Unless one is a professional philologist he feels little interest in the
language of the common people. Its peculiarities in pronunciation, syntax,
phraseology, and the use of words we are inclined to avoid in our own
speech, because they mark a lack of cultivation. We test them by the
standards of polite society, and ignore them, or condemn them, or laugh at
them as abnormal or illogical or indicative of ignorance. So far as
literature goes, the speech of the common people has little interest for
us because it is not the recognized literary medium. These two reasons
have prevented the average man of cultivated tastes from giving much
attention to the way in which the masses speak, and only the professional
student has occupied himself with their language. This is unfortunate
because the speech of the common people has many points of interest, and,
instead of being illogical, is usually much more rigid in its adherence
to its own accepted principles than formal speech is, which is likely to
be influenced by convention or conventional associations. To take an
illustration of what I have in mind, the ending _-s_ is the common mark in
English of a plural form. For instance, "caps," "maps," "lines," and
"places" are plurals, and the corresponding singular forms are "cap,"
"map," "line," and "place." Consequently, granted the underlying premise,
it is a perfectly logical and eminently scientific process from the forms
"relapse" (pronounced, of course, "relaps") and "species" to postulate a
corresponding singular, and speak of "a relap" and "a specie," as a negro
of my acquaintance regularly does. "Scrope" and "lept," as preterites of
"scrape" and "leap," are correctly formed on the analogy of "broke" and
"crept," but are not used in polite society.
So far as English, German, or French go, a certain degree of general
interest has been stimulated lately in the form which they take in
every-day life by two very different agencies, by the popular articles of
students of language, and by realistic and dialect novels. But for our
knowledge of the Latin of the common people we lack these two
all-important sources of information. It occurred to only two Roman
writers, Petronius and Apuleius, to amuse their countrymen by writing
realistic stories, or stories with realistic features, and the Roman
grammarian felt an even greater contempt for popular Latin or a greater
indifference to it than we feel to-day. This feeling was shared, as we
know, by the great humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when the revival of interest in the Greek and Latin languages and
literatures begins. Petrarch, Poggio Bracciolini, and the other great
leaders in the movement were concerned with the literary aspects of the
classics, and the scholars of succeeding generations, so far as they
studied the language, confined their attention to that of the great Latin
stylists. The first student to conceive of the existence of popular Latin
as a form of speech which differed from formal literary Latin, seems to
have been the French scholar, Henri Étienne. In a little pamphlet on the
language and style of Plautus, written toward the end of the sixteenth
century, he noted the likeness between French and the language of the
Latin dramatist, without, however, clearly perceiving that the reason for
this similarity lay in the fact that the comedies of Plautus reflect the
spoken language of his time, and that French and the other Romance
languages have developed out of this, rather than from literary Latin. Not
until the middle of the eighteenth century was this truth clearly
recognized, and then almost simultaneously on both sides of the Rhine.
It was left for the nineteenth century, however, to furnish scientific
proof of the correctness of this hypothesis, and it was a fitting thing
that the existence of an unbroken line of connection between popular Latin
of the third century before our era, and the Romance languages of the
nineteenth century, should have been established at the same time by a
Latinist engaged in the study of Plautus, and a Romance philologist
working upward toward Latin. The Latin scholar was Ritschl, who showed
that the deviations from the formal standard which one finds in Plautus
are not anomalies or mistakes, but specimens of colloquial Latin which can
be traced down into the later period. The Romance philologist was Diez,
who found that certain forms and words, especially those from the
vocabulary of every-day life, which are common to many of the Romance
languages, are not to be found in serious Latin literature at all, but
occur only in those compositions, like comedy, satire, or the realistic
romance, which reflect the speech of the every-day man. This discovery
made it clear that the Romance languages are related to folk Latin, not to
literary Latin. It is sixty years since the study of vulgar Latin was put
on a scientific basis by the investigations of these two men, and during
that period the Latinist and the Romance philologist have joined hands in
extending our knowledge of it. From the Latin side a great impetus was
given to the work by the foundation in 1884 of Wölfflin's _Archiv für
lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik_. This periodical, as is well
known, was intended to prepare the way for the publication of the Latin
_Thesaurus_, which the five German Academies are now bringing out.
One of its primary purposes, as its title indicates, was to investigate
the history of Latin words, and in its first number the editor called
attention to the importance of knowing the pieces of literature in which
each Latin word or locution occurred. The results have been very
illuminating. Some words or constructions or phrases are to be found, for
instance, only in comedy, satire, and the romance. They are evidently
peculiar to vulgar Latin. Others are freely used in these types of
literature, but sparingly employed in historical or rhetorical works. Here
again a shade of difference is noticeable between formal and familiar
usage. The method of the Latinist then is essentially one of comparison
and contrast. When, for instance, he finds the word _equus_ regularly used
by serious writers for "horse," but _caballus_ employed in that sense in
the colloquial compositions of Lucilius, Horace, and Petronius, he comes
to the conclusion that _caballus_ belongs to the vocabulary of every-day
life, that it is our "nag."
The line of reasoning which the Romance philologist follows in his study
of vulgar Latin is equally convincing. The existence of a large number of
words and idioms in French, Spanish, Italian, and the other Romance
languages can be explained only in one of three ways. All these different
languages may have hit on the same word or phrase to express an idea, or
these words and idioms may have been borrowed from one language by the
others, or they may come from a common origin. The first hypothesis is
unthinkable. The second is almost as impossible. Undoubtedly French, for
instance, borrowed some words from Spanish, and Spanish from Portuguese.
It would be conceivable that a few words originating in Spain should pass
into France, and thence into Italy, but it is quite beyond belief that the
large element which the languages from Spain to Roumania have in common
should have passed by borrowing over such a wide territory. It is clear
that this common element is inherited from Latin, out of which all the
Romance languages are derived. Out of the words, endings, idioms, and
constructions which French, Spanish, Italian, and the other tongues of
southern Europe have in common, it would be possible, within certain
limits, to reconstruct the parent speech, but fortunately we are not
limited to this material alone. At this point the Latinist and the Romance
philologist join hands. To take up again the illustration already used,
the student of the Romance languages finds the word for "horse" in Italian
is cavallo, in Spanish caballo, in French cheval, in Roumanian cal, and
so on. Evidently all these forms have come from caballus, which the
Latinist finds belongs to the vocabulary of vulgar, not of formal, Latin.
This one illustration out of many not only discloses the fact that the
Romance languages are to be connected with colloquial rather than with
literary Latin, but it also shows how the line of investigation opened by
Diez, and that followed by Wölfflin and his school, supplement each other.
By the use of the methods which these two scholars introduced, a large
amount of material bearing on the subject under discussion has been
collected and classified, and the characteristic features of the Latin of
the common people have been determined. It has been found that five or six
different and independent kinds of evidence may be used in reconstructing
this form of speech.
We naturally think first of the direct statements made by Latin writers.
These are to be found in the writings of Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca the
Rhetorician, Petronius, Aulus Gellius, Vitruvius, and the Latin
grammarians. The professional teacher Quintilian is shocked at the
illiterate speech of the spectators in the theatres and circus. Similarly
a character in Petronius utters a warning against the words such people
use. Cicero openly delights in using every-day Latin in his familiar
letters, while the architect Vitruvius expresses the anxious fear that he
may not be following the accepted rules of grammar. As we have noticed
above, a great deal of material showing the differences between formal and
colloquial Latin which these writers have in mind, may be obtained by
comparing, for instance, the Letters of Cicero with his rhetorical works,
or Seneca's satirical skit on the Emperor Claudius with his philosophical
writings. Now and then, too, a serious writer has occasion to use a bit of
popular Latin, but he conveniently labels it for us with an apologetic
phrase. Thus even St. Jerome, in his commentary on the Epistle to the
Ephesians, says: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, as the vulgar
proverb has it." To the ancient grammarians the "mistakes" and vulgarisms
of popular speech were abhorrent, and they have fortunately branded lists
of words and expressions which are not to be used by cultivated people.
The evidence which may be had from the Romance languages, supplemented by
Latin, not only contributes to our knowledge of the vocabulary of vulgar
Latin, but it also shows us many common idioms and constructions which
that form of speech had. Thus, "I will sing" in Italian is canterò
(=cantar[e]-ho), in Spanish, cantaré (=cantar-he), in French, chanterai
(=chanter-ai), and similar forms occur in some of the other Romance
languages. These forms are evidently made up of the Latin infinitive
cantare, depending on habeo ("I have to sing"). But the future in literary
Latin was cantabo, formed by adding an ending, as we know, and with that
the Romance future can have no connection. However, as a writer in the
_Archiv_ has pointed out,[18] just such analytical tense forms as are used
in the Romance languages to-day are to be found in the popular Latin
sermons of St. Jerome. From these idioms, common to Italian, French, and
Spanish, then, we can reconstruct a Latin formation current among the
common people. Finally a knowledge of the tendencies and practices of
spoken English helps us to identify similar usages when we come upon them
in our reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of
Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a
loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we
recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved
are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks:
"You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere
oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are
accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid survey which we have just made
of the evidence bearing on the subject establishes beyond doubt the
existence of a form of speech among the Romans which cannot be identified
with literary Latin, but it has been held by some writers that the
material for the study of it is scanty. However, an impartial examination
of the facts ought not to lead one to this conclusion. On the Latin side
the material includes the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and the comic
fragments, the familiar odes of Catullus, the satires of Lucilius, Horace,
and Seneca, and here and there of Persius and Juvenal, the familiar
letters of Cicero, the romance of Petronius and that of Apuleius in part,
the Vulgate and some of the Christian fathers, the Journey to Jerusalem of
St. Ætheria, the glossaries, some technical books like Vitruvius and the
veterinary treatise of Chiron, and the private inscriptions, notably
epitaphs, the wall inscriptions of Pompeii, and the leaden tablets found
buried in the ground on which illiterate people wrote curses upon their
enemies.
It is clear that there has been preserved for the study of colloquial
Latin a very large body of material, coming from a great variety of
sources and running in point of time from Plautus in the third century
B.C. to St. Ætheria in the latter part of the fourth century or later. It
includes books by trained writers, like Horace and Petronius, who
consciously adopt the Latin of every-day life, and productions by
uneducated people, like St. Ætheria and the writers of epitaphs, who have
unwittingly used it.
St. Jerome says somewhere of spoken Latin that "it changes constantly as
you pass from one district to another, and from one period to another" (et
ipsa Latinitas et regionibus cotidie mutatur et tempore). If he had added
that it varies with circumstances also, he would have included the three
factors which have most to do in influencing the development of any
spoken language. We are made aware of the changes which time has brought
about in colloquial English when we compare the conversations in Fielding
with those in a present-day novel. When a spoken language is judged by the
standard of the corresponding literary medium, in some of its aspects it
proves to be conservative, in others progressive. It shows its
conservative tendency by retaining many words and phrases which have
passed out of literary use. The English of the Biglow Papers, when
compared with the literary speech of the time, abundantly illustrates this
fact. This conservative tendency is especially noticeable in districts
remote from literary centres, and those of us who are familiar with the
vernacular in Vermont or Maine will recall in it many quaint words and
expressions which literature abandoned long ago. In Virginia locutions may
be heard which have scarcely been current in literature since
Shakespeare's time. Now, literary and colloquial Latin were probably drawn
farther apart than the two corresponding forms of speech in English,
because Latin writers tried to make the literary tongue as much like Greek
in its form as possible, so that literary Latin would naturally have
diverged more rapidly and more widely from conversational Latin than
formal English has drawn away from colloquial English.
But a spoken language in its development is progressive as well as
conservative. To certain modifying influences it is especially sensitive.
It is fond of the concrete, picturesque, and novel, and has a high
appreciation of humor. These tendencies lead it to invent many new words
and expressions which must wait months, years, perhaps a generation,
before they are accepted in literature. Sometimes they are never accepted.
The history of such words as buncombe, dude, Mugwump, gerrymander, and
joy-ride illustrate for English the fact that words of a certain kind meet
a more hospitable reception in the spoken language than they do in
literature. The writer of comedy or farce, the humorist, and the man in
the street do not feel the constraint which the canons of good usage put
on the serious writer. They coin new words or use old words in a new way
or use new constructions without much hesitation. The extraordinary
material progress of the modern world during the last century has
undoubtedly stimulated this tendency in a remarkable way, but it would
seem as if the Latin of the common people from the time of Plautus to that
of Cicero must have been subjected to still more innovating influences
than modern conversational English has. During this period the newly
conquered territories in Spain, northern Africa, Greece, and Asia poured
their slaves and traders into Italy, and added a great many words to the
vocabulary of every-day life. The large admixture of Greek words and
idioms in the language of Petronius in the first century of our era
furnishes proof of this fact. A still greater influence must have been
felt within the language itself by the stimulus to the imagination which
the coming of these foreigners brought, with their new ideas, and their
new ways of looking at things, their strange costumes, manners, and
religions.
The second important factor which affects the spoken language is a
difference in culture and training. The speech of the gentleman differs
from that of the rustic. The conversational language of Terence, for
instance, is on a higher plane than that of Plautus, while the characters
in Plautus use better Latin than the freedmen in Petronius. The
illiterate freedmen in Petronius speak very differently from the freemen
in his story. Sometimes a particular occupation materially affects the
speech of those who pursue it. All of us know something of the linguistic
eccentricities of the London cabman, the Parisian thief, or the American
hobo. This particular influence cannot be estimated so well for Latin
because we lack sufficient material, but some progress has been made in
detecting the peculiarities of Latin of the nursery, the camp, and the
sea.
Of course a spoken language is never uniform throughout a given area.
Dialectal differences are sure to develop. A man from Indiana and another
from Maine will be sure to notice each other's peculiarities. Even the
railway, the newspaper, and the public school will never entirely
obliterate the old differences or prevent new ones from springing up.
Without these agencies which do so much to promote uniformity to-day,
Italy and the rest of the Empire must have shown greater dialectal
differences than we observe in American English or in British English
even.
For the sake of bringing out clearly some of the points of difference
between vulgar and formal Latin we have used certain illustrations, like
_caballus_, where the two forms of speech were radically opposed to each
other, but of course they did not constitute two different languages, and
that which they had in common was far greater than the element peculiar to
each, or, to put it in another way, they in large measure overlapped each
other. Perhaps we are in a position now to characterize colloquial Latin
and to define it as the language which was used in conversation throughout
the Empire with the innumerable variations which time and place gave it,
which in its most highly refined form, as spoken in literary circles at
Rome in the classical period, approached indefinitely near its ideal,
literary Latin, which in its most unconventional phase was the rude speech
of the rabble, or the "sermo inconditus" of the ancients. The facts which
have just been mentioned may be illustrated by the accompanying diagrams.
[Illustration: Fig. I]
[Illustration: Fig. II]
[Illustration: Fig. III]
[Illustration: Fig. IV]
In Fig. I the heavy-lined ellipse represents the formal diction of Cicero,
the dotted line ellipse his conversational vocabulary. They overlap each
other through a great part of their extent, but there are certain
literary locutions which would rarely be used by him in conversation, and
certain colloquial words and phrases which he would not use in formal
writing. Therefore the two ellipses would not be coterminous. In Fig. II
the heavy ellipse has the same meaning as in Fig. I, while the space
enclosed by the dotted line represents the vocabulary of an uneducated
Roman, which would be much smaller than that of Cicero and would show a
greater degree of difference from the literary vocabulary than Cicero's
conversational stock of words does. The relation of the uncultivated
Roman's conversational vocabulary to that of Cicero is illustrated in Fig.
III, while Fig. IV shows how the Latin of the average man in Rome would
compare, for instance, with that of a resident of Lugudunum, in Gaul.
This naturally brings us to consider the historical relations of literary
and colloquial Latin. In explaining them it has often been assumed that
colloquial Latin is a degenerate form of literary Latin, or that the
latter is a refined type of the former. Both these theories are equally
false. Neither is derived from the other. The true state of the case has
never been better put than by Schuchardt, who says: "Vulgar Latin stands
with reference to formal Latin in no derivative relation, in no paternal
relation, but they stand side by side. It is true that vulgar Latin came
from a Latin with fuller and freer forms, but it did not come from formal
Latin. It is true that formal Latin came from a Latin of a more popular
and a cruder character, but it did not come from vulgar Latin. In the
original speech of the people, preliterary Latin (the prisca Latinitas),
is to be found the origin of both; they were twin brothers."
Of this preliterary Latin we have no record. The best we can do is to
infer what its characteristics were from the earliest fragments of the
language which have come down to us, from the laws of the Twelve Tables,
for instance, from the religious and legal formulæ preserved to us by
Varro, Cicero, Livy, and others, from proverbs and popular sayings. It
would take us too far afield to analyze these documents here, but it may
be observed that we notice in them, among other characteristics, an
indifference to strict grammatical structure, not that subordination of
clauses to a main clause which comes only from an appreciation of the
logical relation of ideas to one another, but a co-ordination of clauses,
the heaping up of synonymous words, a tendency to use the analytical
rather than the synthetical form of expression, and a lack of fixity in
the forms of words and in inflectional endings. To illustrate some of
these traits in a single example, an early law reads "if [he] shall have
committed a theft by night, if [he] shall have killed him, let him be
regarded as put to death legally" (si nox furtum faxsit, si im occisit,
iure caesus esto).[19] We pass without warning from one subject, the
thief, in the first clause to another, the householder, in the second, and
back to the thief again in the third. Cato in his book on Agriculture
writes of the cattle: "let them feed; it will be better" (pascantur;
satius erit), instead of saying: "it will be better for them to feed" (or
"that they feed"). In an early law one reads: "on the tablet, on the white
surface" (in tabula, in albo), instead of "on the white tablet" (in alba
tabula). Perhaps we may sum up the general characteristics of this
preliterary Latin out of which both the spoken and written language
developed by saying that it showed a tendency to analysis rather than
synthesis, a loose and variable grammatical structure, and a lack of logic
in expression.
Livius Andronicus, Nævius, and Plautus in the third century before our era
show the language as first used for literary purposes, and with them the
breach between the spoken and written tongues begins. So far as Livius
Andronicus, the Father of Latin literature, is concerned, allowance should
be made without doubt for his lack of poetic inspiration and skill, and
for the fact that his principal work was a translation, but even making
this allowance the crude character of his Latin is apparent, and it is
very clear that literary Latin underwent a complete transformation
between his time and that of Horace and Virgil. Now, the significant
thing in this connection is the fact that this transformation was largely
brought about under an external influence, which affected the Latin of the
common people only indirectly and in small measure. Perhaps the
circumstances in which literary Latin was placed have never been repeated
in history. At the very outset it was brought under the sway of a highly
developed literary tongue, and all the writers who subsequently used it
earnestly strove to model it after Greek. Livius Andronicus, Ennius,
Accius, and Pacuvius were all of Greek origin and familiar with Greek.
They, as well as Plautus and Terence, translated and adapted Greek epics,
tragedies, and comedies. Several of the early writers, like Accius and
Lucilius, interested themselves in grammatical subjects, and did their
best to introduce system and regularity into their literary medium. Now,
Greek was a highly inflected, synthetical, regular, and logical medium of
literary expression, and it was inevitable that these qualities should be
introduced into Latin. But this influence affected the spoken language
very little, as we have already noticed. Its effect upon the speech of
the common people would be slight, because of the absence of the common
school which does so much to-day to hold together the spoken and written
languages.
The development then of preliterary Latin under the influence of this
systematizing, synthetical influence gave rise to literary Latin, while
its independent growth more nearly in accordance with its original genius
produced colloquial Latin. Consequently, we are not surprised to find that
the people's speech retained in a larger measure than literary Latin did
those qualities which we noticed in preliterary Latin. Those
characteristics are, in fact, to be expected in conversation. When a man
sets down his thoughts on paper he expresses himself with care and with a
certain reserve in his statements, and he usually has in mind exactly what
he wants to say. But in speaking he is not under this constraint. He is
likely to express himself in a tautological, careless, or even illogical
fashion. He rarely thinks out to the end what he has in mind, but loosely
adds clauses or sentences, as new ideas occur to him.
We have just been thinking mainly about the relation of words to one
another in a sentence. In the treatment of individual words, written and
spoken Latin developed along different lines. In English we make little
distinction between the quantity of vowels, but in Latin of course a given
vowel was either long or short, and literary tradition became so fixed in
this matter that the professional poets of the Augustan age do not
tolerate any deviation from it. There are indications, however, that the
common people did not observe the rules of quantity in their integrity. We
can readily understand why that may have been the case. The comparative
carelessness, which is characteristic of conversation, affects our
pronunciation of words. When there is a stress accent, as there was in
Latin, this is especially liable to be the case. We know in English how
much the unaccented syllables suffer in a long word like "laboratory." In
Latin the long unaccented vowels and the final syllable, which was never
protected by the accent, were peculiarly likely to lose their full value.
As a result, in conversational Latin certain final consonants tended to
drop away, and probably the long vowel following a short one was regularly
shortened when the accent fell on the short syllable, or on the syllable
which followed the long one. Some scholars go so far as to maintain that
in course of time all distinction in quantity in the unaccented vowels was
lost in popular Latin. Sometimes the influence of the accent led to the
excision of the vowel in the syllable which followed it. Probus, a
grammarian of the fourth century of our era, in what we might call a
"Guide to Good Usage"[20] or "One Hundred Words Mispronounced," warns his
readers against masclus and anglus for masculus and angulus. This is the
same popular tendency which we see illustrated in "lab'ratory."
The quality of vowels as well as their quantity changed. The obscuring of
certain vowel sounds in ordinary or careless conversation in this country
in such words as "Latun" and "Amurican" is a phenomenon which is familiar
enough. In fact a large number of our vowel sounds seem to have
degenerated into a grunt. Latin was affected in a somewhat similar way,
although not to the same extent as present-day English. Both the ancient
grammarians in their warnings and the Romance languages bear evidence to
this effect.
We noticed above that the final consonant was exposed to danger by the
fact that the syllable containing it was never protected by the accent. It
is also true that there was a tendency to do away with any difficult
combination of consonants. We recall in English the current
pronunciations, "February," and "Calwell" for Caldwell. The average Roman
in the same way was inclined to follow the line of least resistance.
Sometimes, as in the two English examples just given, he avoided a
difficult combination of consonants by dropping one of them. This method
he followed in saying santus for sanctus, and scriserunt for scripserunt,
just as in vulgar English one now and then hears "slep" and "kep" for the
more difficult "slept" and "kept." Sometimes he lightened the
pronunciation by metathesis, as he did when he pronounced interpretor as
interpertor. A third device was to insert a vowel, as illiterate
English-speaking people do in the pronunciations "ellum" and "Henery." In
this way, for instance, the Roman avoided the difficult combinations -mn-
and -chn- by saying mina and techina for the historically correct mna and
techna. Another method of surmounting the difficulty was to assimilate one
of the two consonants to the other. This is a favorite practice of the
shop-girl, over which the newspapers make merry in their phonetical
reproductions of supposed conversations heard from behind the counter.
Adopting the same easy way of speaking, the uneducated Roman sometimes
said isse for ipse, and scritus for scriptus. To pass to another point of
difference, the laws determining the incidence of the accent were very
firmly established in literary Latin. The accent must fall on the penult,
if it was long, otherwise on the antepenult of the word. But in popular
Latin there were certain classes of words in whose case these principles
were not observed.
The very nature of the accent probably differed in the two forms of
speech. In preliterary Latin the stress was undoubtedly a marked feature
of the accent, and this continued to be the case in the popular speech
throughout the entire history of the language, but, as I have tried to
prove in another paper,[21] in formal Latin the stress became very slight,
and the pitch grew to be the characteristic feature of the accent.
Consequently, when Virgil read a passage of the _Æneid_ to Augustus and
Livia the effect on the ear of the comparatively unstressed language, with
the rhythmical rise and fall of the pitch, would have been very different
from that made by the conversation of the average man, with the accented
syllables more clearly marked by a stress.
In this brief chapter we cannot attempt to go into details, and in
speaking of the morphology of vulgar Latin we must content ourselves with
sketching its general characteristics and tendencies, as we have done in
the case of its phonology. In English our inflectional forms have been
reduced to a minimum, and consequently there is little scope for
differences in this respect between the written and spoken languages. From
the analogy of other forms the illiterate man occasionally says: "I swum,"
or, "I clumb," or "he don't," but there is little chance of making a
mistake. However, with three genders, five declensions for nouns, a fixed
method of comparison for adjectives and adverbs, an elaborate system of
pronouns, with active and deponent, regular and irregular verbs, four
conjugations, and a complex synthetical method of forming the moods and
tenses, the pitfalls for the unwary Roman were without number, as the
present-day student of Latin can testify to his sorrow. That the man in
the street, who had no newspaper to standardize his Latin, and little
chance to learn it in school, did not make more mistakes is surprising. In
a way many of the errors which he did make were historically not errors at
all. This fact will readily appear from an illustration or two. In our
survey of preliterary Latin we had occasion to notice that one of its
characteristics was a lack of fixity in the use of forms or constructions.
In the third century before our era, a Roman could say audibo or audiam,
contemplor or contemplo, senatus consultum or senati consultum. Thanks to
the efforts of the scientific grammarian, and to the systematizing
influence which Greek exerted upon literary Latin, most verbs were made
deponent or active once for all, a given noun was permanently assigned to
a particular declension, a verb to one conjugation, and the slight
tendency which the language had to the analytical method of forming the
moods and tenses was summarily checked. Of course the common people tried
to imitate their betters in all these matters, but the old variable usages
persisted to some extent, and the average man failed to grasp the
niceties of the new grammar at many points. His failures were especially
noticeable where the accepted literary form did not seem to follow the
principles of analogy. When these principles are involved, the common
people are sticklers for consistency. The educated man conjugates: "I
don't," "you don't," "he doesn't," "we don't," "they don't"; but the
anomalous form "he doesn't" has to give way in the speech of the average
man to "he don't." To take only one illustration in Latin of the effect of
the same influence, the present infinitive active of almost all verbs ends
in -re, e.g., amare, monere, and regere. Consequently the irregular
infinitive of the verb "to be able," posse, could not stand its ground,
and ultimately became potere in vulgar Latin. In one respect in the
inflectional forms of the verb, the purist was unexpectedly successful. In
comedy of the third and second centuries B.C., we find sporadic evidence
of a tendency to use auxiliary verbs in forming certain tenses, as we do
in English when we say: "I will go," "I have gone," or "I had gone." This
movement was thoroughly stamped out for the time, and does not reappear
until comparatively late.
In Latin there are three genders, and the grammatical gender of a noun is
not necessarily identical with its natural gender. For inanimate objects
it is often determined simply by the form of the noun. Sella, seat, of the
first declension, is feminine, because almost all nouns ending in -a are
feminine; hortus, garden, is masculine, because nouns in -us of its
declension are mostly masculine, and so on. From such a system as this two
results are reasonably sure to follow. Where the gender of a noun in
literary Latin did not conform to these rules, in popular Latin it would
be brought into harmony with others of its class. Thus stigma, one of the
few neuter nouns in -a, and consequently assigned to the third declension,
was brought in popular speech into line with sella and the long list of
similar words in -a, was made feminine, and put in the first declension.
In the case of another class of words, analogy was supplemented by a
mechanical influence. We have noticed already that the tendency of the
stressed syllable in a word to absorb effort and attention led to the
obscuration of certain final consonants, because the final syllable was
never protected by the accent. Thus hortus in some parts of the Empire
became hortu in ordinary pronunciation, and the neuter caelum, heaven,
became caelu. The consequent identity in the ending led to a confusion in
the gender, and to the ultimate treatment of the word for "heaven" as a
masculine. These influences and others caused many changes in the gender
of nouns in popular speech, and in course of time brought about the
elimination of the neuter gender from the neo-Latin languages.
Something has been said already of the vocabulary of the common people. It
was naturally much smaller than that of cultivated people. Its poverty
made their style monotonous when they had occasion to express themselves
in writing, as one can see in reading St. Ætheria's account of her journey
to the Holy Land, and of course this impression of monotony is heightened
by such a writer's inability to vary the form of expression. Even within
its small range it differs from the vocabulary of formal Latin in three or
four important respects. It has no occasion, or little occasion, to use
certain words which a formal writer employs, or it uses substitutes for
them. So testa was used in part for caput, and bucca for os. On the other
hand, it employs certain words and phrases, for instance vulgar words and
expletives, which are not admitted into literature.
In its choice of words it shows a marked preference for certain suffixes
and prefixes. It would furnish an interesting excursion into folk
psychology to speculate on the reasons for this preference in one case and
another. Sometimes it is possible to make out the influence at work. In
reading a piece of popular Latin one is very likely to be impressed with
the large number of diminutives which are used, sometimes in the strict
sense of the primitive word. The frequency of this usage reminds one in
turn of the fact that not infrequently in the Romance languages the
corresponding words are diminutive forms in their origin, so that
evidently the diminutive in these cases crowded out the primitive word in
popular use, and has continued to our own day. The reason why the
diminutive ending was favored does not seem far to seek. That suffix
properly indicates that the object in question is smaller than the average
of its kind. Smallness in a child stimulates our affection, in a dwarf,
pity or aversion. Now we give expression to our emotion more readily in
the intercourse of every-day life than we do in writing, and the emotions
of the masses are perhaps nearer the surface and more readily stirred than
are those of the classes, and many things excite them which would leave
unruffled the feelings of those who are more conventional. The stirring of
these emotions finds expression in the use of the diminutive ending, which
indirectly, as we have seen, suggests sympathy, affection, pity, or
contempt. The ending -osus for adjectives was favored because of its
sonorous character. Certain prefixes, like de-, dis-, and ex-, were freely
used with verbs, because they strengthened the meaning of the verb, and
popular speech is inclined to emphasize its ideas unduly.
To speak further of derivation, in the matter of compounds and
crystallized word groups there are usually differences between a spoken
and written language. The written language is apt to establish certain
canons which the people do not observe. For instance, we avoid hybrid
compounds of Greek and Latin elements in the serious writing of English.
In formal Latin we notice the same objection to Greco-Latin words, and yet
in Plautus, and in other colloquial writers, such compounds are freely
used for comic effect. In a somewhat similar category belong the
combinations of two adverbs or prepositions, which one finds in the later
popular Latin, some of which have survived in the Romance languages. A
case in point is ab ante, which has come down to us in the Italian avanti
and the French avant. Such word-groups are of course debarred from formal
speech.
In examining the vocabulary of colloquial Latin, we have noticed its
comparative poverty, its need of certain words which are not required in
formal Latin, its preference for certain prefixes and suffixes, and its
willingness to violate certain rules, in forming compounds and
word-groups, which the written language scrupulously observes. It remains
for us to consider a third, and perhaps the most important, element of
difference between the vocabularies of the two forms of speech. I mean the
use of a word in vulgar Latin with another meaning from that which it has
in formal Latin. We are familiar enough with the different senses which a
word often has in conversational and in literary English. "Funny," for
instance, means "amusing" in formal English, but it is often the synonym
of "strange" in conversation. The sense of a word may be extended, or be
restricted, or there may be a transfer of meaning. In the colloquial use
of "funny" we have an extension of its literary sense. The same is true of
"splendid," "jolly," "lovely," and "awfully," and of such Latin words as
"lepidus," "probe," and "pulchre." When we speak of "a splendid sun," we
are using splendid in its proper sense of shining or bright, but when we
say, "a splendid fellow," the adjective is used as a general epithet
expressing admiration. On the other hand, when a man of a certain class
refers to his "woman," he is employing the word in the restricted sense of
"wife." Perhaps we should put in a third category that very large
colloquial use of words in a transferred or figurative sense, which is
illustrated by "to touch" or "to strike" when applied to success in
getting money from a person. Our current slang is characterized by the
free use of words in this figurative way.
Under the head of syntax we must content ourselves with speaking of only
two changes, but these were far-reaching. We have already noticed the
analytical tendency of preliterary Latin. This tendency was held in check,
as we have just observed, so far as verb forms were concerned, but in the
comparison of adjectives and in the use of the cases it steadily made
headway, and ultimately triumphed over the synthetical principle. The
method adopted by literary Latin of indicating the comparative and the
superlative degrees of an adjective, by adding the endings -ior and
-issimus respectively, succumbed in the end to the practice of prefixing
plus or magis and maxime to the positive form. To take another
illustration of the same characteristic of popular Latin, as early as the
time of Plautus, we see a tendency to adopt our modern method of
indicating the relation which a substantive bears to some other word in
the sentence by means of a preposition rather than by simply using a case
form. The careless Roman was inclined to say, for instance, magna pars de
exercitu, rather than to use the genitive case of the word for army, magna
pars exercitus. Perhaps it seemed to him to bring out the relation a
little more clearly or forcibly.
The use of a preposition to show the relation became almost a necessity
when certain final consonants became silent, because with their
disappearance, and the reduction of the vowels to a uniform quantity, it
was often difficult to distinguish between the cases. Since final -m was
lost in pronunciation, _Asia_ might be nominative, accusative, or
ablative. If you wished to say that something happened in Asia, it would
not suffice to use the simple ablative, because that form would have the
same pronunciation as the nominative or the accusative, Asia(m), but the
preposition must be prefixed, _in Asia_. Another factor cooperated with
those which have already been mentioned in bringing about the confusion of
the cases. Certain prepositions were used with the accusative to indicate
one relation, and with the ablative to suggest another. _In Asia_, for
instance, meant "in Asia," _in Asiam_, "into Asia." When the two case
forms became identical in pronunciation, the meaning of the phrase would
be determined by the verb in the sentence, so that with a verb of going
the preposition would mean "into," while with a verb of rest it would mean
"in." In other words the idea of motion or rest is disassociated from the
case forms. From the analogy of _in_ it was very easy to pass to other
prepositions like _per_, which in literary Latin took the accusative only,
and to use these prepositions also with cases which, historically
speaking, were ablatives.
In his heart of hearts the school-boy regards the periodic sentences which
Cicero hurled at Catiline, and which Livy used in telling the story of
Rome as unnatural and perverse. All the specious arguments which his
teacher urges upon him, to prove that the periodic form of expression was
just as natural to the Roman as the direct method is to us, fail to
convince him that he is not right in his feeling--and he _is_ right. Of
course in English, as a rule, the subject must precede the verb, the
object must follow it, and the adverb and attribute adjective must stand
before the words to which they belong. In the sentence: "Octavianus wished
Cicero to be saved," not a single change may be made in the order without
changing the sense, but in a language like Latin, where relations are
largely expressed by inflectional forms, almost any order is possible, so
that a writer may vary his arrangement and grouping of words to suit the
thought which he wishes to convey. But this is a different matter from
the construction of a period with its main subject at the beginning, its
main verb at the end, and all sorts of subordinate and modifying clauses
locked in by these two words. This was not the way in which the Romans
talked with one another. We can see that plainly enough from the
conversations in Plautus and Terence. In fact the Latin period is an
artificial product, brought to perfection by many generations of literary
workers, and the nearer we get to the Latin of the common people the more
natural the order and style seem to the English-speaking person. The
speech of the uneducated freedmen in the romance of Petronius is
interesting in this connection. They not only fail to use the period, but
they rarely subordinate one idea to another. Instead of saying "I saw him
when he was an ædile," they are likely to say "I saw him; he was an ædile
then."
When we were analyzing preliterary Latin, we noticed that the
co-ordination of ideas was one of its characteristics, so that this trait
evidently persisted in popular speech, while literary Latin became more
logical and complex.
In the preceding pages we have tried to find out the main features of
popular Latin. In doing so we have constantly thought of literary Latin
as the foil or standard of comparison. Now, strangely enough, no sooner
had the literary medium of expression slowly and painfully disassociated
itself from the language of the common people than influences which it
could not resist brought it down again to the level of its humbler
brother. Its integrity depended of course upon the acceptance of certain
recognized standards. But when flourishing schools of literature sprang up
in Spain, in Africa, and in Gaul, the paramount authority of Rome and the
common standard for the Latin world which she had set were lost. When some
men tried to imitate Cicero and Quintilian, and others, Seneca, there
ceased to be a common model of excellence. Similarly a careful distinction
between the diction of prose and verse was gradually obliterated. There
was a loss of interest in literature, and professional writers gave less
attention to their diction and style. The appearance of Christianity, too,
exercised a profound influence on literary Latin. Christian writers and
preachers made their appeal to the common people rather than to the
literary world. They, therefore, expressed themselves in language which
would be readily understood by the average man, as St. Jerome frankly
tells us his purpose was. The result of these influences, and of others,
acting on literary Latin, was to destroy its unity and its carefully
developed scientific system, and to bring it nearer and nearer in its
genius to popular Latin, or, to put it in another way, the literary medium
comes to show many of the characteristics of the spoken language. Gregory
of Tours, writing in the sixth century, laments the fact that he is
unfamiliar with grammatical principles, and with this century literary
Latin may be said to disappear.
As for popular Latin, it has never ceased to exist. It is the language of
France, Spain, Italy, Roumania, and all the Romance countries to-day. Its
history has been unbroken from the founding of Rome to the present time.
Various scholars have tried to determine the date before which we shall
call the popular speech vulgar Latin, and after which it may better be
styled French or Spanish or Italian, as the case may be. Some would fix
the dividing line in the early part of the eighth century A.D., when
phonetic changes common to all parts of the Roman world would cease to
occur. Others would fix it at different periods between the middle of the
sixth to the middle of the seventh century, according as each section of
the old Roman world passed definitely under the control of its Germanic
invaders. The historical relations of literary and colloquial Latin would
be roughly indicated by the accompanying diagram, in which preliterary
Latin divides, on the appearance of literature in the third century B.C.,
into popular Latin and literary Latin. These two forms of speech develop
along independent lines until, in the sixth century, literary Latin is
merged in popular Latin and disappears. The unity for the Latin tongue
thus secured was short lived, because within a century the differentiation
begins which gives rise to the present-day Romance languages.
It may interest some of the readers of this chapter to look over a few
specimens of vulgar Latin from the various periods of its history.
(a) The first one is an extract from the Laws of the Twelve Tables. The
original document goes back to the middle of the fifth century B.C., and
shows us some of the characteristics of preliterary Latin. The
non-periodic form, the omission of pronouns, and the change of subject
without warning are especially noticeable.
"Si in ius vocat, ito. Ni it, antestamino, igitur em (=eum) capito. Si
calvitur pedemve struit, manum endo iacito (=inicito). Si morbus aevitasve
(=aetasve) vitium escit, iumentum dato: si nolet, arceram ne sternito."
[Illustration:
1 Preliterary Latin.
2 Vulgar Latin
3 Literary Latin
4-8 The Romance languages.
]
(b) This passage from one of Cicero's letters to his brother (_ad Q.
fr._ 2, 3, 2) may illustrate the familiar conversational style of a
gentleman in the first century B.C. It describes an harangue made by the
politician Clodius to his partisans.
"Ille furens et exsanguis interrogabat suos in clamore ipso quis esset qui
plebem fame necaret. Respondebant operae: 'Pompeius.' Quem ire vellent.
Respondebant: 'Crassum.' Is aderat tum Miloni animo non amico. Hora fere
nona quasi signo dato Clodiani nostros consputare coeperunt. Exarsit
dolor. Vrgere illi ut loco nos moverent."
(c) In the following passage, Petronius, 57, one of the freedmen at
Trimalchio's dinner flames out in anger at a fellow-guest whose bearing
seems to him supercilious. It shows a great many of the characteristics of
vulgar Latin which have been mentioned in this paper. The similarity of
its style to that of the preliterary specimen is worth observing. The
great number of proverbs and bits of popular wisdom are also noticeable.
"Et nunc spero me sic vivere, ut nemini iocus sim. Homo inter homines sum,
capite aperto ambulo; assem aerarium nemini debeo; constitutum habui
nunquam; nemo mihi in foro dixit 'redde, quod debes.' Glebulas emi,
lamelullas paravi; viginti ventres pasco et canem; contubernalem meam
redemi, ne quis in sinu illius manus tergeret; mille denarios pro capite
solvi; sevir gratis factus sum; spero, sic moriar, ut mortuus non
erubescam."
(d) This short inscription from Pompeii shows some of the peculiarities
of popular pronunciation. In ortu we see the same difficulty in knowing
when to sound the aspirate which the cockney Englishman has. The silence
of the final -m, and the reduction of ae to e are also interesting. Presta
mi sinceru (=sincerum): si te amet que (=quae) custodit ortu (=hortum)
Venus.
(e) Here follow some of the vulgar forms against which a grammarian,
probably of the fourth century, warns his readers. We notice that the
popular "mistakes" to which he calls attention are in (1) syncopation and
assimilation, in (2) the use of the diminutive for the primitive, and
pronouncing au as o, in (3) the same reduction of ct to t (or tt) which we
find in such Romance forms as Ottobre, in (4) the aspirate falsely added,
in (5) syncopation and the confusion of v and b, and in (6) the silence of
final -m.
(1) frigida non fricda
(2) auris non oricla
(3) auctoritas non autoritas
(4) ostiae non hostiae
(5) vapulo non baplo
(6) passim non passi
(f) The following passages are taken from Brunot's "Histoire de la
langue Fraçaise," p. 144. In the third column the opening sentence of the
famous Oath of Strasburg of 842 A.D. is given. In the other columns the
form which it would have taken at different periods is set down. These
passages bring out clearly the unbroken line of descent from Latin to
modern French.