Vulgar Latin
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[[Image:pompeii-graffiti.jpg|frame|Vulgar Latin, as in this political [[graffiti|graffito]] at [[Pompeii]], was the speech of ordinary people of the [[Roman Empire]] — different from Latin as written by the Roman elites.]]
'''Vulgar Latin''' (in Latin, ''sermo vulgaris'', "folk speech") is a [[blanket term]] covering the popular [[dialect]]s and [[sociolect]]s of the [[Latin|Latin language]] which diverged from each other in the early [[Middle Ages]], evolving into the [[Romance languages]] by the 9th century. The terms Vulgar Latin and '''Late Latin''' are often used synonymously. Vulgar Latin can also refer to [[vernacular]] speech from other periods, including the [[Classical antiquity|Classical period]], in which case it may also be called '''Popular Latin'''.
This spoken Latin came to differ from [[Literary language|literary]] Latin in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, though some of its features did not appear until the late [[Roman Empire|Empire]]. Other features are likely to have been present much earlier in spoken Latin.
During the Middle Ages, Vulgar Latin coexisted with a more cultivated form of the language used by scholars, scribes and the clergy in formal settings, but lacking any [[First language|native speaker]]s, called [[Medieval Latin]].
==What was Vulgar Latin?==
[[Image:Page of Lay of the Cid.jpg|right|thumb|200px|The ''[[Cantar de Mio Cid]]'' (''Song of my [[El Cid|Cid]]'') is the earliest text of reasonable length that exists in Medieval [[Spanish language|Spanish]], and marks the beginning of this language as distinct from Vulgar Latin]]
The name "vulgar" simply means "folk", derived from the Latin word ''vulgaris'', meaning "of people". "Vulgar Latin" has a variety of meanings:
# Variation within Latin (socially, geographically, and chronologically) that differs from the Classical literary standard in an age when most people were illiterate and the primary method of language transmission between people was oral. This typically excludes the language of the more educated upper classes, which, although it does include variation, comes closest to the standard.
# The spoken Latin of the [[Roman Empire]]. Classical Latin represents the [[literary language|literary]] [[register (linguistics)|register]] of Latin, based on the model of ancient literary Greek. It represented a selection from a variety of spoken forms. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to [[Gaul]], [[Hispania|Iberia]] or [[Dacia]] was not identical to the Latin of [[Cicero]], and differed from it in [[vocabulary]], and later in [[syntax]] and [[grammar]] as well.<ref name="Palmer">Palmer (1954).</ref> By this definition, Vulgar Latin was a spoken language and Classical Latin was used for writing, with the later style of literary Latin being slightly different, showing greater influence from the vulgar dialects, compared to the earlier "classical" standards.
# The hypothetical ancestor of the [[Romance languages]] ("Proto-Romance"), which cannot be directly known, except from a few [[graffiti]] inscriptions. [[Proto-language|Proto-Romance]] is a hypothetical vernacular derived from Latin that had undergone important and varying sound shifts and other changes which can be [[historical linguistics|reconstructed]] from the changes evident in its descendants, the Romance languages.
# "Vulgar Latin" is sometimes used to describe the grammatical changes found in some Late Latin texts, such as the 4th-century ''Itinerarium [[Egeria (pilgrim)|Egeriae]]'', Egeria's account of her journey to Palestine and Mt. Sinai; or the works of St [[Gregory of Tours]]. Since written documentation of Vulgar Latin forms is scarce, these works are invaluable to [[philology|philologists]], mainly because of the occasional presence of variations or errors in spelling, providing some evidence of spoken usage during the period in which they were written.<ref name="Palmer" />
Most definitions of "Vulgar Latin" define it as the spoken, rather than written, language. It is important to remember that "Vulgar Latin" is an abstract term, not the name of any particular [[dialect]]. The term itself predates the field of sociolinguistics, and research into the history of Vulgar Latin was in some ways a precursor to sociolinguistics. The latter studies language variation associated with social variables, and tends not to view variation as a strict standard–non-standard dichotomy (for example, Classical–Vulgar Latin) but as a large pool<!-- maybe another word can be used --> of variations. In light of fields such as [[sociolinguistics]], [[dialectology]], and [[historical linguistics]], Vulgar Latin can be seen as nearly synonymous to "language variation in Latin" (socially, geographically, and chronologically) that excludes the speech, and especially writings, of the more educated upper classes. It is because there are so many types of variation that definitions of Vulgar Latin differ so much.
==History==
Because the daily speech of Latin speakers was not [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcribed]], Vulgar Latin can only be studied indirectly through other methods. Our knowledge of Vulgar Latin comes from three chief sources. First, the [[comparative method]] reconstructs the underlying forms from the attested Romance languages, and notes where they differ from Classical Latin. Second, various [[Prescription and description|prescriptive grammar]] texts from the Late Latin period condemn linguistic errors that Latin speakers were liable to commit, giving us an idea of how Latin speakers spoke. Third, the [[solecism]]s and non-Classical usages that occasionally are found in Late Latin texts also reveal, in part, the author's spoken language.<ref>Charles H. Grandgent, [http://books.google.com/books?id=_OzEl6nLsGIC&pg=PA5&lpg=PR4 ''An Introduction to Vulgar Latin''] (Heath & Co., 1907)</ref>
Some literary works with a lower [[register (linguistics)|register]] of Latin also provide a glimpse into the world of early Vulgar Latin. The works of [[Plautus]] and [[Terence]], being comedies with many characters who were slaves, preserve some early [[Basilect#Stratification|basilectal]] Latin features, as does the recorded speech of freedmen in the ''[[Cena Trimalchionis]]'' by [[Petronius Arbiter]].
For many centuries after the [[fall of the Roman Empire|fall of the Roman Empire in the West]], Vulgar Latin continued to coexist with a written form of Late Latin, nowadays referred to as [[Medieval Latin]]; for when speakers of Romance vernaculars set out to write with correct grammar and spelling, they attempted to emulate the norms of Classical Latin. This scholarly Latin, "frozen" by [[Justinian I|Justinian]]'s codifications of [[Roman law]] on the one hand, and by the [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic Church]] on the other, was eventually unified by the medieval copyists; it continued to exist as a [[Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache#Dachsprache|''Dachsprache'']] in the Middle Ages, and a ''[[lingua franca]]'' well beyond them.
Vulgar Latin developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to such modern languages as [[French language|French]], [[Catalan language|Catalan]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], and [[Romanian language|Romanian]]. Although the official language in these areas was Latin, Vulgar Latin was popularly spoken until the new localized forms diverged sufficiently from Latin, thus emerging as separate [[language]]s. However, despite the widening gulf between the spoken and written [[Latin]], throughout the imperial era and until the 8th century CE, it was not significant enough as to make them mutually unintelligible. József Herman states:<ref name="Herman">Herman (2000).</ref>
{{quotation|It seems certain that in the sixth century, and quite likely into the early parts of the seventh century, people in the main Romanized areas could still largely understand the biblical and liturgical texts and the commentaries (of greater or lesser simplicity) that formed part of the rites and of religious practice, and that even later, throughout the seventh century, saints' lives written in Latin could be read aloud to the congregations with an expectation that they would be understood. We can also deduce however, that in Gaul, from the central part of the eighth century onwards, many people, including several of the clerics, were not able to understand even the most straightforward religious texts|József Herman, Vulgar Latin}}
Indeed, at the third [[Council of Tours]] in 813, [[priest]]s were ordered to preach in the vernacular language — either in the ''rustica lingua romanica'' (Vulgar Latin), or in the [[West Germanic|Germanic vernaculars]] — since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin. Within a generation, the [[Oaths of Strasbourg]] (842), a treaty between [[Charlemagne]]'s grandsons [[Charles the Bald]] and [[Louis the German]], was proffered and recorded in a language that was already distinguished from Latin. Consider the excerpt below:
[[Image:Sacramenta Argentariae (pars brevis).jpg|thumb|Extract of the Oaths]]
{{quotation|Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in ajudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il me altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui, meon vol, cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit.<br><br>''For the love of God and for Christendom and our common salvation, from this day onwards, as God will give me the wisdom and power, I shall protect this brother of mine Charles, with aid or anything else, as one ought to protect one's brother, so that he may do the same for me, and I shall never knowingly make any covenant with Lothair that would harm this brother of mine Charles.''}}
From this point on, the Latin vernaculars began to be treated as separate languages in practice, developing local norms and [[orthography|orthographies]] of their own, and "Vulgar Latin" ceases to be a useful term.
== Vocabulary ==
{{main|Vulgar Latin vocabulary}}
{| border="0" width="270px" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" style="font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif; float: right; margin: 10px;"
!Classical Latin
!Vulgar Latin
!English
|-
|''bellum''||*''guerra'' <ref name=germanic>Of Germanic origin.</ref>||war
|-
|''cogitare''||''pensare''||think
|-
|''edere''||''manducare''||eat
|-
|''emere''||''comparare'' <ref name=comparare>Originally meanign "to arrange, settle".</ref>||buy
|-
|''equus''||''caballus''||horse
|-
|''feles''||''catta'' <ref name=catta>A [[hapax]] of classical Latin, with its only occurrence being in an epigram of the Silver Latin poet [[Martial]], where it refers to a type of edible bird</ref> ||cat
|-
|''hortus''||''*gardinus'' <ref name=germanic>Of Germanic origin.</ref>||garden
|-
|''ignis''||''focus'' <ref name=focus>Originally meaning "fireplace".</ref>||fire
|-
|''ludere''||''iocari'' <ref name=iocari>Originally meaning "to joke".</ref>||play
|-
|''omnis''||''totus'' <ref name=totus>Originally meaning "the whole".</ref>||all
|-
|''os''||''bucca'' <ref name=bucca>Originally meaning "cheek".</ref>||mouth
|-
|''pulcher''||''bellus''||beautiful
|-
|''urbs''||''civitas''||city
|-
|''verbum''||''parabola'' <ref name=parabola>Originally meaning "comparison".</ref>||word
|-
|''vesper''||''sera''||evening
|}
Certain words from Classical Latin were dropped from the vocabulary. Classical ''equus'', "[[horse]]", was consistently replaced by ''caballus'' "nag" (but note Romanian ''iapă'', Sardinian ''èbba'', Spanish ''yegua'', Catalan ''euga'' and Portuguese ''égua'' all meaning "mare" and deriving from Classical ''equa'').
A sample of words that are exclusively Classical, and those that were productive in Romance, is to be found in the table to the right.
The vocabulary changes affected even the basic [[grammatical particle]]s of Latin; there are many that vanish without a trace in Romance, such as ''an, at, autem, donec, enim, ergo, etiam, haud, igitur, ita, nam, postquam, quidem, quin, quod, quoque, sed, utrum'' and ''vel''.<ref name="Harrington">Harrington et al. (1997).</ref>
Verbs with prefixed prepositions frequently displaced simple forms. The number of words formed by such [[suffix]]es as ''-bilis'', ''-arius'', ''-itare'' and ''-icare'' grew apace. These changes occurred frequently to avoid irregular forms or to regularise genders.
On the other hand, since Vulgar Latin and Latin proper were for much of their history different registers of the same language, rather than different languages, some Romance languages preserve Latin words that were lost in most others. For example, Italian ''ogni'' ("each/every") preserves Latin ''omnes''. Other languages use cognates of ''totus'' for the same meaning; for example ''tutto'' in Italian, ''tudo''/''todo'' in Portuguese, ''todo'' in Spanish, ''tot'' in Catalan, ''tout'' in French and ''tot'' in Romanian.
Sometimes, a classical Latin word was kept alongside a Vulgar Latin word. In Vulgar Latin, classical ''caput'', "head", yielded to ''testa'' (originally "pot") in some forms of western Romance, including French and Italian. But Italian, French and Catalan kept the Latin word under the form ''capo'', ''chef'', and ''cap'' which retained many metaphorical meanings of "head", including "boss". The Latin word with the original meaning is preserved in Romanian ''cap'', together with ''{{unicode|ț}}eastă'', both meaning 'head' in the anatomical sense. Southern Italian dialects likewise preserve ''capo'' as the normal word for "head". Spanish and Portuguese have ''cabeza''/''cabeça'', derived from *''capetia'', a modified form of ''caput'', while in Portuguese ''testa'' was retained as the word for "forehead".
Frequently, words borrowed directly from literary Latin at some later date, rather than evolved within Vulgar Latin, are found side by side with the evolved form. The (lack of) expected phonetic developments is a clue that one word has been borrowed. For example, Vulgar Latin ''fungus'', "fungus, mushroom", which became Italian ''fungo'', Catalan ''fong'', and Portuguese ''fungo'', became ''hongo'' in Spanish, showing the ''f'' > ''h'' shift that was common in early Spanish (cf. ''filius'' > Spanish ''hijo'', "son", ''facere'' > Spanish ''hacer'', "to do"). But Spanish also had ''fungo'', which by its lack of the expected sound shift shows that it was borrowed directly from Latin.<ref name="Harrington" />
Vulgar Latin contained a large number of words of foreign origin not present in literary texts. Many works on medicine were written and distributed in Greek, and words were often borrowed from these sources. For example, ''gamba'' ( 'knee joint' ), originally a veterinary term only, replaced the classical Latin word for leg (''crus'') in most Romance languages. (cf. Fr. jambe, It. gamba). Cooking terms were also often borrowed from Greek sources, a [[calque]] based on a Greek term was ''ficatum (iecur)'' (goose's liver fattened with figs), with the participle ''ficatum'' becoming the common word for liver in Vulgar Latin (cf. Sp. ''higado'', Fr. ''foie'', Pt. ''fígado'', It. ''fegato'', Romanian ''ficat''). Important religious terms were also drawn from religious texts written in Greek, such as ''episcopus'' (bishop), ''presbyter'' (priest), ''martyr'' etc. Words borrowed from Gaulish include ''caballus'' (horse) and ''carrus'' (chariot).
=== The Reichenau Glosses ===
Insight into the vocabulary changes of late Vulgar Latin in France can be seen in the Reichenau [[Gloss]]es,<ref>[http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Vulgar/Vocabulary/Reichenau_Glosses.htm ''The Reichenau Glosses'']</ref> written on the margins of a copy of the [[Vulgate]] Bible, suggesting that the 4th-century Vulgate words were no longer readily understood in the 8th century, when the glosses were likely written. These glosses demonstrate typical vocabulary changes in [[Gallo-Romance languages|Gallo-Romance]].
The Reichenau Glosses show vocabulary replacement:
* ''arena'' > ''sabulo'' (French ''sable'', Italian ''sabbia'', "sand"; but c.f. Spanish ''arena'', Galician ''area'', Portuguese ''areia'', Italian ''rena'')
* ''canere'' > ''cantare'' (Portuguese/Galician/Spanish/Catalan ''cantar'', French ''chanter'', Italian ''cantare'', Romanian ''cânta'', "to sing", [[frequentative]] of ''canere'')
*''mares'' (nom. ''mas'') > ''masculi'' (French ''mâle'', Italian ''maschio'', Spanish ''macho'', "male", [[diminutive]] of ''mas'')
* ''liberos'' > ''infantes'' (Catalan ''infants'', "children"; French ''enfants'', "children"; Italian ''infante'', "infant"; Portuguese ''infante'', "prince"; Spanish ''infante'', "child" but as a literary word also "prince")
* ''hiems'' > ''hibernus'' (French ''hiver'', Italian ''inverno'', Spanish ''invierno'', Portuguese ''inverno'', Catalan ''invern'', Romanian ''iarnă'', "winter", adjective of ''heims'')
* ''forum'' > ''mercatum'' (French ''marché'', Italian ''mercato'', Spanish ''mercado''; "market")
* ''lamento'' > ''ploro'' (French ''pleurer'', Spanish ''llorar'', Portuguese ''chorar'', Catalan ''plorar'', "to weep")
* ''ager'' > ''campus'' (French ''champ'', Italian/Spanish/Portuguese ''campo'', Romanian ''câmp'')
* ''caseum'' > ''formaticum'' (French ''fromage'', Italian ''formaggio'', Catalan ''formatge'', "cheese", post-classical, from ''formare'', "to form"; but cf. Italian ''cacio'', Portuguese ''queijo'', Spanish ''queso'', Romanian ''caş'')
* ''flare'' > ''suflare'' (French ''souffler'', Italian ''soffiare'', Romanian ''sufla'', Spanish ''soplar'', "to blow", from ''flare'' with prefix ''sub'')
* ''ita'' > ''sic'' (Italian ''sì'', Spanish ''sí'', Portuguese ''sim'', "yes")
* ''pulcra'' > ''bella'' (French ''beau'', Italian/Spanish ''bello'', Portuguese ''belo'', Catalan ''bell'', "beautiful", diminutive of ''bonus'', "good")
* ''umo'' > ''terra'' (French ''terre'', Italian/Portuguese ''terra'', Spanish ''tierra'', "ground")
* ''lebes'' > ''chaldaria'' (French ''chaudière'', Italian ''calderone'', Spanish ''caldera'', "cauldron", from ''calidus'', "warm")
* ''necetur'' > ''occidetur'' (Italian ''uccidere'', Romanian ''ucide'', "to kill")
* ''pingues'' > ''grassi'' (French ''gros'', Italian ''grasso'', Romanian ''gras'', "fat", post-classical, of uncertain origin)
* ''ungues'' > ''ungulas'' (French ''ongle'', Italian ''unghia'', Spanish ''uña'', Portuguese ''unha'', Romanian ''unghie'', Catalan ''ungla'', "fingernail", diminutive of ''unguis'')
* ''vim'' > ''fortiam'' (French ''force'', Italian ''forza'', Spanish ''fuerza'', Portuguese ''força'', "force", post-classical, from ''fortis'', "strong")
* ''si vis'' > ''si voles'' (French ''tu veux'', Italian ''tu vuoi'', Catalan ''tu vols'', "you want", 2nd personal singular of ''*volere'', "to want", regularized form of ''velle'')
* ''oppidis'' > ''civitatibus'' (French ''cité'', Italian ''città'', Portuguese ''cidade'', Spanish ''ciudad'', Catalan ''ciutat'', Romanian ''cetate'', "city")
Grammatical changes:
* ''optimos'' > ''meliores'' (Portuguese ''melhor'', Galician ''mellor'', Spanish ''mejor'', Catalan ''millor'', French ''meilleur'', Italian ''migliore'', "best", originally "better"; but cf. Spanish ''óptimo'', Portuguese ''ótimo'', Italian ''ottimo'', French ''optimal'', with the sense of "excellent" or "optimal")
* ''saniore'' > ''plus sano'' (French ''plus sain'', Italian ''più sano'')
Germanic loan words:
* ''turbas'' > ''fulcos'' (French ''foule'', Italian ''folla'', "mob"; but cf. Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan ''turba'')
* ''cementariis'' > ''mationibus'' (French ''maçon'', Spanish ''masón'', "stonemason")
* ''galea'' > ''helme'' (French ''heaume'', Italian/Portuguese ''elmo'', Catalan ''elm'', Spanish ''yelmo'', "helmet")
* ''coturnix'' > ''quaccola'' (French ''caille'', Italian ''quaglia'', "quail"; but cf. Spanish/Portuguese ''codorniz'')
* ''furvus'' > ''brunus'' (French/Romanian ''brun'', Catalan ''bru'', Portuguese/Italian bruno, "brown/dark")
And words whose meaning has changed:
* ''in ore'' (nom. ''os'') > ''in bucca'' (Portuguese/Spanish/Catalan ''boca'', French ''bouche'', Italian ''bocca'', "mouth", originally "cheek")
* ''emit'' > ''comparavit'' (Italian ''comprare'', Spanish ''comprar'', Portuguese ''comprar'', Romanian ''cumpăra'', Catalan ''comprar'', "to buy", originally "to arrange, settle")
* ''rerum'' (nom. ''res'') > ''causarum'' (French ''chose'', Italian/Spanish/Catalan ''cosa'', Portuguese ''coisa/cousa'', "thing", originally "cause")
* ''rostrum'' > ''beccus'' (French ''bec'', Italian ''becco'', Catalan ''bec'', Spanish ''pico'', Portuguese ''bico'', "beak", post-classical, from Gaulish; but cf. Spanish/Galician ''rostro'', and Portuguese ''rosto'', "face")
* ''femur'' > ''coxa'' (Portuguese, Galician and Old Spanish ''coxa'', French ''cuisse'', Italian ''coscia'', Catalan ''cuixa'', Romanian ''coapsă'', "thigh", originally "hip", first attested in Silver Latin)
== Phonology ==
{{Seealso|Latin spelling and pronunciation|Latin regional pronunciation}}
=== Evidence of changes ===
{{wikisourcelang|la|Appendix Probi|Appendix Probi}}
Evidence of phonological changes can be seen in the late 3rd century [[Appendix Probi]], a collection of glosses [[Prescription and description|prescribing]] correct classical Latin forms for certain vulgar forms. These glosses describe:
*a process of [[syncope]], the loss of unstressed vowels ("''masculus non masclus''");
*the merger between long /e/ and short /i/ ("''vinea non vinia''");
*the levelling of the distinction between /o/ and /u/ ("''coluber non colober''") and /e/ and /i/ ("''dimidius non demedius''");
*regularization of irregular forms ("''glis non glirus''");
*regularization and emphasis of gendered forms ("''pauper mulier non paupera mulier''");
*levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /v/ between vowels ("''bravium non brabium''");
*the substitution of diminutives for unmarked words ("''auris non oricla, neptis non nepticla''")
*the loss of syllable-final nasals ("''mensa non mesa''") or their inappropriate insertion as a form of [[hypercorrection]] ("''formosus non formunsus''").
*the loss of /h/, both initially ("''hostiae non ostiae''", although note that this is a hypercorrection) and within the word ("''adhuc non aduc''").
Many of the forms castigated in the ''Appendix Probi'' proved to be the productive forms in Romance; ''oricla'' (Classical Latin ''auricula'') is the source of French ''oreille'', Catalan ''orella'', Spanish ''oreja'', Italian ''orecchia'', Romanian ''ureche'', Portuguese ''orelha'', "ear", not the Classical Latin form.
=== Consonants ===
Significant [[sound change]]s affected the consonants of Vulgar Latin:
; [[Apocope]]
<!-- The following could use some examples. -->
* Final ''-t'', which occurred frequently in verb conjugations, and final ''-s'', in nouns, were dropped.
* The [[metre in poetry|scansion]] in Latin [[poetry]] suggests that the letter ''-m'' may have been pronounced very softly in classical Latin, being either voiceless or merely a [[silent letter]] that marked the nasalisation of the vowel which preceded it. It continued, however, to be consistently written in the literary language. In Vulgar Latin, these [[nasal vowel]]s disappeared completely (the nasal vowels of French and Portuguese developed from other sources).
; [[Palatalization|Palatalisation]]
* Palatalisation ("softening") of Latin ''c'', ''t'' and often ''g'' before the front vowels ''e'' and ''i'' was almost universal in Vulgar Latin. The initial results were likely [[Affricate consonant|affricate]]s — {{IPA|[ts], [tʃ], [dz], [dʒ]}} —, possibly after a [[palatal consonant|palatal]] intermediate stage, but these eventually became plain [[Fricative consonant|fricative]]s in most languages. Thus Latin ''caelum'' (sky, heaven), pronounced {{IPA|[kailu(m)]}} with an initial {{IPA|[k]}}, became Italian ''cielo'', {{IPA|[tʃɛlo]}}, Romanian ''cer'' {{IPA|[tʃer]}}, Spanish ''cielo'', {{IPA|[θjelo]}} or {{IPA|[sjelo]}}, French ''ciel'', {{IPA|[sjɛl]}}, Catalan ''cel'', {{IPA|[sɛɫ]}}, and Portuguese ''céu'', {{IPA|[sɛu]}}. The only Romance languages that were not affected were [[Dalmatian language|Dalmatian]] and some varieties of [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]].
; [[Lenition]]
<!-- The following could use some examples. -->
Several other consonants were "softened", especially in intervocalic position (an instance of diachronic lenition):
* Single voiceless plosives became [[Voice (phonetics)|voiced]]: ''-p-, -t-, -c-'' → ''-b-, -d-, -g-''. In a few languages such as Spanish, these were further lenited to [[approximant consonant|approximants]], {{IPA| [β̞], [ð̞], [ɣ]}}.
* The plain [[sibilant consonant|sibilant]] ''-s-'' {{IPA|[s]}} was also voiced to {{IPA|[z]}} between vowels, although in many languages its spelling has not changed. (In Spanish, intervocalic {{IPA|[z]}} was later devoiced back to {{IPA|[s]}}.)
* The [[geminate consonant|double]] plosives became single: ''-pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg-'' → ''-p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g-'' in most languages. Some languages of Italy have retained the distinction between double and single consonants, although they have also tended to add to the number of geminates. In French spelling, double consonants are merely etymological.
* The double sibilant ''-ss-'' {{IPA|[sː]}} also became phonetically single {{IPA|[s]}}, although in many languages its spelling has not changed.
* The voiced [[labial consonant]]s ''-b-'' and ''-v-'' (pronounced {{IPA|[b]}} and {{IPA|[w]}}, respectively, in classical Latin) both shifted to the [[Voiced bilabial fricative|fricative]] {{IPA|[β]}} between vowels.<ref>Pope (1934).</ref> This is clear from the orthography; in medieval times, the spelling ''u/v'' is often used for what had been a ''b'' in classical Latin, or the two spellings are used interchangeably. In many Romance languages (Italian, French, etc.), this fricative later developed into a {{IPA|[v]}} sound; but in others (Spanish, Catalan, etc.) it eventually merged back with {{IPA|[b]}} into a common phoneme.
; [[Fortition]]
* The approximant ''j'', which in Latin was merely an allophone of the vowel ''i'', became a fricative, and in most languages split into an independent [[phoneme]].
; [[Prosthesis (linguistics)|Prosthesis]]
* In [[Western Romance]], an [[epenthesis|epenthetic]] vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with ''s'' and another consonant: thus Latin ''spatha'' (sword) becomes Portuguese and Spanish ''espada'', Catalan ''espasa'', French ''épée''. Italian preserved [[euphony]] rules by adding the epenthesis in the preceding article when necessary instead, so it preserves feminine ''spada'' as ''la spada'', but changes the masculine ''*il spaghetto'' to ''lo spaghetto''.
=== Stressed vowels ===
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{| border="1" width="270" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" style="font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode; float: right; margin: 1em;"
!colspan="5"| Evolution of the stressed vowels in Vulgar Latin
|-
!colspan="3" rowspan="1"| Classical
!colspan="2"| Vulgar
|-
!Acad.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
! Roman
!colspan="2"| [[Help:IPA|IPA]]
!Acad.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
|-
! ă
|short ''A''|| {{IPA|[a]}} || rowspan=2 | {{IPA|[a]}} || rowspan=2 | '''a'''
|-
! ā
|long ''A'' || {{IPA|[aː]}}
|-
! ĕ
|short ''E''|| {{IPA|[ɛ]}} || {{IPA|[ɛ]}} || '''ę'''
|-
! ē
|long ''E'' || {{IPA|[eː]}} || rowspan=2 | {{IPA|[e]}} || rowspan=2 | '''ẹ'''
|-
! ĭ
|short ''I''|| {{IPA|[ɪ]}}
|-
! ī
|long ''I'' || {{IPA|[iː]}} || {{IPA|[i]}} || '''i'''
|-
! ŏ
|short ''O''|| {{IPA|[ɔ]}} || {{IPA|[ɔ]}} || '''ǫ'''
|-
! ō
|long ''O'' || {{IPA|[oː]}} || rowspan=2 | {{IPA|[o]}} || rowspan=2 | '''ọ'''
|-
! ŭ
|short ''V'' || {{IPA|[ʊ]}}
|-
! ū
|long ''V'' || {{IPA|[uː]}} || {{IPA|[u]}} || '''u'''
|-
! ў
|short ''Y''|| {{IPA|[y]}} > {{IPA|[ɪ]}} || {{IPA|[e]}} || '''ẹ'''
|-
! ȳ
|long ''Y'' || {{IPA|[yː]}} > {{IPA|[iː]}} || {{IPA|[i]}} || '''y''', '''i'''
|-
! æ
|''AE'' || {{IPA|[ai]}} > {{IPA|[ɛ]}} || {{IPA|[ɛ]}} || '''ę'''
|-
! œ
|''OE'' || {{IPA|[oi]}} > {{IPA|[e]}} || {{IPA|[e]}} || '''ẹ'''
|-
! au
|''AV'' || {{IPA|[au]}} || {{IPA|[au]}} > {{IPA|[o]}} || '''au''', '''ọ'''
|-
|colspan="5"| <small><sup>1</sup></small> Traditional academic transcription in Latin and Romance studies, respectively.
|-
|}
One profound change that affected Vulgar Latin was the reorganisation of its [[vowel]] system. Classical Latin had five short vowels, ''ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ'', and five [[vowel length|long vowels]], ''ā, ē, ī, ō, ū'', each of which was an individual [[phoneme]] (see the table in the right, for their likely pronunciation in IPA), and three [[diphthong]]s, ''ae'', ''oe'', and ''au'' (four according to some authors, including ''ui''). There were also long and short versions of ''y'', representing the [[Close front rounded vowel|rounded vowel]] {{IPA|[y(ː)]}} in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced {{IPA|[i(ː)]}} even before Romance vowel changes started.
There is evidence that in the imperial period all the short vowels except ''a'' differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts.<ref>Allen (2003) states: "There appears to have been no great difference in quality between long and short ''a'', but in the case of the close and mid vowels (''i'' and ''u'', ''e'' and ''o'') the long appear to have been appreciably closer than the short." He then goes on to the historical development, quotations from various authors (from around the 2nd century AD), as well as evidence from older inscriptions where "e" stands for normally short ''i'', and "i" for long ''e'', etc.</ref> So, for example ''ē'' was pronounced [[Close-mid vowel|close-mid]] {{IPA|/eː/}} while ''ĕ'' was pronounced [[Open-mid vowel|open-mid]] {{IPA|/ɛ/}}, and ''ī'' was pronounced [[Close vowel|close]] {{IPA|/iː/}} while ''ĭ'' was pronounced [[Near-close vowel|near-close]] {{IPA|/ɪ/}}. The diphthongs ''ae'' and ''oe'', pronounced {{IPA|/ai/}} and {{IPA|/oi/}} in earlier Latin, had also begun their [[monophthong]]isation to {{IPA|/ɛ/}} and {{IPA|/e/}}, respectively. ''Oe'' was always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin; in [[Old Latin]], ''oinos'' (one) regularly became ''unus''.<ref name="Palmer" />
As Vulgar Latin evolved, three main changes occurred in parallel. First, length distinctions were lost, so that for instance ''ă'' and ''ā'' came to be pronounced the same way. Second, the near-close vowels ''ĭ'' and ''ŭ'' became more open in most varieties of Vulgar Latin, merging with the long vowels ''ē'' and ''ō'', respectively. As a result, Latin ''pira'' "pear" (fruit) and ''vēra'' "true", came to rhyme in most of its daughter languages: Italian, French, and Spanish ''pera'', ''vera''; [[Old French]] ''poire'', ''voire''. Similarly, Latin ''nux'' ("nut", acc. sing) and ''vōx'' (voice) become Italian ''noce, voce'', Portuguese ''noz, voz'', and French ''noix, voix'' (in some cases the quality of the vowel later changed again, because of regularising tendencies, or other extraneous influences).
There must have been some regional variation in pronunciation, since the [[Eastern Romance languages]] and the [[Southern Romance languages]] evolved differently.<ref name="Vincent">Vincent (1990).</ref> In [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]], for instance, ''ĭ'' and ''ŭ'' became more ''close'', merging with their long counterparts ''ī'' and ''ū''. Apart from Sardinian, which preserved the position of the Classical Latin vowels but lost phonemic vowel length, what happened to Vulgar Latin can be summarized as in the table to the right. More precisely, these mergers happened in most of western Europe, yielding the seven vowel system of [[Italo-Western languages|Italo-Western-Romance]].
In general, though, the ten-vowel system of Classical Latin (not counting the Greek letter ''y''), which relied on phonemic vowel length, was newly modelled into one in which [[vowel length]] distinctions lost [[phoneme|phonemic]] importance, and qualitative distinctions of [[vowel height|height]] became more prominent. (Exceptions were [[Friulian language|Friulian]], and some dialects of [[French language|French]], which have retained a contrast between long and short vowels.)
In Vulgar Latin, the [[stress (linguistics)|stress]] on accented syllables became much more pronounced than in Classical Latin. This tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. The results of short ''o'' and ''e'' in stressed position proved to be unstable in several of the Romance languages, with a tendency to break up into diphthongs. ''Focus'', "fireplace", became the general word in Vulgar Latin for "fire" (replacing ''ignis''), but its short ''o'' sound became a diphthong — a different diphthong — in many languages:
*[[Italian language|Italian]]: ''fuoco''
*[[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''fuego''
*[[French language|French]]: ''feu'' (now no longer a diphthong but {{IPA|[fø]}})
In French and Italian, these changes occurred only in open syllables. Spanish, however, diphthongised in all circumstances, resulting in a simple five-vowel system in both stressed and unstressed syllables. [[Romanian language|Romanian]] shows diphthongisation of short ''e'' (''fier'' from Latin ''ferrum'', "iron") but not of short ''o'' (''foc''). In [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], no diphthongisation occurred at all (''ferro'', ''fogo'').
Some languages experienced further mergers, reducing the number of stressed vowels down from seven (to six in Romanian, to five in Sardinian and [[Spanish language|Spanish]]). On the other hand, later monophthongisations led to new vowel phonemes in some languages (such as {{IPA|[y]}}, {{IPA|[œ]}}, and {{IPA|[ø]}} in French), while nasalisation produced new phonemic [[nasal vowel]]s in French and Portuguese.
Latin ''au'' was under some pressure to change in the [[Roman Republic]]an period; a number of populist politicians adopted the spelling ''[[Clodius]]'' for the well known Roman name ''[[Claudius]]'', but this change was not universal, and marked as [[basilect]]al well into the early Empire. ''Au'' was initially retained, but was eventually reduced in many languages to {{IPA|[o]}}. (Portuguese evolved only as far as {{IPA|[ou]}} until much more recently; [[Occitan language|Occitan]] and Romanian preserve {{IPA|[au]}} to this day.)<ref name="Vincent" /> The results of Latin ''ae'' were also subject to at least some early variation; French ''proie'' (spoils) presumes {{IPA|[e]}} rather than {{IPA|[ɛ]}} from Classical Latin ''praeda''.
===Unstressed vowels===
There was more variability in the result of the unstressed vowels. Two main paths can be distinguished:
* Languages like Italian or Spanish have largely retained the system of five unstressed vowels of Vulgar Latin, with pronunciations still close to what they would have been in Classical Latin, except for length.
* In French, Portuguese, or Occitan, there has been more instability, with unstressed vowels changing pronunciation significantly (unstressed ''o'', ''a'' → {{IPA|[u]}}, {{IPA|[ɔ]}} in Occitan; unstressed ''o'', ''e'' → {{IPA|[u]}}, {{IPA|[i]}}/{{IPA|[ɨ]}} in Portuguese), some being reduced to a kind of [[schwa]] (unstressed final ''a'' → ''e'' → {{IPA|[ə]}} in French).
In [[Catalan language|Catalan]], the process was similar to that of Portuguese in that the short Latin ''o'' turned into an open vowel, but short ''e'' eventually turned into a closed {{IPA|[e]}} in Western dialects (opposite to the pattern in the other Italo-Western languages), and a schwa in the Eastern ones. This schwa slowly evolved towards an open {{IPA|[ɛ]}}, although in most of the Balearic Islands the schwa is maintained even today. Eastern dialects have some vocalic instability similar to that of Portuguese as well: unstressed {{IPA|[e]}} and {{IPA|[a]}} turn into a schwa (at some point of the evolution of the language, this change did not affect {{IPA|[e]}} in pre-stressed position, a pronunciation that can still be heard in part of the Balearics), and, except in most of Majorca, unstressed {{IPA|[o]}} and {{IPA|[u]}} merge into {{IPA|[u]}}.
== Grammar ==
=== The Romance articles ===
It is difficult to place the point in which the [[definite article]], absent in Latin but present in some form in all of the Romance languages, arose; largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.
Definite articles formerly were demonstrative [[pronoun]]s or [[adjective]]s; compare the fate of the Latin [[demonstrative adjective]] ''ille, illa, (illud)'', in the [[Romance languages]], becoming French ''le'' and ''la'', Catalan and Spanish ''el'' and ''la'', and Italian ''il'' and ''la''. The Portuguese articles ''o'' and ''a'' are ultimately from the same source. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ''ipse, ipsa'' (''su, sa''); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, eg. ''lupul'' ("the wolf") and ''omul'' ("the man" — from ''lupus ille'' and ''*homo ille'')<ref name="Vincent" />, a result of its membership in the [[Balkan linguistic union]].
This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin demonstrative was losing its force. The [[Vetus Latina]] Bible contains a passage ''Est tamen ille dæmon sodalis peccati'' ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate [[sacred text]]s that were originally in [[Greek language|Greek]], which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. [[Egeria (pilgrim)|Aetheria]] uses ''ipse'' similarly: ''per mediam vallem ipsam'' ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force.<ref name="Harrington" />
Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with ''prædictus'', ''supradictus'', and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, ''Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus'' ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough.<ref name="Harrington" /> In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ''ecce'' (originally an [[interjection]]: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian ''ecco''. This is the origin of Old French ''cil'' (*''ecce ille''), ''cist'' (*''ecce iste'') and ''ici'' (*''ecce hic''); Spanish ''aquel'' and Portuguese ''aquele'' (*''eccu ille''); Italian ''questo'' (*''eccu iste''), ''quello'' (*''eccu ille'') and obsolescent ''codesto'' (*''eccu tibi iste''); Spanish ''acá'' and Portuguese ''cá'', (*''ecce hic''), Portuguese ''acolá'' (*''ecce illic'') and ''aquém'' (*''ecce inde''); Romanian ''acest'' (*''ecce iste'') and (*''ecce ille'') and many other forms.
On the other hand, even in the [[Oaths of Strasbourg]], no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages. (''pro Deo amur'' — "for the love of God") Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been too slangy for a royal oath in the 9th century. Considerable variation exists in all of the Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles can be suffixed to the noun, as in other members of the [[Balkan sprachbund|Balkan linguistic union]] and the [[North Germanic languages]].
The numeral ''unus, una'' (one) supplies the [[indefinite article]] in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; [[Cicero]] writes ''cum uno gladiatore nequissimo'' ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests that ''unus'' was beginning to supplant ''quidam'' in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BCE.
=== Gender: loss of the neuter ===<!-- This section is linked from [[Grammatical gender]] -->
[[Image:LatinGenderLoss.svg|right|frame|200px|The genders]]
The three [[grammatical genders]] of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages. In Latin, gender is partly a matter of [[inflection]], i.e. there are different declensional paradigms associated with the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, and partly a matter of [[Agreement (linguistics)|agreement]], i.e. nouns of a certain gender require forms of the same gender in adjectives and pronouns associated with them.
The loss of these final consonants led to a remodelling of the [[Grammatical gender|gender system]].
In Classical Latin, the endings ''-us'' and ''-um'' distinguished masculine from neuter nouns in the second [[declension]]; with both ''-s'' and ''-m'' gone, the neuters merged with the masculines, a process that is complete in Romance. By contrast, some neuter plurals such as ''gaudia'', "joys", were [[back-formation|re-analysed]] as feminine singulars. The loss of the final ''m'' was a process which seems to have begun by the time of the earliest monuments of the Latin language. The [[epitaph]] of [[Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus]], who died around 150 BCE, reads <small>TAVRASIA CISAVNA SAMNIO CEPIT</small>, which in Classical Latin would be ''Taurāsiam, Cisaunam, Samnium cēpit'', "He captured Taurasia, Cisauna, and Samnium". (Note that in the [[Latin alphabet]], the letters ''u'' and ''v'', ''i'' and ''j'' were not distinguished until the early modern period. Upper-case ''u'' and ''j'' did not exist, while lower-case ''j'' and ''v'' were only graphic variations of ''i'' and ''u'', respectively.)
The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases absorbed by the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The syntactical confusion starts already in the [[Pompeii|Pompeian]] graffiti, e.g. ''cadaver mortuus'' for ''cadaver mortuum'' "dead body" and ''hoc locum'' for ''hunc locum'' "this place" (''-us'' was normally a masculine ending, and ''-um'' a neuter ending). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending ''-us'' (''-Ø'' after ''-r'') in the ''o''-declension: in Petronius Arbiter, we find ''balneus'' for ''balneum'' "bath", ''fatus'' for ''fatum'' "fate", ''caelus'' for ''caelum'' "heaven", ''amphiteatrus'' for ''amphitheatrum'' "amphitheatre" and conversely the nominative ''thesaurum'' for ''thesaurus'' "treasure".
In modern Romance languages, the nominative ''s''-ending has been abandoned and all substantives of the ''o''-declension have an ending derived from <small>-UM</small> > ''-u''/''-o''/''-Ø'': <small>MURUM</small> > Italian and Spanish ''muro'', Catalan and French ''mur'' and <small>CAELUM</small> > Italian, Spanish ''cielo'', French ''ciel'', Catalan ''cel'', Sardinian ''kelu''. Old French still had ''-s'' in the nominative and ''-Ø'' in the accusative in ''both'' original genders (''murs'', ''ciels'').
For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem was the productive form in Romance; for others, the nominative/accusative form, which was identical in Classical Latin, was the one that survived. Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French ''(le) lait'', Catalan ''(la) llet'', Spanish ''(la) leche'', Portuguese ''(o) leite'', Italian ''(il) latte'', and Romanian ''lapte(le)'' ("milk"), all derive from the non-standard but attested Latin nom./acc. neut. ''lacte'' or acc. masc. ''lactem''. Note also that in Spanish the word became feminine, while in French, Portuguese and Italian it became masculine (in Romanian it remained neuter, ''lapte/lăpturi''). Other neuter forms, however, were preserved in Romance; Catalan and French ''nom'', Portuguese ''nome'', and Italian ''nome'' ("name") all preserve the Latin nominative/accusative ''nomen'', rather than the oblique stem form *''nominem'' (which nevertheless produced Spanish ''nombre'').<ref name="Vincent" />
{| border="0" align="right" style="margin: 10px;"
! colspan="5" | Typical Italian endings
|-
|
|-
||
| colspan="2" | Nouns
| colspan="2" | Adj. & determiners
|-
| || sing. || plur. || sing. || plur.
|-
|m || ''giardin'''o''''' || ''giardin'''i''''' || ''buon'''o''''' || ''buon'''i'''''
|-
|f || ''donn'''a''''' || ''donn'''e''''' || ''buon'''a''''' || ''buon'''e'''''
|-
|n || ''uov'''o''''' || ''uov'''a''''' || ''buon'''o''''' || ''buon'''e'''''
|}
Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in <small>-A</small> or <small>-IA</small>; some of these were reanalysed as feminine singulars, such as ''gaudium'' ("joy"), plural ''gaudia''; the plural form lies at the root of the French feminine singular ''(la) joie'', as well as of Catalan and Occitan ''(la) joia'' (Italian ''la gioia'' is a borrowing from French); the same for ''lignum'' ("wood stick"), plural ''ligna'', that originated the Catalan feminine singular noun ''(la) llenya'', and Spanish ''(la) leña''. Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g. <small>BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA</small> "arm(s)" > Italian ''(il) braccio'' : ''(le) braccia'', Romanian ''bra{{unicode|ț}}(ul)'' : ''bra{{unicode|ț}}e(le)''. Cf. also [[Merovingian]] Latin ''ipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant''.
Alternations such as ''l'uovo fresco'' ("the fresh egg") / ''le uova fresche'' ("the fresh eggs") in Italian are usually analysed as masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in ''-a'' (heteroclisis). However, it is also consistent with their historical development to say that ''uovo'' is simply a regular neuter noun (< ''ovum'', plural ''ova'') and that the characteristic ending for words agreeing with these nouns is ''-o'' in the singular and ''-e'' in the plural. Thus, neuter nouns can arguably be said to persist in Italian, and also Romanian.
These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin, the names of trees were usually feminine, but many were declined in the second declension paradigm, which was dominated by masculine or neuter nouns. Latin ''pirus'' ("[[pear]] tree"), a feminine noun with a masculine-looking ending, became masculine in Italian ''(il) pero'' and Romanian ''păr(ul)''; in French and Spanish it was replaced by the masculine derivations ''(le) poirier'', ''(el) peral''; and in Portuguese and Catalan by the feminine derivations ''(a) pereira'', ''(la) perera''. ''Fagus'' ("[[beech]]"), another feminine noun ending in ''-us'', is preserved in some languages as a masculine, e.g. Romanian ''fag(ul)'' or Catalan ''(el) faig''; other dialects have replaced it with its adjectival forms ''fageus'' or ''fagea'' ("made of beechwood"), whence Italian ''(il) faggio'', Spanish ''(el) haya'', and Portuguese ''(a) faia''.
As usual, irregularities persisted longest in frequently used forms. From the fourth declension noun ''manus'' ("hand"), another feminine noun with the ending ''-us'', Italian and Spanish derived ''(la) mano'', Catalan ''(la) mà'', and Portuguese ''(a) mão'', which preserve the feminine gender along with the masculine appearance.
Except for the Italian and Romanian heteroclitic nouns, other major Romance languages have no trace of neuter nouns, but all have vestigial, semantically neuter pronouns. French: ''celui-ci, celle-ci, ceci''; Spanish: ''éste, ésta, esto'' (all meaning "this"); Italian: ''gli, le, ci'' ("to him", "to her", "to it"); Catalan: ''ho'', ''açò'', ''això'', ''allò'' ("it", ''this'', ''this/that'', ''that over there''); Portuguese: ''todo, toda, tudo'' ("all of him", "all of her", "all of it"); Venetian: '' 'sto qua, 'sta qua, questo'' (meaning "this") and ''qûeło là, qûeła là, queło=queła'' (meaning "that").
In Spanish, a three-way contrast is also made with the definite articles ''el'', ''la'', and ''lo''. The last is used with nouns denoting abstract categories: ''lo bueno'', literally 'the good' or 'that which is good', from ''bueno'': good; "lo importante", i.e. that which is important.'' "¿Sabes lo tarde que es?"'', literally "Do you know 'the late' that it is?", or more idiomatically "Do you know how late it is?", from ''tarde'': late. This is traditionally interpreted as the existence of a neuter gender in Spanish, although no morphological distinction is made anywhere else but in the singular definite article.
Some varieties of [[Astur-Leonese language|Astur-Leonese]] maintain endings for the three genders such as follows: ''bonu, bona, bono'' ("good").
=== The loss of the noun case system ===
{| font="Arial Unicode MS" align="right" style="margin: 2px; margin-left: 12px;"
! Classical Latin
|-
|Nominative:||''rosa''
|-
|Accusative:||''rosam''
|-
|Genitive:||''rosae''
|-
|Dative:||''rosae''
|-
|Ablative:||''rosā''
|-
! Vulgar Latin
|-
|Nominative:||''rosa''
|-
|Accusative:||''rosa''
|-
|Genitive:||''rose''
|-
|Dative:||''rose''
|-
|Ablative:||''rosa''
|}
The sound changes that were occurring in Vulgar Latin made the [[noun case]] system of Classical Latin harder to sustain, and ultimately spelled doom for the system of [[Latin declension]]s. As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, vulgar Latin moved from being a markedly [[synthetic language]] to a more [[analytic language]] where word order is a necessary element of syntax. Consider what the loss of final /m/, the loss of phonemic vowel length, and the sound shift of ''ae'' from {{IPA|/ai/}} to {{IPA|/ɛ/}} entailed for a typical first declension noun (''see table'').
The complete elimination of case happened only gradually. [[Old French]] still maintained a [[nominative case|nominative]]/[[oblique case|oblique]] distinction (called ''cas-sujet''/''cas-régime''); this disappeared in the course of the 12th or 13th centuries, depending on the dialect. Old Occitan also maintained a similar distinction, as did many of the [[Rhaeto-Romance]] languages until only a few hundred years ago. [[Romanian language|Romanian]] still preserves a separate [[genitive]]/[[dative case]] along with vestiges of a [[vocative case]].
The distinction between [[Grammatical number|singular]] and [[plural]] was marked in two ways in the Romance languages. North and west of the [[La Spezia-Rimini Line|La Spezia-Rimini line]], which runs through northern [[Italy]], the singular was usually distinguished from the plural by means of final -''s'', which was present in the old [[accusative case|accusative]] plurals in masculine and feminine nouns of all declensions. South and east of the La Spezia-Rimini Line, the distinction was marked by changes of final vowels, as in contemporary standard Italian and Romanian. This preserves and generalizes distinctions that were marked on the nominative plurals of the first and second declensions.
=== Prepositions multiply ===
Loss of a productive noun case system meant that the [[syntax]] purposes it formerly served now had to be performed by [[preposition]]s and other paraphrases. These particles increased in numbers, and many new ones were formed by compounding old ones. The descendant Romance languages are full of grammatical particles such as Spanish ''donde'', "where", from Latin ''de'' + ''unde'', or French ''dès'', "since", from ''de'' + ''ex'' or ''dans'', "in" from ''de intus'', "from the inside", while the equivalent Spanish and Portuguese ''desde'' is ''de'' + ''ex'' + ''de''. Spanish ''después'' and Portuguese ''depois'', "after", represent ''de'' + ''ex'' + ''post''. Some of these new compounds appear in literary texts during the late empire; French ''dehors'', Spanish ''de fuera'' and Portuguese ''de fora'' ("outside") all represent ''de'' + ''foris'' (Romanian ''afară'' - ''ad'' + ''foris''), and we find St [[Jerome]] writing ''si quis de foris venerit'' ("if anyone goes outside").<ref name="Harrington" />
As Latin was losing its case system, prepositions started to move in to fill the void. In colloquial Latin, the preposition ''ad'' followed by the accusative was sometimes used as a substitute for the dative case.
'''Classical Latin:'''
:''Jacōbus patrĭ librum dat.'' "James is giving his father a/the book."
'''Vulgar Latin:'''
:''´Jacọmọs ´lẹvrọ a ´patre dat.'' "James is giving a/the book to his father."
Just as in the disappearing dative case, colloquial Latin sometimes replaced the disappearing genitive case with the preposition ''de'' followed by the ablative.
'''Classical Latin:'''
:''Jacōbus mihi librum patris dat.'' "James is giving me his father's book."
'''Vulgar Latin:'''
:''´Jacọmọs mẹ ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre dat.'' "James is giving me the book of (belonging to) his father."
or
:''´Jacọmọs ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre a ´mẹ dat.'' "James is giving the book of (belonging to) his father to me."
=== Adverbs ===
Classical Latin had a number of different suffixes that made [[adverb]]s from [[adjective]]s: ''carus'', "dear", formed ''care'', "dearly"; ''acriter'', "fiercely", from ''acer''; ''crebro'', "often", from ''creber''. All of these derivational suffixes were lost in Vulgar Latin, where adverbs were invariably formed by a feminine [[ablative case|ablative]] form modifying ''mente'', which was originally the ablative of ''mentis'', and so meant "with a _____ mind". So ''velox'' ("quick") instead of ''velociter'' ("quickly") gave ''veloce mente'' (originally "with a quick mind", "quick-mindedly")
This explains the widespread rule for forming adverbs in many Romance languages: add the suffix -''ment(e)'' to the feminine form of the adjective. This originally separate word becomes a suffix in Romance. This change was well under way as early as the 1st century BCE, and the construction appears several times in [[Catullus]], for example in [[Catullus 8]], line 11: ''sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura'' "but carry on obstinately [obstinate-mindedly]: get over it!"
=== Verbs ===
{{further|[[Romance verbs]]}}
The verb forms were much less affected by the phonetic losses that eroded the noun case systems; indeed, an active verb in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] (or other modern Romance language) will still strongly resemble its Latin ancestor. One factor that gave the system of verb inflections more staying power was the fact that the strong [[lexical stress|stress accent]] of Vulgar Latin, replacing the light stress accent of Classical Latin, frequently caused different syllables to be stressed in different conjugated forms of a verb. As such, although the word forms continued to evolve phonetically, the distinctions among the conjugated forms did not erode (much).
For example, in Latin the words for "I love" and "we love" were, respectively, ''amō'' and ''amāmus''. Because a stressed A gave rise to a diphthong in some environments in Old French, that daughter language had ''(j')'''ai'''me'' for the former and ''(nous) '''a'''mons'' for the latter. Though several phonemes have been lost in each case, the different stress patterns helped to preserve distinctions between them, if perhaps at the expense of irregularising the verb. Regularising influences have countered this effect in some cases (the modern French form is ''nous aimons''), but some modern verbs have preserved the irregularity, such as ''je v'''ie'''ns'' ("I come") versus ''nous v'''e'''nons'' ("we come").<ref name="Vincent" />
Another set of changes already underway by the 1st century CE was the loss of certain final consonants. A [[graffiti|graffito]] at [[Pompeii]] reads ''quisque ama valia'', which in Classical Latin would read ''quisquis amat valeat'' ("may whoever loves be strong/do well").<ref name="Harrington" /> In the [[perfect tense]], many languages generalized the ''-aui'' ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel {{IPA|/awi/}}, and the {{IPA|/w/}} sound was in many cases dropped; it did not participate in the sound shift from {{IPA|/w/}} to {{IPA|/β̞/}}. Thus Latin ''amaui'', ''amauit'' ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *''amai'' and *''amaut'', yielding for example Portuguese ''amei'', ''amou''. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of {{IPA|/w/}}.<ref name="Vincent" />
Another major systemic change was to the [[future tense]], remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. This may have been due to phonetic merger of intervocalic {{IPA|/b/}} and {{IPA|/w/}}, which caused future tense forms such as ''amabit'' to become identical to [[perfect tense]] forms such as ''amauit'', introducing unacceptable ambiguity. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb ''habere'', *''amare habeo'', literally "to love I have". This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":
* [[French language|French]]: '''''j'aimerai''''' (''je'' + ''aimer'' + ''ai'') < ''aimer'' ["to love"] + ''ai'' ["I have"].
* [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] and [[Galician language|Galician]]: '''''amarei''''' (''amar'' + [''h'']''ei'') < ''amar'' ["to love"] + ''hei'' ["I have"]
* [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Catalan language|Catalan]]: '''''amaré''''' (''amar'' + [''h'']''e'') < ''amar'' ["to love"] + ''he'' ["I have"].
* [[Italian language|Italian]]: '''''amerò''''' (''amar'' + [''h'']''o'') < ''amare'' ["to love"] + ''ho'' ["I have"].
An innovative [[conditional mood|conditional]] (distinct from the [[subjunctive mood|subjunctive]]) also developed in the same way (infinitive + conjugated form of ''habere''). The fact that the future and conditional endings were originally independent words is still evident in Portuguese, which in these tenses allows [[clitic]] object pronouns to be incorporated as [[infix]]es between the root of the verb and its ending: "I will love" (''eu'') ''amarei'', but "I will love you" ''amar-te-ei'', from ''amar'' + ''te'' ["you"] + (''eu'') ''hei'' = ''amar'' + ''te'' + [''h'']''ei'' = ''amar-te-ei''.
Contrary to the millennia-long continuity of much of the active verb system, which has now survived 6000 years of known evolution, the synthetic [[passive voice]] was utterly lost in Romance, being replaced with [[periphrastic]] verb forms—composed of the verb "to be" plus a passive participle—or impersonal [[reflexive verb|reflexive]] forms—composed of a verb and a passivizing pronoun.
Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this is the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going": ''ire'', ''vadere'', and ''ambulare''. In Spanish and Portuguese ''ire'' and ''vadere'' merged into the verb ''ir'' which derives some conjugated forms from ''ire'' and some from ''vadere''. ''andar'' was maintained as a separate verb derived from ''ambulare''. Italian instead merged ''vadere'' and ''ambulare'' into the verb ''andare''. And at the extreme French merged all three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving from ''vadere'' and ''ambulare'' and the future tense deriving from ''ire''. Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be", ''essere'' and ''stare'', was lost in French as these merged into the verb ''être''.
====Copula====
{{main|Romance copula}}
The [[copula]] (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was ''esse''. This evolved to *''essere'' in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix ''-re'' to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian ''essere'' and French ''être'' through Proto-Gallo-Romance *''essre'' and Old French ''estre'' as well as Spanish and Portuguese ''ser'' (Romanian ''a fi'' derives from ''fieri'' which means "to become"). However, in Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb ''stare'', which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand" to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *''essere'' signified the ''esse''nce, while ''stare'' signified the ''sta''te. ''Stare'' evolved to Spanish and Portuguese ''estar'' and Old French ''ester'' (both through *''estare''), while Italian retained the original form.
The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said (hypothetically, Classical Latin was nearly fully restricted to writing and reserved for rhetorical purposes): ''vir est in foro'', meaning "the man is at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin should have been *''(h)omo stat in foru'', "the man stands at the marketplace", replacing the ''est'' (from ''esse'') with ''stat'' (from ''stare''), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing. The use of ''stare'' in this case was still actually correct assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift from ''essere'' to ''stare'' became more wide-spread, and, in the end, ''essere'' only denoted natural qualities that would not change. (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish ''la catedral está en la ciudad'', "the church is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through ''estar'' in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the church ''stands'' in the city".)
In French, the evolved forms of the two verbs, ''estre'' and ''ester'', merged in the late Middle Ages, as the "s" disappeared from words beginning in ''est-'', as this phenomenon produced Modern French ''être'' and an obscure form *''éter'', which eventually merged.
== See also ==
* [[Oaths of Strasbourg]]
* [[Romance copula]]
* [[Romance languages]]
* [[Veronese Riddle]]
===History of specific Romance languages===
* [[Catalan phonology and orthography]]
* [[History of French]]
* [[History of Portuguese]]
* [[History of the Spanish language]]
* [[Latin to Romanian sound changes]]
* [[Old French]]
== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}
===References===
<small>
*Allen, W. Sidney. (2003). ''Vox Latina – a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin''. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37936-9.
*Boyd-Bowman, Peter. ''From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts''. Contains a great deal of data showing exactly how various Latin words developed into their Romance equivalents.
*Harrington, K. P., J. Pucci, and A. G. Elliott. (1997). ''Medieval Latin''. 2nd edition. Univ. of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-31712-9. Discusses the vocabulary, orthographical, and grammatical changes of Late Latin as they appear in literary sources and texts.
*Herman, József. (2000). ''Vulgar Latin''. First published in French as ''Le latin vulgaire'', Paris, 1967. Trans. by Roger Wright. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-02001-6). A good overview of the phonological, morphological and lexical changes leading to Vulgar Latin and Proto-Romance.
*Palmer, L. R. (1954). ''The Latin Language''. Repr. 1988, Univ. Oklahoma. ISBN 0-8061-2136-X. A general history of the Latin language from the earliest monuments of the language to the present. It confirms that a number of features of early Romance, excluded in classical Latin, appear in early texts.
*{{cite journal| title=Spoken and Written Latin| first=Ernst| last=Pulgram| journal=Language| volume=26| issue=4| year=1950| pages=458–466| doi=10.2307/410397}}
*Sihler, A. L. (1995). ''New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin''. Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8. A more recent comparative grammar giving an etymological treatment with focus on the older language.
*Tucker, T. G. (1931). ''Etymological Dictionary of Latin''. Repr. 1985, Ares Publishers. ISBN 0-89005-172-0. An older attempt at tracing the etymological roots of Latin words.
*Vincent, Nigel. (1990). "Latin". In M. Harris and N. Vincent (eds), ''The Romance Languages''. Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-520829-3. Contains an extensive discussion of the subject, including syntactic changes.
*von Wartburg, Walther. (1928-). ''Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch''. In German and French. An extensively detailed work covering the etymology of French and Occitan words, with a great deal of information on the lexical development of Vulgar Latin.
Various books cover the changes between Latin and specific Romance languages, including:
*For French: Glanville Price (1984) ''The French language: present and past'' (Grant and Cutler) is an excellent overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactic changes occurring between Latin and modern French; Mildred K. Pope (1934) ''From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman Phonology and Morphology'' (Manchester University Press), is an older etymological reference grammar focusing specifically on sound changes; William W. Kibler, ''An Introduction to Old French'' also contains a good account of the sound changes leading to Old French.
*For Spanish: Ralph Penny (2002) ''A History of the Spanish Language'' (Cambridge Univ. Press) covers the sound changes leading to Spanish in exacting detail.
*For Portuguese: Edwin B. Williams (1968) ''From Latin to Portuguese: Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Portuguese Language'' (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press) is the standard reference, and highly detailed.
*For Occitan: William D. Paden, ''An Introduction to Old Occitan'' is a good overview of the changes leading to Old Occitan. (It includes a 150-page glossary of all the terms found in the readings in the book, with extensive etymological information on each.)
</small>
== External links ==
*[http://print.google.com/print?hl=en&id=_OzEl6nLsGIC&lpg=PR4&pg=PR1&printsec=4 ''An Introduction to Vulgar Latin''] by C.H. Grandgent
*[http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Medieval/Dag_Norberg/01.html ''Latin at the End of the Imperial Age''] by Dag Norberg
*[http://www.orbilat.com/index.html Orbis Latinus], a website about Latin and the Romance languages
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