Vulgar Latin

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Theodiskaz
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Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Hi, everyone. I apparently have an account here, which is just as well, since it looks like I'd have to send someone an email to get one. Anyway, I am one exhausted (obsessed) conlanger.
Briefly, I am (re)constructing a form of common, mutually mostly intelligible Vulgar Latin for personal use. I may make my wife learn it, too. Anyway, I think I will represent the spectrum of changes from more "classical" forms, syntax etc thru more "vulgar" ones as a function of speech registers ie formal or poetic on "down" to highly colloquial speech. And since it seems that that the common speech was evolving at different rates in different areas, albeit in sometimes different ways, this seems reasonable to me.
Right now, I'm stuck on verbs. Actually the perfects, and I'm bummed right now because it's starting to seem like I am going to have to grasp the classical system pretty well before I can understand what I am reading (about Latin's historical development).
I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on my speech register idea and my whole project in general. If anyone has done anything similar, I'd enjoy a conversation or looking at your paradigms, etc.
Good day to all.

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Kereb
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Kereb »

Theodiskaz wrote:I may suggest that my wife learn it, too.
fixed
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Imralu »

Theodiskaz wrote:I may make my wife learn it, too.
Oh, so you'll be venturing into the kitchen to give lessons then? Marvelous!
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Thry »

Well, it's Vulgar Latin, you have to think Roman... uxor, tace!

As for your request, I can't really help other than saying I speak Vulgar Latin myself, sort of... Spanish. Compare among modern romance languages for tense usage, development, etc.

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Kereb wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote:I may suggest that my wife learn it, too.
fixed
Point well taken, Kereb. But I'm no neanderthal, and don't mean to imply any insistance or coercion on my part. She alleady can pass in Spanish and French, and she is very tolerant, even encouraging, of my language thing. I just meant that as I jibber jabber at her in "broken Latin" saying things like "dinner smells good...I love you...let's go make love." et cetera, she will aquire it in the normal course of things. One thing I know better to do is to "make" her examine my paradigms, any more than she would would make me look at her craft patterns:) And to Imralu, We usually cook and clean up together, so there:) PS. There is no Vegamite in my kitchen, Imralu, neither is there likely ever to be. But there is lot's of peanut butter.

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Ean wrote:Well, it's Vulgar Latin, you have to think Roman... uxor, tace!

As for your request, I can't really help other than saying I speak Vulgar Latin myself, sort of... Spanish. Compare among modern romance languages for tense usage, development, etc.
Multas gratias, amicus. Actually, it should be fairly straightforward except for one thing, the perfect tense which becomes the preterite in most of the daughter languages. I am discovering that it was highly unpredictable, as to stem form, in CL. The hesitation between forms and the analogical re-formations must have looked (sounded) pretty chaotic during the period I'm targeting.

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Re: Vulgar Latin

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Theodiskaz wrote:And to Imralu, We usually cook and clean up together, so there:) PS. There is no Vegemite in my kitchen, Imralu, neither is there likely ever to be. But there is lot's of peanut butter.
I realised it was probably just poor word choice, but I'm sure you can understand how it came across. I love Vegemite (thanks phone spell check: I love hegemony), but I love peanut butter too, so I'll be happy. (I mean "What, no Vegemite?! How do you punish your wife then?")
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Imralu wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote:And to Imralu, We usually cook and clean up together, so there:) PS. There is no Vegemite in my kitchen, Imralu, neither is there likely ever to be. But there is lot's of peanut butter.
I realised it was probably just poor word choice, but I'm sure you can understand how it came across. I love Vegemite (thanks phone spell check: I love hegemony), but I love peanut butter too, so I'll be happy. (I mean "What, no Vegemite?! How do you punish your wife then?")
LOL If you ask her, she'll say I punish her linguistically, but she'll do it tongue in cheek. Oh, and that's a good word there, hegemony. Nice to write (with spell check); interesting to think about, maybe. But pronounce? I mispronounced the darn thing til about three years ago, when I ill advisedly said it to my wife. She, who had long wondered about it's pronunciation, immediately challenged my accenting the first syllable, so I looked it up. And to this day she refuses to utter the word because she doesn't read IPA and thinks I might be kidding her about it to get to hear her mispronounce a word!

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Or did you mean your phone thinks Vegemite is Hegemony? I usually leave phone predictoids in my texts, because I think they're funny. Predictably, Chrome's spell check doesn't recognize the word predictoid, and thinks I mean "predictable" Technology has a way to go dealing with human language, you think? :)

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Ser »

Theodiskaz wrote: I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on my speech register idea and my whole project in general.
Seems fine to me. I don't understand why you call it "Vulgar" Latin instead of just "Latin" though.

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by R.Rusanov »

Why not just learn classical Latin? It's not that hard, the language as a whole is remarkably regular and comprehension of even huge texts such as the Aeneid is easy after some study.
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Aurora Rossa »

R.Rusanov wrote:Why not just learn classical Latin? It's not that hard, the language as a whole is remarkably regular and comprehension of even huge texts such as the Aeneid is easy after some study.
Latin is remarkably regular?
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Ser »

R.Rusanov wrote:Why not just learn classical Latin? It's not that hard, the language as a whole is remarkably regular and comprehension of even huge texts such as the Aeneid is easy after some study.
Conlangers don't actually consider learning a language necessary to create a conlang related to it. If I want to create a Semitic conlang, does that mean I have to learn at least Aramaic for it? It'd certainly help, but I don't have to, in fact, reading a little bit of all of Semitic would arguably be more beneficial, even.

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by R.Rusanov »

Jabechasqvi wrote:
R.Rusanov wrote:Why not just learn classical Latin? It's not that hard, the language as a whole is remarkably regular and comprehension of even huge texts such as the Aeneid is easy after some study.
Latin is remarkably regular?
There are a handful of paradigms that are repeated throughout, so I'd definitely say so, yeah.

Irregular forms are few and far between and the really irregular ones (that aren't just a vowel or three off from an existing class) are even rarer.
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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Serafín wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote: I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on my speech register idea and my whole project in general.
Seems fine to me. I don't understand why you call it "Vulgar" Latin instead of just "Latin" though.
I suppose "Late Spoken Latin" might be more descriptive. I'm aiming for the latest, more or less mutually intelligible form of Proto-Romance, conjecturally speaking. The fact of language change from generation to generation has fascinated me ever since I read some Chaucer in English class in High School. In fact this is where my obsession with linguistics took hold. [/smile]

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

R.Rusanov wrote:
Jabechasqvi wrote:
R.Rusanov wrote:Why not just learn classical Latin? It's not that hard, the language as a whole is remarkably regular and comprehension of even huge texts such as the Aeneid is easy after some study.
Latin is remarkably regular?
There are a handful of paradigms that are repeated throughout, so I'd definitely say so, yeah.

Irregular forms are few and far between and the really irregular ones (that aren't just a vowel or three off from an existing class) are even rarer.
The thing about irregularities is how spoken Latin dealt with them over time, which is interesting. I believe the way irregularities are treated in a speech community says something very interesting about the human psyche, even if it's not very clear exactly what it says. The process of analogy, innovation, grammatical "mistakes", etc all say something about the way humans think, I believe.
Anyway, learning a fossilized form of the language of mostly upper class Romans intentionally imitating Greek literary styles might be a necessary jumping off point, but doesn't seem like as much fun as just jumping right in. And yes, I'm very impulsive. Had ADHD and Asperger's for as long as I can remember. :)

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Ser »

Theodiskaz wrote:
Serafín wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote: I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on my speech register idea and my whole project in general.
Seems fine to me. I don't understand why you call it "Vulgar" Latin instead of just "Latin" though.
I suppose "Late Spoken Latin" might be more descriptive. I'm aiming for the latest, more or less mutually intelligible form of Proto-Romance, conjecturally speaking. The fact of language change from generation to generation has fascinated me ever since I read some Chaucer in English class in High School. In fact this is where my obsession with linguistics took hold.
I mean, you seemed to do the thing some Romanists do and deny the existence of some two clearly distinguished tiers, namely CL/ML vs. VL/Proto-Romance/Proto-whatever, as opposed to a flowing continuum of registers with significant sociolinguistic variation involved, especially when the literate are concerned... you know, like any of today's languages. With such a continuum of registers, there would not be any need to talk about "Vulgar" Latin or "Late Spoken" Latin as if it were something wholly independent from written Latin, so you just get "Latin".

(Of course, once people started writing texts in an orthography that thoroughly rejected the traditional one, using something very close to 1 grapheme : 1 phoneme, i.e. what we call Romance texts, and yet the language used in such texts got called things like "Latin language" (Oaths of Strasbourg: romana lingua) or "our Latin" (Alfonso X: nuestro latin), that's when the discussion really gets interesting...). And let's not even get on the sort of registers used in things like the cartularies of Valpuesta or the Nodicia de kesos or those 10th century Leonese notarial texts, which were written using traditional spellings and yet so thoroughly rejected the traditional syntax, which is otherwise perfectly found in texts composed by high clerics or the like... et de illas custodias, de illas uineas de alios omnes que sunt de alios locos (Cartularies of Valpuesta, Gothic calf, 844).

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Re: Vulgar Latin

Post by Theodiskaz »

Serafín wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote:
Serafín wrote:
Theodiskaz wrote: I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on my speech register idea and my whole project in general.
Seems fine to me. I don't understand why you call it "Vulgar" Latin instead of just "Latin" though.
I suppose "Late Spoken Latin" might be more descriptive. I'm aiming for the latest, more or less mutually intelligible form of Proto-Romance, conjecturally speaking. The fact of language change from generation to generation has fascinated me ever since I read some Chaucer in English class in High School. In fact this is where my obsession with linguistics took hold.
I mean, you seemed to do the thing some Romanists do and deny the existence of some two clearly distinguished tiers, namely CL/ML vs. VL/Proto-Romance/Proto-whatever, as opposed to a flowing continuum of registers with significant sociolinguistic variation involved, especially when the literate are concerned... you know, like any of today's languages. With such a continuum of registers, there would not be any need to talk about "Vulgar" Latin or "Late Spoken" Latin as if it were something wholly independent from written Latin, so you just get "Latin".

(Of course, once people started writing texts in an orthography that thoroughly rejected the traditional one, using something very close to 1 grapheme : 1 phoneme, i.e. what we call Romance texts, and yet the language used in such texts got called things like "Latin language" (Oaths of Strasbourg: romana lingua) or "our Latin" (Alfonso X: nuestro latin), that's when the discussion really gets interesting...). And let's not even get on the sort of registers used in things like the cartularies of Valpuesta or the Nodicia de kesos or those 10th century Leonese notarial texts, which were written using traditional spellings and yet so thoroughly rejected the traditional syntax, which is otherwise perfectly found in texts composed by high clerics or the like... et de illas custodias, de illas uineas de alios omnes que sunt de alios locos (Cartularies of Valpuesta, Gothic calf, 844).
Um mm but that is actually what I do want to do, that is, represent a continuum of registers from a form that would strike ones audience as archaic, poetic, legalese, ecclesiastical or just plain old-farty. For example, I imagine a non phonetic orthography which does not indicate things like palatalization, elision, lenition, assimilation, etc, but which does include reflexes of vocab items like pulcher, vesper, domus, etc, on down to the raciest, slangiest version used by the grand-kids, or whatever, for which it would be my sincere pleasure to create a much more phonetic spelling system. All this at a point in time where, I imagine, if a speaker went from one end of the former empire to the other end and tried to communicate there, their "fanciest" speech might already remind him or her of his or her grand-kids speech. The traveler's classiest, most pompous sounding poetry might already be striking these other people as substantially incomprehensible. I guess the reason I don't call what I'm aiming for just plain old "Latin" is that it would make most people think of classical literature.

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