Pedants' Paradise

[doversoul1]

there is no reason to think that the 'classical Latin' available to a Roman of the first century BC wasn't what he spoke as well (pretty much).

Spoken form of language (if you mean the language that people use in their everyday lives) differs in two ways from its written form: it is often a social means (that is, it’s the act of speaking that is important and not necessarily the content) and almost entirely dependent on the context, whereas written form needs to function in an abstract setting. A Roman in the first century would probably have spoken in the classical Latin in certain situations if he was educated but that sort of language (in that form) would have been pretty useless when all he wanted to say was See you tomorrow, or Bring the wine over here.

As for English and other European languages, because there was Latin for the purpose of intellectual writing, vernacular written form didn’t develop until much later, and when it did develop, it was, to begin with, largely for ‘women and children’ and less educated. This is why, I think, in these languages, written form is not so distinct from its spoken form.

Originally Posted by jean

A good deal of the prose literature that survives from the classical period consists of speeches. This fact in itself brings spoken and written versions of the language closer together, doesn't it? Many of the people crowded around in a corona in the forum to hear the great man orate were probably illiterate themselves, but are we to assume that they spoke a totally different variety from what they heard and, presumably, understood?

I wouldn’t call these examples as spoken forms. They were meant to be listened to but not spoken by the audience in their daily lives. I doubt the speeches in the prose literature were ‘verbatim’ if you mean spoken words or utterances by 'speeches'.

As for Chinese, I think the very early form of Chinese writing was a visual form and did not have the vocal equivalent. But it was language and not pictures. No, this is definitely nothing to do with different versions of modern Chinese.

[jean]

"The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (October 2012)"

And the discussion continues there.

The section headed Confusion is relevant to this discussion.

Poor VincentG is very confused indeed. FelipeS s right to question what he says. Dave isn't correct in all respects (he's probably trying to be too colloquial), but I think he's nearer the truth of it than Vincent. Neither of them writes very good English(!)

Classical latin was never a spoken language. It was a literary language. I don't know where the idea came from that everybody would have talked a perfect language, as in the books. It's like saying that that every people on earth speak the language that is written in a grammar or in a book. Completely ludicrous. The every day language and "real" language was "vulgar" latin for common language. Even Virgil and Cicero spoke vulgar latin because it means "spoken language". Like American & British speak vulgar english. Just because people see "vulgar" they think it was spoken by uneducated persons. We should all know that "vulgaris, usualis, rusticus, plebeius" in latin meant "spoken by the people" whether high class people or the farmer VincentG 00:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

That's news to me. Where did you hear it? FilipeS 14:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Read serious books well sources and they will say the same thing.132.203.109.70 15:14, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Serious books such as...? FilipeS 17:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I didn't read well, but this article says that indeed Classical Latin was a literary language and not a written one. But I will try another source.VincentG 21:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well I hope the current version settles this 2-year-old issue. The word vulgaris is not quite "spoken." It is 80% spoken and 20% vulgar. This is a situation not unlike today's so I really do not understand the issue. If you go to a coming-out ball or a high-level press conference you are not going to hear the English spoken in the streets and if you go to Wesleyen or Vassar you are not going to hear that English either in fact if you do not use good English you will be demonstrating an inability to use good English and will be mightily embarrased and in the circles I moved in briefly looked down upon as an inappropriate person to be associating with people of class and money. On the other hand if you learn the lingo and put on the ritz ("putting on the ritz") you can work just about any deception to your own advantage. I should say sermo not lingo. Classical Latin was in fact the spoken language of the good families of Rome and many equestrian families rose into it by speaking it. You could be a freedman (the second-to-lowest) but if you could talk to your betters in their register you could rise into their ranks (almost). Ditto if you were an educated slave. Now, the good old aristocracy of Romans were driven out of Rome and slaughtered as refugees on the road by foreigners who were sick of them and Rome stood vacant and ruined while the Gothic king rode around looking at the sights. At last when the Goths decided Rome should be populated after all some were allowed back but Rome and its language clearly had fallen. The Goths ran things around there. No need to get snooty. Then and only then might we speak of Latin as a literary language, a language learned and written but not spoken. Ciao. Almost done with this article.Dave (talk) 16:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks as if Vincent never did provide any sources, and nobody else has questioned the current version of that section of the article.

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[jean]

A Roman in the first century would probably have spoken in the classical Latin in certain situations if he was educated but that sort of language (in that form) would have been pretty useless when all he wanted to say was See you tomorrow, or Bring the wine over here.

If he wanted to tell his mate to bring the wine over, he'd say fer vinum tecum or something similar.

That's an informal utterance, but it's perfectly classical. In what way do you think it isn't?

[french frank]

but it's perfectly classical. In what way do you think it isn't?

Word order? And would he use ferre or portare? Tabulating the differences, possible or probable, between the various ways he might say it would be difficult because we don't know what he would have said.

[vinteuil]

Are you saying that you think Cicero normally spoke pretty much how he wrote in his literary works?

Yes, I am. Why would we think otherwise?

Jean - surely you must have come across unadulterated transcripts of recordings of people speaking? They are extraordinarily unlike how we might imagine we speak - whether on our best behaviour, 'correctly', or when in a looser or more colloquial register ; they are still farther away from even brave attempts at 'colloquial' writing.

I wish I had to hand some of Queneau's essays on the subject of modern spoken French - he saw 'written French' and 'spoken French' as almost distinct languages. It is certainly the case that various tenses met with in the written language wd sound most peculiar if used in spoken French.

[jean]

Word order? And would he use ferre or portare? Tabulating the differences, possible or probable, between the various ways he might say it would be difficult because we don't know what he would have said.

Indeed we don't know what he would have said, which is why I think it is very odd to assume that whatever it was, it wouldn't count as classical.

My example was one possible way he might have said what he needed to say, and it is, I maintain, perfectly classical.

Word order wasn't fixed, as it doesn't need to be in an inflected language. So no clues there.

Da robur, fer auxilium says the Christian poem, much later than the period we're discussing, so I don't think we need to speculate that he would have used portare instead. If he lived in Gaul rather than Rome and perhaps a half a century after our period, we might infer from later developments that he would have done.

And did he think vinum was masculine? Of course, he might have, if he hadn't been to school - if he was one of the vulgus profanum. Confusing genders was the sort of thing that people began to do so that in most Romance languages we end up with two instead of three.

Who exactly began to do it and when, we don't know. But I bet Cicero didn't, even when he was only asking Atticus to bring the wine.

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[jean]

Jean - surely you must have come across unadulterated transcripts of recordings of people speaking? They are extraordinarily unlike how we might imagine we speak - whether on our best behaviour, 'correctly', or when in a looser or more colloquial register ; they are still farther away from even brave attempts at 'colloquial' writing.

Yes, of course, though I don't think I'd agree with you about the extraordinarily. However informal the register, I can see that they and the written varieties are part of the same language.

I wish I had to hand some of Queneau's essays on the subject of modern spoken French - he saw 'written French' and 'spoken French' as almost distinct languages. It is certainly the case that various tenses met with in the written language wd sound most peculiar if used in spoken French.

I don't really buy that, though I note you add almost. I know there are linguists who argue that spoken language doesn't have separate words, that sort of thing. French has the peculiarity that so many of its written endings aren't articulated at all, so it can be argued that in the spoken language they don't even exist.

And there's always the passé historique, a written form only, to which English has no equivalent. Did such forms exist in the period when classical Latin was the written standard? We don't know.

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[vinteuil]

... one of my friends from student days, following serious work on the Epigrams of Martial , and then on those of Ausonius, has more and more interested himself in the deliquescence of late Latin into the emerging Romance languages. I tend to meet him three or four times a year for an extended evening of drinking. I think one such meeting is due before the Christmas season: I shall have to discuss with him some of the points which have arisen here...

[french frank]

As I would see it, confusion derives from the fact that 'classical' is not a precise technical term in linguistics. It refers to the written works in Latin of a particular period during the Roman Empire. It is thought of as 'written' because it's what survives in written form. But it is generally held (sources below) that there were, concurrently, two slightly different forms of the language: the one found in the literary works of the time, and a spoken form.

KP Harrington, Medieval Latin, intro p xxiii, writes: "Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that even in the days of Cicero and Vergil there were two distinct kinds of Latin in every day use, the highly artistic artistic product of the literary [not literate or educated] aristocracy, and the so-called Vulgar Latin, or speech of the masses..."; while Britannica says " Vulgar Latin was primarily the speech of the middle classes in Rome and the Roman provinces ..."

For me, 'classical Latin' refers specifically to the literary language of Roman writers; 'Vulgar Latin' refers to the spoken form of the language. Although the ancestor of 'classical Latin' was spoken, I would say that the safest conclusion (from which you dissent ) is that its eventual written form developed into 'classical Latin' but to me it seems less likely that it was commonly spoken. But we don't know.

[jean]

...I shall have to discuss with him some of the points which have arisen here...

The deliquescence (lovely word!) of late Latin into the emerging Romance languageshappens much later than the period we're discussing; we're very aware of it though, because we are so familiar with the languages that developed from it; but we are also conscious of the distinctive Latin of the Vulgate, and of the persistence of medieval Latin because of its use by the Church; and then of the elevation of classical Latin into a form to be used for communication by the scholars of the Renaissance.

[jean]

As I would see it, confusion derives from the fact that 'classical' is not a precise technical term in linguistics.

No, it isn't. Since it predates modern lingistics by a a few centuries, it isn't any kind of technical term in linguistics at all.

And It refers to the written works in Latin of a particular period during the Roman Empire.

More accurately, the end of the Roman Republic.

Not everyone thinks of it as just a written language, even though we have no surviving spoken records. It is perfectly possible to speak it, and all I am arguing is that for this period we do not need to hypothesise substantially different spoken forms in use by those who were fluent in the written version.

KP Harrington, Medieval Latin, intro p xxiii, writes: "Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that even in the days of Cicero and Vergil there were two distinct kinds of Latin in every day use, the highly artistic artistic product of the literary [not literate or educated] aristocracy, and the so-called Vulgar Latin, or speech of the masses..."

Note that he carefully does not say that the literary aristocracy spoke the speech of the masses.

I wouldn't take much notice of Britannica.

Although the ancestor of 'classical Latin' was spoken, I would say that the safest conclusion (from which you dissent ) is that its eventual written form developed into 'classical Latin' but to me it seems less likely that it was commonly spoken. But we don't know.

The idea that the spoken and written forms developed separately and in parallel over the centuries up to the first century BC seems to me not safe at all. (But we don't know).

I should have a copy of Palmer's The Latin Language somewhere, but I can't find it.

(Have you got through Cicero's letters yet?)

[jean]

I should have a copy of Palmer's The Latin Language somewhere, but I can't find it.

...But I have found this, which looks very good.

There's a chapter on the Latin of the period we're talking about. I don't see any evidence for sermo vulgaris being a spoken language common to everyone.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

At what point did Latin end and its Italian successor start to evolve?

[doversoul1]

Originally Posted by jean

Otherwise when I mention how important they are for speculation about how Romans of this period actually spoke, nobody knows what I'm talking about.

The link (if it is a link) doesn’t work. But jean, what do you actually mean by ‘spoken language’ or how people ‘spoke’? All your examples so far are written forms, even some were vocalisedl or look informal. ‘Spoken language’ usually refers to how people ‘talk’ spontaneously to each other (or talk to / at someone), and not to an audience. You can leave out an awful lot of words and information when you are talking to someone which you can’t do in writing. Why would Romans or anyone for that matter need to talk as if they were writing?

I don’t think anyone would disagree with your argument that Romans in the first century spoke the language which was essentially the same language as the ‘classical Latin’ but I think it must have been a very different form.

Up until the 19th century, there were two distinct forms of Japanese: one for writing and one for speaking. No matter how well you were educated, you would not speak in the written form, as it was for a different purpose. The situation could have been something similar in Rome then.

[french frank]

Not everyone thinks of it as just a written language

No, clearly, you don't. But for me the term itself refers to the language of the Latin writers and the works which they wrote.

"Classical Latin is the modern term used to describe the form of the Latin language recognized as standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire." That statement neither affirms nor denies that those writers, Cicero or whoever, spoke in the way they wrote. They wrote in Latin, they spoke Latin: we know no more.

"the form of Latin used in classical literature, especially the literary Latin of the 1st century b.c. and the 1st and 2nd centuries a.d."

"the term [Classical Latin] reflects the fact that it was during this period ['roughly 100 BCE to 200 CE'] that the standard form of written Latin was crystallised, and the authors of this time, in particular Cicero and Caesar, have been used as the models of Latinity ever since the first century CE." J. Clackson

In the same way, one can affirm that there was a second 'spoken' form of Latin, sermo vulgaris, vulgar Latin, the vernacular - saying nothing about who spoke it and who didn't. Merely that it was spoken at the same time. But classical Latin texts are written. Does that set the record straight?

even though we have no surviving spoken records. It is perfectly possible to speak it, and all I am arguing is that for this period we do not need to hypothesise substantially different spoken forms in use by those who were fluent in the written version.

No, we don't need to hypothesise that. But nor do we need to hypothesise that it was 'substantially' the same unless the idea pleases us.

The idea that the spoken and written forms developed separately and in parallel over the centuries up to the first century BC seems to me not safe at all. (But we don't know).

It's not 'safe', presumably because we don't 'know'?

(Have you got through Cicero's letters yet?)

No, but to my surprise, by admitting to having written two articles and a review which appeared in front of my astonished eyes when I entered my name, I was able to download an 'uncorrected proof' copy of the chapter on 'Classical Latin' from Clackson and Horrocks: History of the Latin Language' which is somewhat to the point.