsche Grammatik, which came out in 1819 and was the first to use such methods in philology, decided to apply them to the Romance languages and discovered Raynouard's work, Grammaire comparée des langues de l'Europe latine dans leurs rapports avec la langue des troubadours, published in 1821. Describing himself as a pupil of Raynouard, he went on to expand the concept to all Romance languages, not just the speech of the troubadours, on a systematic basis, thereby becoming the originator of a new field of scholarly inquiry.^[3]

Diez, in his flagship work on the topic, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, first published in 1836–1843 and multiple times thereafter, after enumerating six Romance languages that he compared: Italian and Wallachian (i.e. Romanian) (east); Spanish and Portuguese (southwest); and Provençal and French (northwest), asserts that they had their origin in Latin, but nicht aus dem classischen Latein, "not from classical Latin," rather aus der römischen Volkssprache oder Volksmundart, "from the Roman popular language or popular dialect".^[4] These terms, as he points out later in the work, are a translation into German of Dante's vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and the Italian of Boccaccio, latino volgare.^[5] These names in turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman republic.

The concepts and vocabulary from which vulgare latinum descend were known in the classical period and are to be found amply represented in the unabridged Latin dictionary, starting in the late Roman republic. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a prolific writer, whose works have survived in large quantity, and who serves as a standard of Latin, and his contemporaries in addition to recognizing the lingua Latina also knew varieties of "speech" under the name sermo. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo plebeius and sermo quotidianus. These modifiers inform post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed, which was used by the masses (vulgus) in daily speaking (quotidianus) and was lower-class (plebeius), although some plebeians were quite wealthy.

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 fiction unattested 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 Latinish") one spoke good Latin, and formal Latin had latinitas, the quality of good Latin, about it. After the fall of the empire and the death of spoken Latin its only representative then was written Latin, which became known as classicus, "classy" Latin. The original opposition was between formal or implied good Latin and informal or Vulgar Latin. The spoken/written dichotomy is entirely philological.

Sources[link]

It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a distinct 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 hypothetical prisca latinitas of unknown or poorly remembered 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. Because it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indirectly. Knowledge comes from these chief sources:^[6]

1. Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts.
2. Mention of it by ancient grammarians, including prescriptive grammar texts from the Late Latin period condemning linguistic "errors" that represent spoken Latin.
3. The comparative method, which reconstructs Proto-Romance, a hypothetical vernacular proto-language from which the Romance languages descended.
4. Some literary works written in a lower register of Latin provide a glimpse into the world of Vulgar Latin in the classical period: the dialogues of the plays of Plautus and Terence, being comedies with many characters who were slaves, and the speech of freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius Arbiter

History[link]

The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text.

Vulgar Latin developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to the different Romance languages. József Herman states:

It seems certain that in the sixth century, and quite likely into the early parts of the seventh century, people in the main Romanized areas could still largely understand the biblical 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, including several of the clerics, were not able to understand even the most straightforward religious texts.^[7]

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 vernaculars – since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. Within a generation, the Oaths of Strasbourg (842), a treaty between Charlemagne's grandsons Charles the Bald and Louis the German, was proffered and recorded in a language that was already distinct from Latin.

Extract of the Oaths, the earliest French text.

From approximately this point on, the Latin vernaculars began to be viewed as separate languages, developing local 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 differences in linguistic features.

Vocabulary[link]

Vulgar Latin featured a large vocabulary of words that were productive in Romance.

The Reichenau Glosses[link]

Insight into the vocabulary of late Vulgar Latin in France can be seen in the Reichenau Glosses,^[8] written on the margins of a copy of the Vulgate Bible (written in Classical Latin though intended for the vulgus), suggesting that the 4th-century words of the Bible were no longer readily understood in the 8th century, when the glosses were likely written. These glosses demonstrate typical vocabulary differences between Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin in Gallo-Romance:

• ager "field" > campus, a Classical synonym (French champ, Italian/Spanish/Portuguese campo, Catalan camp, Romanian câmp, but Portuguese in toponyms and, above all, Galician in common use retain agra and diminutive agrela for "fields of collective ownership" and Romanian sometimes agru "field")
• aper "wild boar" > salvāticus, from (porcus) silvāticus "wild pig" (Old French salvage "wild pig")
• arēna "sand" > sabulō, orig. "gravel" (French sable, Italian sabbia, Catalan sorra, Portuguese saibro "sand"; but Spanish and Sardinian arena, Galician area, Portuguese areia "sand", regional Romanian arină).
• canere "to sing" > cantāre, a Classical synonym; frequentative of canere (French chanter, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan cantar, Italian cantare, Romanian cânta, "to sing")
• cāseum "cheese (acc.)" > formāticum, from (cāseus) formāticus "cheese formed in a mold" (French fromage, Italian formaggio, Catalan formatge "cheese", post-classical, from formare, "to form"; but Portuguese queijo, Sardinian casu, Spanish queso, Romanian caş, Galician queixo, Italian dialect cacio "cheese")
• clīvium "mountain" (a Late Latin word, from Classical clīvus "slope, hill") > montānia, from Classical montānus "mountainous" (French montagne, Spanish/Galician montaña, Italian montagna, Portuguese montanha, Romanian munte)
• flāre "to blow" > suflare (= sufflāre), orig. "to inflate" (French souffler, Italian soffiare, Portuguese/Galician soprar, Romanian sufla, Spanish soplar)
• forum "market (acc.)" > mercātum, a Classical synonym (French marché, Italian mercato, Portuguese/Spanish/Galician mercado, Catalan mercat. Forum gave birth to Italian foro "law court", Spanish fuero "jurisdiction", Portuguese/Galician foro "jurisdiction", Catalan fur "jurisdiction", French for "judgment")
• gecor (=jecur) "liver" > ficato (= fīcātum), orig. (jecur) fīcātum "liver from an animal fattened on figs" (French foie, Italian fegato, Spanish higado, Portuguese/Galician fígado, Romanian ficat)
• hiems "winter" > hībernus, orig. "wintry" (French hiver, Italian inverno, Spanish invierno, Portuguese/Galician inverno, Catalan hivern, Romanian iarnă, adjective of hiems)
• ita "thus" > sīc, a Classical synonym (French, sometimes, si, Italian sì, Spanish sí, Portuguese sim "yes", Romanian şi "and")
• lamentō "I wail" > plōrō, orig. "I cry out" (French pleurer, Spanish llorar, Portuguese/Galician chorar, Catalan plorar "to weep", Romanian ploaie "rain". Lamento gave birth to Portuguese/Spanish lamentar, Italian lamentare, French lamenter.)
• līberōs "children (acc.)" > infantēs, orig. "infants" (French enfants, Catalan infants "children"; Italian infante "infant"; Portuguese infante "prince"; Spanish infante "child", but as a literary word also "prince")
• lebes "boiler" > chaldāria (= caldāria), based on Classical caldārius "related to bathing or hot water" (French chaudière, Italian caldaia, Spanish caldera, Portuguese/Galician caldeira, Romanian căldare)
• mārēs "males" (< mās) > māsculī, a Classical synonym; diminutive of mās (French mâle, Italian maschio, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish macho, Catalan mascle, "male", also Romanian mascur "castrated male pig" and mare "big")
• necētur "is killed (subj.)" > occidetur (= occidātur), a Classical synonym (Italian uccidere, Spanish occiso, "dead person", French occire, Romanian ucide, "to kill". Necetur gave birth to Italian annegare, Portuguese/Galician/Spanish anegar, Romanian îneca "to drown")
• pinguēs "fat (nom. pl.)" > grassī, from Classical crassī "fat, thick" (French gras, Italian grasso, Romanian gras, Portuguese/Galician graxo, Catalan gras "fat". Pingues > Italian expression terra pingue "rich soil")
• oppidīs "in the towns" > cīvitātibus, orig. "in the cities" (French cité, Italian città, Portuguese/Galician cidade, Sardinian tzitade, Spanish ciudad, Catalan ciutat, Romanian cetate, "city")
• ovēs "sheep (pl.)" > berbicēs, Vulgar Latin *berbix from Classical vervex "castrated ram" (Romanian berbec "ram", French brebis "ewes", but Spanish oveja, and Romanian oi "ewes")
• pulchra "beautiful" > bella, a Classical synonym (French beau / belle, Italian/Spanish bello, Portuguese/Galician belo, Catalan bell "beautiful". Pulcro gave birth to Spanish pulcro "tidy, neat")
• sortilegus "sorcerer" > sorcerus (Latinization of French sorcier, from Classical sors "oracular response")
• tenet "it bores, it annoys" (Classical "it holds") > anoget (= inōdiat), from Classical in odiō "hateful" (Old French anoie > French ennui; inodio > Italian noia, Spanish enojo)
• umo (= humō) "ground (abl.)" > terrā, orig. "land (abl.)" (French terre, Italian/Portuguese/Galician/Catalan terra, Spanish tierra, Romanian ţară, but also humă, "ground")
• unguēs "fingernails (acc.)" > ungulās, orig. "claws"; diminutive of unguēs (French ongle, Italian unghia, Spanish uña, Portuguese unha, Galician both uña and unlla, Romanian unghie, Catalan ungla "fingernail")
• vim "force (acc.)" > fortiam, from Classical fortis "strong" (French force, Spanish fuerza, Portuguese força, Galician forza, Catalan força "force", Romanian foarte "very (much); intense")
• sī vīs "if you want" > sī volēs, Vulgar Latin *volēre, regularized from Classical velle "to want" (French tu veux, Italian (tu) vuoi, Catalan (tu) vols, Romanian (tu) vrei or (tu) vei, "you want")
• viscera "entrails, guts" > intrālia (earlier intrānea, from Classical interāneum "intestine") (French entrailles, Spanish entrañas, Portuguese entranhas)

Grammatical changes:

• optimōs "best (acc. pl.)" > meliōrēs, orig. "better (acc. pl.)" (Portuguese melhor, Galician mellor, Spanish mejor, Catalan millor, French meilleur, Italian migliore. Reborrowed Spanish óptimo, Portuguese óptimo, Italian ottimo, French optimal, Catalan òptim, with the sense of "excellent" or "optimal")
• sāniōre "healthier (abl.)" > plūs sānō (French plus sain, Italian più sano, Spanish más sano, Catalan més sa, Portuguese mais são, Romanian mai sănătos)

Germanic loan words:

• turbās "crowds (acc.)" > fulcās (French foule, Italian folla "mob", but Spanish/Portuguese/Galician/Catalan/Romanian turba "mob")
• cementāriīs "stonemasons (abl.)" > matiōnibus (mac(h)io > French maçon > Spanish masón "stonemason")
• galea "helmet" > helme (French heaume, Italian/Portuguese/Galician elmo, Catalan elm, Spanish yelmo "helmet")
• cōturnīx "quail" > quaccola (French caille, Italian quaglia "quail", but Spanish codorniz, Portuguese codorna "quail")
• fulvus "brown, dark" > brunus (French/Romanian brun, Catalan bru, Spanish/Italian/Galician bruno "brown/dark")
• pignus "proof, token, pledge" > wadius (French gage, but Italian pegno)

And words whose meaning has changed:

• in ōre "in the mouth" (< ōs) > in buccā, orig. "in the cheek" (Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan boca, French bouche, Italian bocca "mouth", Romanian bucă with the sense of "cheek" and "buttock")
• ēmit "bought" > comparāvit, orig. "compared, prepared" (Italian comprare, Spanish/Portuguese/Galician comprar, Romanian cumpăra, Catalan comprar "to buy")
• rērum "of things" (< rēs "thing") > causārum "of causes" (French chose, Italian/Spanish/Catalan cosa, Portuguese/Galician coisa/cousa "thing". Rēs gave birth to French rien, Catalan res "nothing")
• rōstrum "beak" > beccus, post-classical borrowing from Gaulish (French bec, Italian becco, Catalan bec, Spanish pico, Portuguese/Galician bico "beak". Rostro gave birth to Italian rostro "beak", Spanish/Galician rostro, and Portuguese rosto "face", Romanian rost "mouth", "scope, purpose" and a rosti "to pronounce", "to tell")
• femur "thigh" > coxa, orig. "hip", first attested in Silver Latin (Portuguese, Galician and Old Spanish coxa, French cuisse, Italian coscia, Catalan cuixa, Romanian coapsă "thigh")

Phonology[link]

There was no single pronunciation of Vulgar Latin, and the pronunciation of Vulgar Latin in the various Latin-speaking areas is indistinguishable from the earlier history of the phonology of the Romance languages. See the article on Romance languages for more information.

Evidence of changes[link]

Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article: Appendix Probi

Evidence of phonological changes can be seen in the late 3rd century Appendix Probi, a collection of glosses prescribing correct classical Latin forms for certain vulgar forms. These glosses describe:

• a process of syncope, the loss of unstressed vowels ("masculus non masclus");
• 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/ between vowels ("bravium non brabium");
• the substitution of diminutives for unmarked words ("auris non oricla, neptis non nepticla")
• the loss of syllable-final 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., oricla (Classical Latin auricula) is the source of French oreille, Catalan orella, Spanish oreja, Italian orecchia, Romanian ureche, Portuguese orelha, "ear", not the Classical Latin form.

Consonant development[link]

The most significant consonant changes affecting Vulgar Latin were palatalization (which affected all areas except Sardinia); lenition (which affected the areas north and west of the La Spezia-Rimini line); and loss of final consonants. The loss of final consonants was already underway by the 1st century AD in some areas. A graffito at Pompeii reads quisque ama valia, which in Classical Latin would read quisquis amat valeat ("may whoever loves be strong/do well").^[9] (The change from valeat to valia is also an early indicator of the development of /j/ (yod), which played such an important part in the development of palatalization.) On the other hand, this loss of final /t/ was not general. Old Spanish and Old French preserved a reflex of final /t/ up through AD 1100 or so, and modern French still maintains final /t/ in some liaison environments.

Vowel development[link]

One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its vowel system. Classical Latin had five short vowels, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, and five long vowels, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, each of which was an individual phoneme, and four diphthongs, ae, oe, au and eu (five according to some authors, including ui). There were also long and short versions of y, representing the rounded vowel [y(ː)] in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced [i(ː)] even before Romance vowel changes started.

There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except a differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts.^[10] So, for example ē was pronounced close-mid /eː/ while ĕ was pronounced open-mid /ɛ/, and ī was pronounced close /iː/ while ĭ was pronounced near-close /ɪ/. The diphthongs ae and oe, pronounced /ai/ and /oi/ in earlier Latin, had also begun their monophthongisation to /ɛ/ and /e/, respectively. Oe was always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin; in Old Latin, oinos (one) regularly became unus.^[11]

As Vulgar Latin evolved, three main changes occurred in parallel. First, length distinctions were lost, so that for instance ă and ā came to be pronounced the same way. Second, the near-close vowels ĭ and ŭ became more open in most varieties of Vulgar Latin, merging with the long vowels ē and ō, respectively. As a result, Latin pira "pear" (fruit) and vēra "true", came to rhyme in most of its daughter languages: Italian, French, and Spanish pera, vera; Old French poire, voire (but not Modern French "vrai"). Similarly, Latin nux ("nut", acc. sing nucem) and vōx (voice) become Italian noce, voce, Portuguese noz, voz, and French noix, voix (in some cases the quality of the vowel later changed again, because of regularising tendencies, or other extraneous influences).

There was likely some regional variation in pronunciation, as the Eastern Romance languages and Sardinian evolved differently.^[12] In Sardinian, for instance, ĭ and ŭ became more close, merging with their long counterparts ī and ū; as a result, all corresponding short and long vowels simply merged with each other. In Romanian, the front vowels ĕ, ĭ, ē, ī evolved like the Western languages (the majority of languages, as described above), but the back vowels ŏ, ŭ, ō, ū evolved as in Sardinian. There are also small sets of remnant dialects in southern Italy that behave like Sardinian or Romanian.

In general, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin (not counting the Greek letter y), which relied on phonemic vowel length, was newly modelled into one in which vowel length distinctions lost phonemic importance, and qualitative distinctions of height became more prominent.

Grammar[link]

Romance articles[link]

It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages, arose; largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.

Definite articles formerly were demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese article a ultimately comes from the same source, while o is derived from hoc. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" – from lupum illum and *homo illum),^[12] possibly a result of its membership in the Balkan sprachbund.

This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in 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 dæmon sodalis peccati ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Greek, which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force.^[9]

Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with prædictus, supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough.^[9] In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian ecco. This is the origin of Old French cil (*ecce ille), cist (*ecce iste) and ici (*ecce hic); Spanish aquel and Portuguese aquele (*eccu ille); Italian questo (*eccu iste), quello (*eccu ille) and obsolescent codesto (*eccu tibi iste); Spanish acá and Portuguese cá, (*ecce hic), Portuguese acolá (*ecce illic) and aquém (*ecce inde); Romanian acest (*ecce iste) and acela (*ecce ille), and many other forms.

On the other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages (pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the ninth century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be suffixed to the noun, as in other members of the Balkan sprachbund and the North Germanic languages.

The numeral unus, una (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests that unus was beginning to supplant quidam in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BC.^{[dubious – discuss]}

Loss of neuter[link]

The genders

The three grammatical genders of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages. In Latin, gender is partly a matter of inflection, i.e. there are different declensional paradigms associated with the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, and partly a matter of agreement, i.e. nouns of a certain gender require forms of the same gender in adjectives and pronouns associated with them.

The loss of final consonants^{[dubious – discuss]} led to a remodelling of the gender system. In Classical Latin, the endings -us and -um distinguished masculine from neuter nouns in the second declension; with both^{[dubious – discuss]} -s and -m gone, the neuters merged with the masculines, a process that is complete in Romance. By contrast, some neuter plurals such as gaudia, "joys", were re-analysed as feminine singulars. The loss of the final m was a process which seems to have begun by the time of the earliest monuments of the Latin language. The epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, who died around 150 BC, reads TAVRASIA CISAVNA SAMNIO CEPIT, which in Classical Latin would be Taurāsiam, Cisaunam, Samnium cēpit, "He captured Taurasia, Cisauna, and Samnium". (Note that in the Latin alphabet, the letters u and v, i and j were not distinguished until the early modern period. Upper-case u and j did not exist, while lower-case j and v were only graphic variations of i and u, respectively.) This however can be explained in a different way, that the inscription simply fails to note the nasality of the final vowels (like in the established custom of writing COS. for consul). See the Consonants section above.

The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases absorbed by the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The syntactical^{[dubious – discuss]} confusion starts already in the Pompeian graffiti, e.g. cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum "dead body" and hoc locum for hunc locum "this place" (-us was normally a masculine ending, and -um a neuter ending). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending -us (-Ø after -r) in the o-declension: in Petronius, we find balneus for balneum "bath", fatus for fatum "fate", caelus for caelum "heaven", amphitheater for amphitheatrum "amphitheatre", vinus for vinum "wine" and conversely the nominative thesaurum for thesaurus "treasure". Notably, most of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimalchion.

In modern Romance languages, the nominative s-ending has been abandoned and all substantives of the o-declension have an ending derived from -UM > -u/-o/-Ø: MURUM (masc.) > Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish muro, Catalan and French mur and CAELUM (neut.) > Italian, Spanish cielo, French ciel, Portuguese céu, Romanian "cer", Catalan cel, Sardinian kelu. Old French still had -s in the nominative and -Ø in the accusative in both original genders (murs, ciels).^[13]

For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem was the productive form in Romance; for others, the nominative/accusative form, which was identical in Classical Latin, was the one that survived. Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French (le) lait, Catalan (la) llet, Spanish (la) leche, Portuguese (o) leite, Italian language (il) latte, Leonese (el) lleche and Romanian lapte(le) ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nom./acc. neut. lacte or acc. masc. lactem. Note also that in Spanish the word became feminine, while in French, Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Romanian it remained neuter, lapte/lăpturi). Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and French nom, Leonese, Portuguese and Italian nome, Romanian nume ("name") all preserve the Latin nominative/accusative nomen, rather than the oblique stem form *nominem (which nevertheless produced Spanish nombre).^[12]

Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such 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) leña. Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g. BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA "arm(s)" > Italian (il) braccio : (le) braccia, Romanian braț(ul) : brațe(le). Cf. also Merovingian Latin ipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant.

Alternations such as l'uovo fresco ("the fresh egg") / le uova fresche ("the fresh eggs") in Italian are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in -a (heteroclisis). However, it is also consistent with their historical development to say that uovo is simply a regular neuter noun (< ovum, plural ova) and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is -o in the singular and -a in the plural. Thus, neuter nouns can arguably be said to persist in Italian, and also Romanian.

These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the names of trees were usually feminine, but many were declined in the second declension paradigm, which was dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latin pirus ("pear tree"), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking ending, became masculine in Italian (il) pero and Romanian păr(ul); in French and Spanish it was replaced by the masculine derivations (le) poirier, (el) peral; and in Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations (a) pereira, (la) perera. Fagus ("beech"), another feminine noun ending in -us, was recategorized as a masculine noun in some languages, e.g. Romanian fag(ul) and Catalan (el) faig; other dialects replaced it with an adjectival form derived from fagus meaning "(made) of beech", either in the masculine fageus (e.g. Italian faggio) or in the feminine fagea (e.g. Portuguese faia and Spanish haya).

As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension noun manus ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending -us, Italian and Spanish derived (la) mano, Catalan (la) mà, and Portuguese (a) mão, which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.

Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but all have vestigial, semantically neuter pronouns. French: celui-ci, celle-ci, ceci; Spanish: éste, ésta, esto (all meaning "this"); Italian: gli, le, ci ("to him", "to her", "to it"); Catalan: ho, açò, això, allò ("it", this, this/that, that over there); Portuguese: todo, toda, tudo ("all of him", "all of her", "all of it"); Venetian: 'sto qua, 'sta qua, questo (meaning "this") and qûeło là, qûeła là, queło=queła (meaning "that").

In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the definite articles el, la, and lo. The last is used with nouns denoting abstract categories: lo bueno, literally 'the good' or 'that which is good', from bueno: good; "lo importante", i.e. that which is important. "¿Sabes lo tarde que es?", literally "Do you know 'the late' that it is?", or more idiomatically "Do you know how late it is?", from tarde: late. This is traditionally interpreted as the existence of a neuter gender in Spanish, although no morphological distinction is made anywhere else but in the singular definite article. Leonese keeps three genders with the same finish for masculine and neuter, clarified with the articles: (el) bonu, (la) bona, (lu) bonu ("good").

Loss of cases[link]

The sound changes that were occurring in Vulgar Latin made the noun case system of Classical Latin harder to sustain, and ultimately spelled doom for the system of Latin declensions. As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, vulgar Latin moved from being a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic language where word order is a necessary element of syntax. Consider what the loss of final /m/, the loss of phonemic vowel length, and the sound shift of ae from /ai/ to /ɛ/ entailed for a typical first declension noun (see table).

Wider use of prepositions[link]

Loss of a productive noun case system meant that the syntactic purposes it formerly served now had to be performed by prepositions and other paraphrases. These particles increased in number, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanish donde, "where", from Latin de + unde, or French dès, "since", from de + ex, while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguese desde is de + ex + de. Spanish después and Portuguese depois, "after", represent de + ex + post. Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; French dehors, Spanish de fuera and Portuguese de fora ("outside") all represent de + foris (Romanian afară – ad + foris), and we find 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 is within also?"). In some cases, compounds were created by combining a large number of particles, such as the Romanian adineauri ("just recently") from ad + de + in + illa + hora.^[14]

As Latin was losing its case system, prepositions started to move in to fill the void. In colloquial Latin, the preposition ad followed by the accusative was sometimes used as a substitute for the dative case.

Classical Latin:

Marcus patrī 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 giving me [his] father's book.

Vulgar Latin:

Marcus mi da libru de patre. "Marcus is giving me [the] book of [his] father."

Adverbs[link]

Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that made adverbs from adjectives: carus, "dear", formed care, "dearly"; acriter, "fiercely", from acer; crebro, "often", from creber. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin, where adverbs were invariably formed by a feminine ablative form modifying mente, which was originally the ablative of mens, and so meant "with a _____ mind". So velox ("quick") instead of velociter ("quickly") gave veloci mente (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly") This explains the widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance languages: add the suffix -ment(e) to the feminine form of the adjective. This originally separate word becomes a suffix in Romance.

Verbs[link]

In general, the verbal system in the Romance languages evolved less from Classical Latin than did the nominal system.

In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first 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 /β̞/. 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/.^[12]

Another major systemic change was to the future tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. This may have been due to phonetic merger of intervocalic /b/ and /w/, which caused future tense forms such as amabit to become identical to perfect forms such as amauit, introducing unacceptable ambiguity. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb habere, *amare habeo, literally "to love I have". This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western 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: amaré (amar + [h]e) < amar ["to love"] + he ["I have"].
• Italian: amerò (amar + [h]o) < amare ["to love"] + ho ["I have"].

An innovative conditional (distinct from the subjunctive) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form of habere). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in literary Portuguese, which in these tenses allows clitic object pronouns to be incorporated between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (eu) amarei, but "I will love you" amar-te-ei, from amar + te ["you"] + (eu) hei = amar + te + [h]ei = amar-te-ei.

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 utterly lost in Romance, being replaced with periphrastic verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal reflexive forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.

Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this is the verbs expressing 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 conjugated forms from ire and some from vadere. andar was maintained as a separate verb derived from ambulare. 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 deriving from vadere and ambulare and the future tense deriving 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 être.

Copula[link]

The copula (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was esse. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix -re to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian essere and French être through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old French estre as well as Spanish and Portuguese ser (Romanian a fi derives from fieri which means "to become"). However, in Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb stare, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand" to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *essere signified the essence, while stare signified the state. Stare evolved to Spanish and Portuguese estar and Old French ester (both through *estare), while Italian and Romanian retained the original form.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: vir est in foro, meaning "the man is at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin should have been *(h)omo stat in foro, "the man stands 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 essere to stare became more widespread, and, in the end, essere only denoted natural qualities that would not change. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish la catedral está en la ciudad, "the church 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 church stands in the city".)

Notes[link]

See also[link]

• Oaths of Strasbourg
• Romance copula
• Romance languages
• Veronese Riddle

History of specific Romance languages[link]

• Catalan phonology
• History of French
• History of Italian
• History of Portuguese
• History of the Spanish language
• Latin to Romanian sound changes
• Old French

References[link]

General[link]

External links[link]

• Batzarov, Zdravko (2000). "Orbis Latinus". http://www.orbilat.com/index.html. Retrieved 19 September 2009. 
• Norberg, Dag; Johnson, R.H. (Translator) (2009) [1980]. "Latin at the End of the Imperial Age". Manuel pratique de latin médiéval. New York: Columbia University Press, Orbis Latinus. http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Medieval/Dag_Norberg/01.html. 
• "Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum". Paris: Laboratoire d'Histoire des théories linguistiques. 2008. http://kaali.linguist.jussieu.fr/CGL/text.jsp. Retrieved 19 September 2009.