Latin falling into disuse

[Smellincoffee]

I read an article a number of years ago on Latin's fall into disuse. The article mentioned that Roman texts were examined, and civic authorities saw how different their Latin was from Roman Latin. To prevent the language from changing completely, they codified the rules and tried to make it a fixed, unchanging language. Since human beings modifiy languages for their uses, Latin fell into disuse and the three "romantic" languages took over the vernacular in Europe.

I may be remember things incorrectly, but that was the impression I have of it, and I would very much like to read it again.

 

[Mirc]

Which are the three Romantic languages from Europe? Last time I checked there were 5 official ones, 6 important ones in total, and over 10 if we count the small ones.

Back on topic, I really, really don't see how this explanation would be plausible...

Edit: Made a stupid mistake in my post.

 

[bombshoo]

French, Spanish, Italian are what he is talking about I assume. Though Romanian, and Portuguese are also important. Catalan, Venetian, Sardinian, Sicilian, Romansh, Galacian are much smaller but also moderatly important.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Yes, I was thinking of the biggest three. Sorry for that gaffe.

Back on topic, I really, really don't see how this explanation would be plausible...

Any particular reason? I don't know if I explained my question well enough; the idea of the article was that the people rejected an unyielding language and didn't use it except when necessary. As a result, their own regional vernaculars became more and more different from the language that they developed from.

 

[Mirc]

I don't see it plausible just because I feel there are better explanations, this one is very simple, it's hard to believe that Rome would impose an unchanging language to its people, and it sounds speculative, at least to me.

With the splitting of the Roman Empire into the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire ceased speaking Latin just because the now called Byzantine empire was mainly Greek, influenced by Greek culture and speaking the Greek language (the only exception being Romania, which was not in the Byzantine Empire as Rome had retreated from Dacia in 271 AD, thus it continued speaking a latin language).

Now, the Eastern Roman Empire existed for about 1000 years more than the Western One, falling in 1453 under the attack of the Turks. In this time, the Western Roman Empire had fallen, long ago (it's hard to define the year, many people consider the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 471, the year of the sacking of Rome by the Vandals).

So for a period of time, there was absolutely no authority in the area. Soon, because of the love of the Ostrogoths for Roman culture (known fact), when the first principalities emerged in that area, Roman culture was not lost. But there was absolutely no authority for some time. That's the moment when the 4 western Romance languages split. So what happened is exactly the opposite, because of the fall of the Roman Empire, when there was nobody to impose Latin, its accents became dialects, and then dialects became separate languages.

It's anyway known that Italian is mutually intelligible with Spanish, Spanish with Portuguese, Spanish with Catalan, most French can understand Italian, any Romanian understands Italian and Latin, and any Sardinian understands Italian and Latin.

That's my explanation, and I think it's much more plausible as it's actually backed up by historical facts, while that article seemed mostly a speculation.

 

[shortguy]

Well, the Church was there to provide some of the centralized authority that fell after the Roman Empire. So there were still forces that were driving Latin use, albeit probably more weakly.

 

[MCdread]

Yes, I was thinking of the biggest three. Sorry for that gaffe.

Biggest three? Portuguese is way more widely spoken than italian or french.

I'd say that everyday latin, ie vulgar latin, was always distinct from literary latin at any point, and certainly quite divergent even during the Empire. I think there are 2nd century writers that already complain of that fact and that notice that even their more literate latin was different from Cicero's.
Literary authorities though kept reading, writing and teaching in reference to the classic works, while vulgar latin continued to evolve differently. Even today, in an era of standardized languages and universal education, the way languages are applied on the street is quite different from what you read on literary works.
Therefor, and in a way, latin didn't really fall into disuse, it is still alive and kicking today as modern romance languages are really the product of the evolution of vulgar latin, ie, they're like different dialects or different versions of Modern Latin. It also should be noticed that the modern languages are artificially more different among themselves due to political reasons and the centralization of modern states, as just a couple of centuries ago, you'd see a more homogeneous continuum of dialects within the romance speaking world.

 

[Plotinus]

I don't know if I explained my question well enough; the idea of the article was that the people rejected an unyielding language and didn't use it except when necessary. As a result, their own regional vernaculars became more and more different from the language that they developed from.

This seems wildly unlikely. How could "the authorities" actually transform a previously evolving language into a an unyielding one? And how could most people react to this by starting to speak a different language instead? Surely what would happen is that they would completely ignore the orders and continue to speak the same old language, but allow it to evolve naturally. Which is in fact precisely what happened, since, as has been pointed out, the Romance languages just are developments of Latin. However, these had become the common vernacular long before there was any attempt to "fix" Latin. Even scholarly Latin itself changed and evolved throughout the Middle Ages, for example.

When, precisely, is this event described in the OP supposed to have happened, anyway? And where?

 

[Verbose]

Actually the "unyielding" phase of the history of Latin was the Renaissance. Medieval Latin was a very useful language, with simplifications like the vernaculars (word-order carrying meaning etc). You could write anything with it, use it for all kinds of tasks, from the highest to the lowest.

The Renaissance Humanists held up Cicero's Latin as the acme of Knowing Your Latin meant. Well, Cicero has cartloads of style, but his language isn't necessarily simple.

This Renaissance attempt to "purify" Latin, "corrupted" as they saw it by all these Medieval monks they held nothing but scorn for, seems to have worked against it. It became a playground for the Classical Antiquity trivia crowd of Humanist scholars, thumbing their nose a the more functional Latin the Middle Ages.

 

[Plotinus]

Right. But that, of course, was some time after Italian, French, and so on became the day-to-day vernacular of common people. Francis of Assisi was writing in Italian in the early thirteenth century, long before anyone tried to turn back the clock with Latin. So I don't see how it's possible to argue that the latter was the cause of the former.

 

[Leifmk]

So for a period of time, there was absolutely no authority in the area. Soon, because of the love of the Ostrogoths for Roman culture (known fact), when the first principalities emerged in that area, Roman culture was not lost. But there was absolutely no authority for some time. That's the moment when the 4 western Romance languages split. So what happened is exactly the opposite, because of the fall of the Roman Empire, when there was nobody to impose Latin, its accents became dialects, and then dialects became separate languages.

The breakdown of central secular authority and decline in regional trade and travel helped speed the divergence of the vernaculars, yes, but it seems differences were creeping in already. The preservation of Latin as a common scholarly language was in part due to the church of Rome and various monastic orders, and in part due to educational sponsorship efforts by the first Frankish emperors around the year 800. It seems that written use of the vernaculars was on the rise prior to Charlemagne and if not for his efforts they might have come to displace Latin soon after that time.

 

[jonatas]

I know I've posted about this subject here before and I dislike repeating myself, but there are transitional phases for Latin languages in Southwestern Europe before we can speak of modern forms. If you want to know what happened to Latin, read Occitan. It's closest relative today would be Catalan, but comprises a series of dialects which stretched from Italy through Southern France and into Iberia in early middle ages and is the vernacular which would have risen up after the fall of the Empire. It uses many words from French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Latin all in one language. It's interesting because you can see all modern latin languages encapsulated in it before they became separated and defined.

Trobadors began the modern literary tradition with Occitan and it accordingly holds great literary prestige with figures such as Guillaime X (I think it's the X) of Aquitaine, Jaufre Rudel etc... Dante would call it "the mother of poetry" and was hugely influenced by Arnault for example. Interestingly enough the Occitan trobadors did not draw on Classical sources directly in their work, something Dante would later do. But Occitan is what you should be looking at if you are interested in knowing what the earliest vernaculars would have been like, though of course there were more primitive variations before Occitan as we know it.

 

[GenMarshall]

How is Latin falling into disuse? The Vatican still uses it in their offical documents and Latin words and phrases has snuck into the English language .

 

[jonatas]

double post

 

[Verbose]

If you want to know what happened to Latin, read Occitan. It's closest relative today would be Catalan, but comprises a series of dialects which stretched from Italy through Southern France and into Iberia in early middle ages and is the vernacular which would have risen up after the fall of the Empire. It uses many words from French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Latin all in one language. It's interesting because you can see all modern latin languages encapsulated in it before they became separated and defined.

Quite!
Iirc it has a monster vocabulary of something like 400.000 words.

 

[jonatas]

Quite!
Iirc it has a monster vocabulary of something like 400.000 words.

Yes it does with innumerable mutually intelligible dialects. There is one particularly good wiki article on Occitan literature from what I remember which really goes into its linguistic history. Something else to consider is its centrality of location in Southwestern Europe, which accounts for its uncanny resemblance and intelligibility into the various modern latin tongues and of course its descent from the original vulgar latin. Not to mention it was the vehicle for an apex of medieval art and a fascinating culture.

 

[Mirc]

I know I've posted about this subject here before and I dislike repeating myself, but there are transitional phases for Latin languages in Southwestern Europe before we can speak of modern forms. If you want to know what happened to Latin, read Occitan. It's closest relative today would be Catalan, but comprises a series of dialects which stretched from Italy through Southern France and into Iberia in early middle ages and is the vernacular which would have risen up after the fall of the Empire. It uses many words from French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Latin all in one language. It's interesting because you can see all modern latin languages encapsulated in it before they became separated and defined.

Sorry I misunderstood you.

 

[jonatas]

Sorry, but that's not true. Closest in vocabulary is Sardinian and closest in grammar is Romanian.
Catalan is considered one of the modern ones, actually.
(I can prove it if you want, both by links and also by phrases and comparisons between sentences and short words)

You must be confused by what I was referring to. I know Catalan is modern, I was saying Catalan is Occitan's "closest relative today". Catalan is essentially Occitan descended through time.

In Western European languages, Occitan predates modern French, Spanish etc.. So I was saying that if someone is interested in learning about what the transitional periods from vulgar latin to modern languages were, they should look at Occitan. I don't pretend to be an expert on Eastern European Latin languages. Are you satisfied?

 

[Mirc]

Ah, OK, I thought you meant closest to Latin. Will edit my post. (anyway I had the inspiration to put a big grin smiley just in case I misunderstood )

 

[jonatas]

Ah, OK, I thought you meant closest to Latin. Will edit my post. (anyway I had the inspiration to put a big grin smiley just in case I misunderstood )

It's ok, I know you're a good guy Mirc