Talk:Vulgar Latin/Archive 1

message: I have not had the chance to check the following two brief comments carefully, but I thought that I'd submit them before I forget them.
Are you sure that domus and magnus do not have any Romance reflexes (via Vulgar Latin)?  I should have thought that domus is reflected in Sp. domo, Fr. dôme, and Italian duomo (obviously the sense has become more specific, viz. referring to [ecclesiastical] architecture) as well as in the titles (Sp.) mayordomo and (It.) maggiordomo (and Fr. majordome?).  As for magnus, Old French has maigne and maine (though there's always an outside possibility that these reflect a Germanic word).
Of course it's always tricky to tell without thorough research that Romance languages have not reborrowed the words later, but these two examples seem worth checking to me. -- A. G. Kozák
:I think that the duomo in Italian may be a Germanic borrowing.  In Swedish, a cathedral is a domkyrka, literally a "judgment church," i.e. the church where the bishop held his court.  Most Romance do keep some forms of magnus for comparison, Spanish has mayor and so forth.  It's sometimes hard to tell whether these words are preserved or reborrowed.  I have expanded the section on vocabulary with some different Classical and Vulgar parallelisms with examples I think are a bit less ambiguous.  Smerdis of Tlön 14:09, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/generic/affiche.exe?32;s=2473386015;d=1;f=2;t=2;r=3; says:  (1)I. DÔME n. m. XVIe siècle, domme. Emprunté de l'italien duomo, « église cathédrale » (XIIIe siècle), du latin domus, « maison », employé dans domus (Dei), « maison de Dieu », domus (episcopi), « maison de l'évêque », d'où « église épiscopale ».  —Casey J. Morris 18:36, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A couple of possibilities 

message: "d'ist di en avant" is translated as "till that day". Shouldn't it be "starting today", or literally "from this day on" ? Bogdan | Talk 20:31, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You're slow!  I corrected that earlier!   — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 21:44, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Oath of Strasbourg translation

message: I've written in the article all the Portuguese "look" that I remember and searched in the diccionary. For further development of that:
 aquele (*eccu ille): that male (person or animal)
 aquela (*eccu illa): that female (person or animal)
 aquilo (*eccu illud): that thing
 cá (*eccu hac): in here
 aqui (*eccu hic): in here
 acolá (*eccu illac): in there
 aquém (*eccu + inde): to here.
-Pedro 12:24, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: aquele, aquela, etc. 

message: I wrote some comments on vowels in the article under the   . -Pedro 19:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What's with the Breves?  I've never seen latin transcriptions use any more than macrons and it seems fairly redundant. AEuSoes1 01:12, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowels

message: Interestingly enough, this metaphor is present in Hungarian as well, at least in the ironic intimidation "kupan vaglak", meaning approximately "I will hit your cup/bowl", ie, your head:).--Tamas 09:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually the metaphor is in English too, roughly: mug = face.  —Muke Tever 17:29, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: pot as metaphor for head

message: "As such, their phonetic erosion was hindered." To speak of phonetic erosion rings with a non-neutral prescriptivist-biased vibe to me.
:Go and change all the articles on glaciers, valleys, mountains and rivers first.   Chameleon 17:16, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Breach of NPOV?

message: There is no fungo in Spanish, if that's what the article means.
:The word appears in my Spanish-English dictionary.  Smerdis of Tlön 16:33, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fungo 

message: What is the origin of the word, "Sí", meaning "yes" in spanish, italian and (sometimes) in french?
Sic - thus, so?
(According to the page about Romanian Language, Latin does not have a word for "yes". Is this true?)
Classical Latin did not have a word for 'yes'. They would have used rough equivalents such as 'Certe'. (Decius)
:Yes, "sí" comes from "sic".  And more strictly correct would be that Latin had several words used for agreement, but not one that corresponds exactly to English "yes".  Apparently the most ordinary word though was "etiam" : Cicero says "aut 'etiam' aut 'non' responde" ("answer either 'yes' or 'no'").  Other yes-like words are ita, sic, sane, maxime, admodum, oppido, certe, plane, and planissime.  (source:   )  —Muke Tever 15:23, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yes 

message: The Classical Latin word caput has survived with the same original meaning in the Romanian word cap, which means the 'head' in the anatomical sense, not metaphorical. Capul Meu means 'my head' in Romanian, showing the article attached to the end of the word (cap-ul). The fact that caput survives as cap in Romanian must be stated in the body of the article. Vulgar Latin testa is not used for the 'head' in Romanian in polite speech, because it resonates with the meaning 'skull' that it has in Romanian.
: Wrong. "Ţeastă" is still used, but mostly with the meaning of "skull", but also as "head". Bogdan | Talk 19:28, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It. capo is used in many metaphorical senses, but also in anatomical sense, competing with It. testa. It is a matter of regional habits and personal taste. 'Headache' is mal di testa and, less frequent but equally correct, mal di capo. Sprocedato 01:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caput 

message: In the section "Gender: loss of the neuter", we read:
:"French le lait, Spanish la leche, Portuguese o leite, and Italian il latte, "milk", all presuppose a Latin accusative *lacte(m), which in fact did not occur in classical Latin in the neuter noun lac.  Note also that Spanish assigned it to the feminine gender, while Portuguese, Italian and French made it masculine."
Oxford Latin Dictionary (1996) cites the following non-standard forms (p. 992):
:"nom. acc. lacte Enn. Ann. 352; Pl. Bac.6; Men.1089; Cato Agr. 86; 150.1; Var. R. 2.1.4; Petr.38.1; Plin.Nat.23.126; etc.; lact Var.Men.26; L.5.104; Plin.Nat.11.232;22.116;acc. lactem Petr.71.1;Apul.Met.8.19;8.28; Gel. 12.1.17"
So the form lactem does in fact occur. Furthermore, the neutre lacte is frequent since our earliest texts. Considering that the Romance forms can come from both lacte and lactem, they cannot serve as a testimony of the loss of the neutre. We must find a better example or rephrase the section so that it focuses on the confusions in Classical Latin.
It would also be useful if we distinguished more explicitly morphological confusion (neutre declensions being absorbed my masculine declensions) from syntactical confusion (old neutres being used with adjectives or pronouns in the masculine). Enkyklios 16:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have separated that paragraph, and amended it to clarify that lacte and lactem are indeed attested non-standard forms.  Smerdis of Tlön 16:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Most neuter gender nouns of the second and third declensions were absorbed by the masculine gender, since the accusative endings -UM or -EM was the same for both. 
But of course -em isn't a neuter accusative ending. So what's the sentence trying to say? Doops |  talk 20:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lac 

message: In general, the article appears to be very good and factually reliable.  One question, however, involves the chart on the development of Vulgar Latin vowel sounds from Classical Latin vowel sounds.  The article has:
:AV (Cl. L. spelling), /au/ (Cl. L. pronunciation),  /au/ (V.L. Pronunciation)
But I had always thought it was:
:AV (Cl. L. spelling), /au/ (Cl. L. pronunciation),  /o/ (V.L. Pronunciation)
(Thus giving, for example: oro (Span., Ital.) from aurum; orejo (Span.), orecchio (Ital.) from aureculum.)
-- Bob Bob99
:The change /au/ > /o/ did in fact occur in just about every Romance language.  However, it happened well after other changes from original VL /o/, and as such /o/ resulting from /au/ is treated differently from /o/ that was /o/ in Classical Latin.  For instance, short Latin /o/ became "uo" in Old French, often written "oeu" in Modern French: CL ovum > MF oeuf, "egg".  And long Latin /o:/ becomes "ou"  or "eu" in French: CL florem > F fleur.  Similar sequences can be constructed in Spanish, Portuguese, and most other Western Romance languages.  But CL aurum, "gold" gets taken into French as or, Spanish oro &c.; the /o/ resulting from CL /au/ is preserved, and does not participate in the changes that original /o/ suffered.  It follows, therefore, that the change to /au/ must have happened at some time after the CL /o/ and /o:/ sounds were changed in the spoken language.  Does this make more sense?  Smerdis of Tlön 04:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  /au/ is preserved in Romanian, South Italian and Provençal (e.g. aurum > Rom., Prov. aur, laudat > Rom. laudă, Prov. lauza), and it becomes /ou/ in [Portuguese language|Portuguese]] (e.g. aurum > ouro, causa > cousa). Furthermore, the monophthongisation of /au/ must be later than the French palatalisation of /k, g/ to // (> //) before original /a/ (e.g. causa > chose, gaudēre > jouir = caballus > cheval, gamba > jambe), and this palatalisation must itself be later than the Frankic conquest (cf. Germ. *kausjan > choisir). However, there was a monophthongisations in certain registers of Classical Latin already, cf. Claudius > Clōdius, auricula > ōricula, and some words have survived with an old monophthong in the Romance languages (cf. cauda > cōda > Rom. coada, Prov. koza, French queue). Enkyklios 15:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question About Vowel Phonology 

message: I'm translating this article and I do not understand the following sentence: thus, I cannot translate it. If it is not explained to me, I will simply remove it from the translation.
:Both the diphthongs AE and OE also fell in with /e/. 
--Zantastik talk 03:59, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It means in essence that a phonemic merger obliterated the difference between the sounds written AE, OE, and E itself, and all of them came to be pronounced as /e/.  
Smerdis of Tlön 04:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about meaning of sentence 

message: I've changed certain things in this article and I don't think any of them are very important. Parts either weren't very clear or didn't make strict grammatical sense. However I can see my removal of the quotation marks enclosing "mistakes" causing problems. Generally I'm suspicious of such use - speech marks here imply that there's something wrong with the term, in which case it shouldn't be used. In fact the term isn't problematic if it's qualified - a mistake is an inadvertent spelling variation - one that an author would not have wished to appear - and in this context there is no requirement for quotes. The term "variations" covers anything that was not erroneous. In practice it's often impossible to divide the two up but I can't see anything wrong with "errors and variations".
I think the following ought to be removed but I would like to know if people agree/ disagree before I do anything:
"Obviously Vulgar Latin is considered lost when the local dialects start collecting enough local characteristics to form a different language. They evolved into Romance languages when an independent value was recognisable in them (e.g. the word for "yes": Oïl, Oc, or Si)."
The first sentence seems a bit circular - basically saying that a language becomes a new language when it changes enough to become a new language. In fact the question of what constitutes a separate language is difficult and controversial and cannot be summarised in a short sentence beginning "obviously". It's not made clear what an "independent value" is independent of (the other languages or the original language?) but it really isn't that clear-cut: it's possible, as in the case of Greek and even English, for a language to alter dramatically in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocab and not to be considered a separate language and it's also possible for regional variations to exist (the two Welsh words for "see") without dialects being called languages.
This part adds nothing to a perfectly good explanation of the divergence of languages.Lo2u 23:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What was Vulgar Latin? 

message: I've just removed a section saying "Vulgar rather than classical Latin is the source of many derivatives in Romance languages" because it's the source of all of the Romance languages and Classical L only really begins to play a big part later on. The "tete" example comes, of course, from original classical words. --Lo2u (T • C) 10:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good call. Not only was tête misspelled in that contribution, its etymology was wrong. (It comes from testa "pot".) User:Angr 10:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vulgar Latin

message: The examples in the "Prepositions multiply" section got me wondering when VL switched from being predominantly SOV to being predominantly SVO. When did ´Jacọmọs ´lẹvrọ a ´ppatre ´dọnat and ´Jacọmọs mẹ ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre ´dọnat become ´Jacọmọs ´dọnat ´lẹvrọ a ´ppatre and ´Jacọmọs mẹ ´dọnat ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre (the normal order in modern Romance languages)? User:Angr 15:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word order 

message: "It means the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin was an artificial literary language; the Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not necessarily the Latin of Cicero. By this definition, Vulgar Latin was a spoken language and "late" Latin was used for writing, its general style being slightly different from earlier "classic" standards."
I feel this and some other paragraphs gives the impression that classical and vulgar latin were two completely seperate languages which was not the case. Classical Latin was merely a higher register of the same language, and was not unintelligable to speakers of vulgar latin. 11th Oct 2006
:I changed that text to the following: "It means the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. Classical Latin represents the literary register of Latin. It represented a selection from a variety of available spoken forms. The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero, and differed from it in vocabulary, syntax, and grammar." - Smerdis of Tlön 19:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is misleading 

message: This section could be improved by adding a discussion of:
*What happened to the verb tenses of Classical Latin in Vulgar Latin: several were replaced with periphrases, others began to be confused, or were repurposed. In particular, the whole system of synthetic passive forms was lost.
*The new verb forms created by Vulgar Latin / Romance, such as the conditional. FilipeS 20:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Verbs section: suggestions for improvement

message: It is correct that, according to Spanish RAE, "lo bueno" or "ello" can be perceived (by a Spanish native speaker) as neuter determinants. But in fact, they are masculine ones. "Ello" substitutes whole phrases, so it works more than a grammatical pronoun than a (neuter) gender determinant. It could be the same as to state that "que" or "cual" ("cuál de ellos") is also a particle of neuter gender. On the other hand, "lo" comes from archaic articles elo, ela, elos, elas (from which accusative pronouns comes from too), only two-gender, not neuter at all, and anomalistic forms (vg. el águila, from ela aguila, since "águila" is femenine) are common. "Lo" is not a neuter article, but a masculine one with stressed vowel (last one) instead of unstressed ones.212.51.52.5 12:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Semantically, it is just as neuter as English "it". FilipeS 13:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so. The English "it" refers to neuter terms, I mean, you cannot refer to them with other pronouns than "it". Neither a mountain or a whole can be referred as "he" or "she" (when exceptions, like in ships, you don't use "it" of course). Such Spanish "neuter" is not a neuter at all just for this. "Esto es LO bueno", it is not neuter, it is masculine, you can say "Esta es LA [cosa] buena". I think the difference is clear. "¿Sabes LO tarde que es?" (out of date "¿Sabes CUÁN tarde es?", but more correct form), but "¿Sabes LA hora que es?". Etymologically, you can trace very well since Portuguese has not this problem, "o/a" vs. Spanish "el-lo/la" (<elo/ela). I mean, it is perceived by a native speaker as a rare thing, but it is masculine. The article is very clear (and correct), all of neuter in Western Romances were absorbed by masculine gender.212.51.52.5 13:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

text: However, you cannot say *Esto es EL bueno or *¿Sabes EL tarde que es? When used as abstract nouns, such words require the neuter article. That's different from English, where using "she" for ships is optional, not required. FilipeS 17:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see your point of view now. But, you are identifying "lo" with a neuter, and that "lo" is not a neuter ("ello" neither), the accusative pronouns are "lo, la, los, las" and come from the same origin that the articles. That "lo" is masculine, not neuter. It is a curiosity of the evolution of Spanish from Latin such a doublet like "el-lo". You can not say also "se EL di" (for "se LO di"). The origin of those "el-lo" are the same word (vulgar latin "ello"), and it is not the case of Portuguese "isto, isso, aquilo", for instance, which in despite of coming, in fact, from the latin neuter forms, no one say they are marking neuter gender -they do not refer to neuter terms. All Romance languages work like if all were masculine, unless it was clearly stated it is femenine. No neuter exist. I'm saying all this precisely because of Western Romances not to have neuter gender, and I think it is confuse to say Spanish has a neuter gender (and in my opinion all this matter are not neuter, absolutely not like it was in Latin and it is in other indoeuropean languages with neuter gender).212.51.52.4 21:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I know what RAE says. RAE cannot can explain (to me) why "sino" ("but") does not mark with tilde ("sinó") and the various Academies (the Spanish and the Latin American ones) cannot agree if "guión" or "guion" (depending on the Academy considering it monosyllabic or bisyllabic), and worse things. I am not questioning anything of this, Academies can sing Masses (in fact they did in the past), I'm only trying to say it is absurd to state in an article that neuter gender did not pass to Western Romances and to say a few after that Spanish has neuter gender. Of course if RAE is the last word on the matter, say no more.212.51.52.5 02:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

text: You are right, but it is not the matter. Excuse me if I explain so badly, but the point I'm trying to make clear is that Western Romances has not neuter gender at all, and Western Vulgar Latin (or as you like it) has not too. So, either you say such "neuter anomalies" come directly from Vulgar Latin, and the article is inconsistent, or there is no neuter (or they are "a posteriori" constructions, or as you like it). I hope to explain better this time. Anyway, it is a mere paragraph and this is too much noise for too little, and by the way, if "todo, toda, tudo" is an example of sort-of-neuter, I think it is also the same case of "algum, alguma, alguém", "nenhum, nenhuma, ninguém", "outro, outra, outrem" and the "isto, isso, aquilo" set of invariable (not neuter) words. Thanks a lot for your answers.212.51.52.7 23:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Neuter" in Spanish

message: Howdid it work, that italian nouns like 'amico' (lat. amicus) became its -o ending. Is the ablative responsible ?? ( lat. leo,leonis became ital. leone, and that's the former ablative form of leo)
--89.52.74.131 17:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  -o ending in italian nouns 

message: Neuter fully exists in Romanian. I have no idea why this article says it doesn't. Could anyone explain this to me?
Actually, the vast majority of words for objects in Romanian are neuter. Romanian has almost fully inherited neuter from Latin. I would correct this, but I feel others might know better exactly how, because I don't want to mess that section that's already very complicated. Can someone do this? Thanks. Mirc mirc 16:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you speak Romanian you have the authority to change the offending sentence. Please name a source, too, if you can. The authors will be grateful for an article free of embarrassing mistakes. RedRabbit1983 07:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neuter in Romanian 

message: I'd like to call your attention to these sentences:
Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris, "common speech") is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages.
This needs to be made clearer: did Vulgar Latin begin when Latin did?
It means variation within Latin (socially, geographically, and chronologically) that differs from the perceived Classical literary standard.
Why is the Classical literary standard perceived? Isn't this like calling red a perceived colour rather than a real one? The word perceived diminishes the difference between the two types of Latin. 
I'd also suggest links to sound files of phonetic symbols. 
By the way, why are there so few references? RedRabbit1983 01:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems 

message: Unless the definition of this term is different in English than in my language, there's something not quite right here. Apocope is the loss unstressed vowels in the last syllable, not the loss of consonants, as far as I know. I do not know, though, what the appropriate term is. Can anybody help?--Alexlykke (talk) 13:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It can refer to both: In many cases the loss of an unstressed vowel in the final syllable resulted in the lost of the following noun.  For example, Latin panem became Spanish pan, French pain, Portuguese pão, Romanian pâine, etc. •Jim62sch•dissera! 17:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apocope 

message: Beware this sentence: The Latin brought by Roman soldiers to Gaul, Iberia or Dacia was not identical to the Latin of Cicero,....  Cicero rewrote his speeches to fit the conventions of "proper" Latin.  •Jim62sch•dissera! 17:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cicero

message: The subordinate clause might be of value, but it's not phrased well: For many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Vulgar Latin continued to coexist with a written form of Late Latin, which is currenly 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. •Jim62sch•dissera! 18:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Subordinate clause

message: The table at the bottom of the article. To my knowledge, the period of 200-900 is not a period of "Vulgar Latin", but a period of "Late Latin". Late Latin surely consists of Vulgar Latin too, but not solely, as the litterary language did not cease to exist after 200 AD. This is also the cause of some confusions in the article itself, and also in Latin spelling and pronunciation, where one can get an impression, that the authors cannot clearly decide, whether the Vulgar Latin is confined to the vulgar speech of late periods (like III/IV/V century), or it also existed in Classical times. This looks like a major inconsitency. Mamurra (talk) 10:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ages of Latin 

message: This scholarly Latin, "frozen" by Justinian's codifications of Roman law on the one hand, and by the Catholic Church on the other, was eventually unified by the medieval copyists
:What exactly was unified? Mamurra (talk) 12:57, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scholarly Latin 

message: Jacọmọs mẹ ´lẹvrọ dẹ ´patre dat. - are these forms actually attested for imperial period, or they're purely restored from the Romance? In either case, for which century they're supposed to be valid? Mamurra (talk) 09:40, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jacomos 

message: *(h)omo stat in foru - the asterisk means that the sentence is hypothetical, but I think that it is also made hyper-vulgar, as foru is acc. But this section is about copula, and not about the confusion of cases, so this bit rather looks like someone was trying to amuse himself with the violation of syntax. I think writing in foro instead is okay, and the sentence remains vulgar enough just by the usage of homo instead of vir. Mamurra (talk) 10:04, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Corrected. Mamurra (talk) 13:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foru 

message: Classical Latin	Vulgar Latin	English  	Meaning of VL word in CL
bellum         	*guerra     	war      	(Germanic origin)
cogitare       	pensare     	think    	weigh, ponder
edere or esse  	manducare   	eat      	chew
emere          	comparare   	buy      	arrange, settle
equus          	caballus    	horse    	gelding, nag
feles          	catta       	cat      	(unkown origin)
hortus         	*gardinus   	garden   	(Germanic origin)
ignis          	focus       	fire     	fireplace
ludere         	jocare      	play     	joke
omnes          	totos       	all      	whole
os             	bucca       	mouth    	cheek
pulcher        	bellus      	beautiful	pleasant
urbs           	civitas     	city     	citizenship
verbum         	parabola    	word     	comparison (from Greek)
vesper         	sera        	evening  	late
What about adding a column to the table? I'm concerned with the fact that almost every entry in the table has a note reporting the original meaning of the word used in Vulgar Latin. Since shifts of meaning are relevant to the subject, why not put them systematically in the table itself? Sprocedato (talk) 16:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any objections except what I expressed above (that the entries of bellus/comparare as being vulgar, and opposed to pulcer/emere as being classical are doubtful IMHO). Mamurra (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vulgar Latin vocabulary - sample table 

message: I see that a dispute has started about the infinitive of edo "eat". It's not central to this article, but I quite understand the desire for precision. I think that every sudent of Latin has learned the peculiarities of the verb edo, with its contracted or athematic forms. Seldom is our attention drawn to the existence of "regular" forms parallel to the "irregular" ones.
If edere is postclassical we should cite the infinitive in the table as esse (edo), or something very similar. If it's also classical we should put both forms esse or edere.
Interested people can quote or reference the dictionaries available to them.
Ferruccio Calonghi, Dizionario Italiano Latino, 3rd Ed., Rosenberg & Sellier, 1950, reports the entry as "ĕdo, ēdi, ēsum, ĕdĕre and esse -> estur, Plaut.; essetur (ederetur), Varr. - subj. edim, edis, etc., Plaut.; perf. eserim (esserim), Apul.; partic. estus, Placit." According to the conventions used in the dictionary this implies that the infinitive in classical Latin could be both edere and esse, but it's not explicit about that, and the forms of the present active indicative are strangely not dealt with.
Lewis & Short, 1879, is available online as part of the Perseus Project, and here's the direct link to edo. It says that there is an occurrence of pres. ind. uncontr. edit in Cic. Att. 13, 52; there is no mention at all of edere, but the sentence "the contracted forms are very frequent" is ambiguous, because it says nothing about the frequency of uncontracted forms.
The Oxford Latin Dictionary (1968-1982 edition), has "edō esse ēdī ēsum (essum) Forms: pres. ind. edo, (es), est, edimus, estis, edunt; pass. estur. Pres. subj. edam or (less common in class. and later Latin) edim. Impf. subj. essem (but ederent Gel. 19.2.7); pass. essetur cj. in Var.L.5.106. Imp. es (or esto), este. Pres. inf. esse; pass. edi. essum, essurus, etc. (= esum, esurus) Pl.Cur.228, Men.147, etc. Pros.: -i- of pres. subj. presumed long on analogy of sim, sīs, etc., though quantity actually certain only in Pl.Poen.537 (and by cj. in Nov.com.6)." Here inf. edere is altogether absent, therefore considered unattested in classical Latin.
Although none of the above sources is sufficiently explicit, I'm inclined to think, at least provisionally, that edere cannot be considered classical. -- Sprocedato (talk) 22:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae explicitly says that "edere" is found first in Tertullian. So as long as it isn't proven wrong, I think that this has to be considered decisive. Mamurra (talk) 13:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''esse'' and ''edere'' 

message: What is written on the graffitto? Could I ask for a translitteration? Mamurra (talk) 18:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can see "<AV>RELIVM" and "C LOLLIVM LVSCVM" below. The rest is illegible, but anyways, I don't think that this graffitto can prove, that "spoken" Latin was different than the written one - rather the opposite. Despite tha fact that this seems to be a pretty official inscription. My proposition is to remove the image, then. Mamurra (talk) 13:10, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Compliments for what you managed to read! I agree with you: it's an exhortation to vote some political candidates with nothing "vulgar" in it, except for soiling a wall in the public street. There are some transliterations of Pompeiian Graffiti here. They are indistinguishable, as to the language, from classical Latin. Of course there may be others more representative of vulgar Latin, but I think that Pompeii is the wrong place to search. Sprocedato (talk) 23:41, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I'll remove the image right away then. For the inscriptions, in meantime I have found something, that is prima facie classical, but in wider context it is deviant, as it says "VALETIS" where one would expect "VALETE". So there is some confusion of endings, which is easily observable in late periods, and hence a conclusion is drawn, that this phenomenon occurred already in vulgar speech in 1st century AD. Still, this conclusion is a hypothesis, and as such is debatable, because one can think that a confusion between -etis and -ete may be explained differently, for example by Greek substratum (where there is no difference between indic. and imperat. praes act. in 2nd. pl.). Anyway, there is no place here to discuss such details. Mamurra (talk) 14:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pompeian graffitto 

message: I am about to revert this edit. The reason being, that much of the features of vulgar Latin (incl. such words as "guerra") was deduced from Romance languages, incl. Italian. So, showing similarity of it to Italian (or any other Romance language) seems completely pointless and looks like a circular reasoning. Objections? Mamurra (talk) 23:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Showing similarity to Italian 

message: "hostiae non ostiae", although note that this is a hypercorrection
:How this can be a hypercorrection? "hostiae" ("the victims") is not a hypercorrect form, it is simply correct. Mamurra (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology: hypercorrection? 

message: I was reading the section that compares sentences in Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin and while I do not know Vulgar Latin the sentences in Classical Latin are a poor illustration of Classical Latin.  The translations into English while successfully retaining approximate meaning completely change the usage of words so that the English objects are not the same as how they are declined in Latin.  --Tempestswordsman (talk) 01:05, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparing Classical and vulgar Latin 

message: Has any Romance language retained latin's vowel length distinctions?
In Friulian there is phonemic vowel length distinction, but this is a later development unrelated with the vocalic system of latin. In most Romance languages the vowels in open stressed syllables are longer than in closed stressed syllables. In Friulan this difference happened to become phonemic, probably when long consonants were lost.
For example, the minimal pair given in the article about Friulian language
: lat	(milk)
: lât	(gone)
is likely to derive from older Friulian
: *latte
: *allado
Thus, it is not correct to say that Friulian has retained vowel length distinctions. It has reintroduced them at a later time in a different phonetic system.
I propose to drop this claim from the article. Sprocedato (talk) 13:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I just did this.  The phonemic length distinction in Middle French (and still indicated in spelling, with a circumflex) is likewise a secondary development, stemming mostly from /s/ that dropped before another consonant but lengthened the previous vowel in the process. Benwing (talk) 04:01, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Retention of vowel length distinctions 

message: This article has the makings of a good article; there is a lot of good material here. However, it suffers from over-zealousness on the part of one or more editors needing improvement in their understanding and technique. One of the biggest deficits is erring on the side of guesswork. The editors need to understand that if you don't know and can't substantiate an item it is far better not to include it. Anyone can make up a story filling in the details as required. That is not what we are doing here. As you tell the story and gaps occur you turn to the resources to fill them; you don't guess. Truth is in fact stranger than fiction and typically you can't guess it. If the gaps can't be filled you start taking about the lack of knowledge and the debatability. Not taking that approach is the main cause of the many fact templates put on this. It is also much too long for the topic. I'm going to be editing now for a while weeding out unsupported statements, looking for duplicate material, cross-referencing and thinking of ways to improve the format. Then I will look at the numerous comments and suggestions of this discussion to see if they all have been addressed.Dave (talk) 13:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Don't despair

message: It isn't customary to put editor reviews in the bibliography, as first of all, it is book report material and is the editor's personal assessment, and second it doubles the length of the bibliography. The article is about the subject, not the books, and even if it were about the books, you couldn't give your personal opinion.Dave (talk) 19:38, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Book reviews

message: German Volk and English folk although related etymologically are not exactly the same thing. I KNOW Dietz used Volksprache, but we aren't Diez and we aren't explicitly German. It was the great Deutches Volk in whose name the chancellor of the 3rd Reich committed all his depravities and conceived the Volkswagen (now the sport Wagen of only the rich Volk). In a nutshell Volk is about equivalent to people, but we don't do things in the name of the people if we can possibly help it except on a constitutional level (the American people). We don't take as great an interest in being sacrificial lambs for the people, as we are in fact the people (in contrast to other ideologies). We find the wholesale suicide required of the Volk in recent times a bit horrifying. We haven't yet got out from under its black shadow. Now, the English folk are a different story. You can find them hiding under rock somewhere all dressed up in fairy suits as elves should be, or drinking away in a pub in the most rustic villages of merry old England, or trying to use those wierd beakers the beaker folk are supposed to have used. They certainly aren't to be confused with any English-speaking population such as brought the Stuarts under constitutional control, won a major war against the Volk or built a constitutional democracy in the new world. Folks don't do that sort of thing. If you're the boss you can call people folks or if you are talking family to a friend you might use the term "my folks" if you get along with those folks, or if you want to sell someone something and desire to establish a rapport you might pretend hypocritically that they are folks, to the total disgust of those aforementioned folks. Volk is not folk and neither is the vulgus. So I am going to remove the Volk/folk from the article and you phil-Germanists can find some other basis for getting along. We don't need any 60-year-old propanganda.Dave (talk) 15:58, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: the People and the Folk

message: The amusing slaves of Plautus and Terence may be using some vulgar latin items in the inventory but there is no evidence at all that they were speaking or ever spoke a creole. Most people have no idea what a basilect is (and neither do you) so they don't know enough to tag it. I would say, either undergo a course of study to find out what you are talking about or stop with the incomprehensible patois.Dave (talk) 13:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Basilectal Latin features

message: Throughout this article and its spin-offs is the notion that vocabulary was "changed" in early Romance languages and Vulgar Latin words "replaced" classical words. There were no changes, no replacements. None of those documents were ever in classical Latin so how could anything be replaced in them? Classical Latin did not "change" into Vulgar Latin, it changed into Mediaeval Latin. Nothing changed, except Vulgar Latin into Romance Languages. I have no idea where this alteration concept came from, except possibly from some philological hypothetical expectation of seeing classical words in the documants, which was "changed" when Vulgar Latin words were discovered there, or else out of the editor's imagination. Deal with it as you may, I'm not letting the error stand..Dave (talk) 13:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes and Replacements

message: Some of this material is in the vocabulary article, some not. I have the present article down to 69 kB and that continues to be too long. The Reichenau glosses section is actually set up so it could be the stub of a new article. I'm inclined to do that and I don't think I need a special request. I need a few moments to get my courage and enthusiasm up. Meanwhile if you have any thoughts sound off. It could be merged in with the vocabulary article but then it would lose its unity. The other article is for "select" vocabulary and does not currently contain all the Reichenau Glossary. For all the categories and what not I would just copy the current as is relevant.Dave (talk) 18:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. CapnPrep (talk) 21:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Reichenau glosses

message: I am not sure if the photo of an inscription corresponds properly to the statement expressed somewhat below that the vulgar Latin as a language was "unwritten". Mamurra (talk) 15:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. The language was and was not unwritten. There is little or no continuous prose in it and no one consciously sat down to write "Vulgar Latin." But, when they did write Latin sometimes they used vulgar expressions, The point is made later but perhaps it needs to be made earlier. I altered the text to respond to this comment. Understand, this article needs much more work, but I see nothing wrong with making this small fix until we get around to the rest of it.Dave (talk) 10:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The photo of the inscription 

message: we find St Jerome writing si quis de foris venerit ("if anyone goes outside").
Sure, that de foris actually means "outside" in this place? venire is not "to go", but "to come", and de foris looks much like the classical foris, i.e. "from outside". So I suspect that the suggested translation may be wrong, it should be "if anyone comes from outside". And this in turn, shows no parallel to the Romance examples adduced in the relevant section. Mamurra (talk) 09:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Replaced with a better example. Mamurra (talk) 13:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So did I have the feeling that this phrase meant "if anyone comes from outside", and I was disturbed by the translation. --Plijno (talk) 23:32, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  De foris 

message: The image in the information box shows the extent of the Roman Empire. In half of those territories the main language was greek. Hence the article is bullshit. 201.252.49.96 (talk) 18:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: My dear sir, your language is very colorful. It sounds like vernacular New England, which in its formative stages was once concerned with cleaning the stalls of cattle at 4:00 in the morning. In my youth I actually had a job doing that on a farm long since sold off and rendered into condos. Here, however, you are too hasty. We never said Latin was exclusively spoken there. It was spoken by some elements of society, mainly Roman officialdom. In fact the Byzantine Empire used a lot of Latin words rendered into Greek. But why stop there? Almost the whole range included populations that spoke other languages. We are trying to improve WP here. This is a process of gradual modification. We cannot get to every piece of BS instantaneously. You seem attracted to WP, otherwise you would not be giving us your feelings on it. Why don't you consider contributing? I think however you will have to stop pampering your impatience. It takes a lot of patience to work on WP. Rome was not built in a day.Dave (talk) 11:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The range of Latin, 60 AD 

message: Seems too coincidental to me: the closeness of the regions, the relevant historical periods, the distinctly similar pronunciation of these two terms. Yet no mention at all anywhere that I can see of any connection between the words. Am very curious and would like to see discussion by any linguist or historian with knowledge to share about any relationship between them.
Tariqa1153 (talk) 18:03, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The origin of 'Bulgar' isn't precisely known, and is often connected to the river Volga. But in early Bulgarian sources the people refer to themselves as 'Blugarinu', which is different from Volga. The Latin word 'vulgar' comes from Latin vulgaris, which meant 'common, ordinary' and derives from vulgus, which meant the 'common people'. That is why it refers to the ordinary spoken Latin of the Roman empire, the Latin of the 'vulgus', of the common people. CodeCat (talk) 20:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bulgar vs Vulgar 

message: From the main article:
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.
Note in Spanish haya is feminine, despite using the article "el", to avoid cacophony ("el" is used when the following word starts with "a", as in "el águila" but "las águilas" where there is no cacophony. And "el haya" (as the h is silent), but "las hayas".
Maybe another example can be chosen.
186.58.188.139 (talk) 23:28, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I removed the articles from that part of the sentence. Another solution would be to use the indefinite article, but it seems to me like unnecessary clutter. CapnPrep (talk) 08:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The loss of neuter 

message: The cluster [kw] ⟨qu⟩ was simplified to [k] in most instances. In 435, one can find quiscentis instead of quisquentis ("of the person who rests here").
That's wrong. The word which is meant is "quiescentis". So perhaps the examples are reversed, i.e. there is "quiesquentis" on the inscription as a hyperurbanism for the correct "quiescentis"? -212.87.13.78 (talk) 23:42, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, you were right! I've just corrected it. Thanks!--Fauban 11:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  quiscentis 

message: Why are forms other than the acc used as etymological sources? •Jim62sch•dissera! 00:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Because sometimes the Romance forms do not go back to the accusative, e. g. French pâtre 'shepherd' < Latin nominative pastor; Spanish nombre 'name', apparently from ablative nōmine. Also because sometimes scholars prefer to quote the Latin forms in the basic (= nominative) form rather than the accusative, when speaking of the word and not of its form. --Zxly (talk) 21:27, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Why not accusative?

message: Some of the classical only words are not classical only. I found four of them in Romanian:
*Latin albus -> Romanian alb (white)
*Latin cogitare > Romanian cugeta (to think)
*Latin equus > Latin equa (feminine) -> Romanian iapă (female horse); qu -> p is a common phonetic change, cf. aqua -> apă (water)
*Latin scire -> Romanian şti (to know)
bogdan (talk) 00:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know if this is the case, but these words may have survived from the classical vocabulary spoken by the elite. The explanation is probably that the Vulgar latin vocabulary varied. I know for a fact that Rheto-Roman uses a word derived from 'albus' for white. So yes, you are probably right that these words are not classical only, but maybe they were classical only in most of western Europe, rumanian is sort of deviant from the other latin languages anyway, so...--Alexlykke (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Latin cogitare has also survived in Spanish cuidar, that nowadays means "be careful", "take care of", "look after". The phonetic development points to a popular use during the Middle Ages, and the shift of meaning is consistent with the presence of pensare as "think". But pensare itself is problematic, because the n in that position should have dropped already in the I century AD, at least in the spoken language. Spanish has in fact the doublet pesar "weigh" and pensar "think". When did the pronunciation get differentiated? When was pensare readopted displacing cogitare from its former role? Sprocedato (talk) 00:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This indicates that pensare was originally a learned word that at some point in the early Middle Ages became adopted as a popular word in most of the Romance area.  Note that Old French also has cuidier meaning "believe" and plenty of other seemingly vanished Classical words, e.g. rien "thing", estovoir "to be necessary" (from est opus; cf. Old Spanish huebos es), polle "girl" (Lat. puella), etc. Benwing (talk) 03:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course albus, cogitare, equa, scire are not "Classical only", they are simply Latin. Their substitution with blank, pensare, iumentum, sapere took place too late to embrace the whole of the Romance-speaking world. Rumanian is not deviant here, but it faithfully continues the Latin use. --Zxly (talk) 21:40, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classical only words 

message: :Not to be confused with Latin profanity.
Oh, no… Is this a joke? Would anybody actually get these confused? —Wiki Wikardo 12:40, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You know, this hatnote has long bothered me. The article on Latin profanity started out as something rather scurrilous with mainly references to body parts and practices more or less repressed by our society; certainly not polite. The profanity article was more or less thinly disguised porn. But, I've encountered porn on WP before. In fact in some locations the editors were listing porn sites as references. I did a lot of railing against it. A whole movement developed of scholarizing deviant sexuality or publishing porn under the disguise of WP articles. Such terms as pederasty were given sexual connotations. It was suggested that the a major contribution of the Dorian people to Greek culture was the sexual abuse of children. It seemd pretty clear that unless something were done these people were going to take over WP. The administration did not know what to do about it. At first Jim tried removing the scurrilous stuff. Then suddenly he became aware of the protection of free speech so he stopped removing it. It was I who pointed out that much of this material was actually criminally illegal. Suddenly there was a concern for legality. I had really to stop involving myself. When WP reached the point of our having to deal with this material on a regular basis then I was going to quit WP and abandon it as ruined and regard it as a failed experiment. Then there was a great explosion of articles. The administration must have done something as I believe there has been a decline of scurrilous material. The articles to which I objected were altered, fine distinctions were being made. That is the background. Now, I knew I would not be allowed to remove this scurrilous hatnote. I would be taking on the panderers full tilt (panderers, according to Dante there is a special place in the afterworld for you). There is after all a scurrilous side to Roman society, nowhere so evident as at those pleasure cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum. When the Roman soldier flung one of those heavy darts they used sometimes it accompanied a note that it might find its way to a certain anatomical part of the enemy commander. That stuff should be documented, but in polite language. So, here is what I did instead. I brought some of the Pompeii frescos to public attention by putting them up front in the article. These are on Commons; anyone can view them. They are what amounts to French postcards, as we used to call them. Well, wouldn't you know it, they were removed! That is not what the public wants after all. They don't want us to be panderers. Not only that but the whole existence of the article has been seriously questioned. I've jumped in on what I consider the right side. Let's either rise to a scientific or medical level on this or else let's put all this stuff back in the closet. The article is not about Latin profanity. It has to go as such. Therefore this hatnote has to go. I have slightly more authoriy now than I had then so I am just removing it in the hope that you will leave it out. People who are interested in Latin language should not have to be redirected at the top to an article on Latin scurrilous language. You didn't want to see Pompeii pictures there. Why would you want to read all about bodily functions? Is that what the Roman people were all about? No more than any other people, I dare say. This is an encyclopedia. Let's keep this material distinct and not inflict it on serious researchers.Dave (talk) 10:53, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latin profanity 

message: In the section regarding Origins the book title: Grammaire comparée des langues de l'Europe latine dans leurs rapports avec la langue des troubadours. Is it possible to get this book title, translated into English. I am just learning to speak French, and thought that someone else that may not speak any French, might need to see English equivalent title. Can an English equivalent be added to this section Cmurdock1955 (talk) 17:21, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  English equivalent of this French  book title 

message: The section about verbs mentions that the verbs andar(e) in many Romance languages derives from ambulare. I find this very unlikely... why did -mbul- develop into -nd-, and not into, say -mbl-? I have found other explanations of this in other places, which mention that the origin is not ambulare but ambitare. That makes much more sense phonetically: -mbit- > -mbt- or -mbd- > by assimilation -nd-. CodeCat (talk) 12:52, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambulare 

message: A brief section with references is necessary on the general transition from VSO to VSO and less flexibility. John Holly (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syntax Section Needed 

message: "As early as 722, in a face to face meeting between Pope Gregory II, born and raised in Rome, and Saint Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon, Boniface complained that he found Pope Gregory's Latin speech difficult to understand, a clear sign of the transformation of Vulgar Latin in two regions of western Europe." I'm not sure this is a good example as wouldn't Boniface speak Latin as second language? So he would have learned something more formal perhaps even "classical" Latin, vs the pope who would have spoken vulgar Latin.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.66.145.0 (talk) 17:54, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not to nitpick 

message: "Vulgar Latin" is a slippery term, but it seems to me that it can be thought of approximately as the common speech during the Roman Empire, and somewhat similar to "Proto-Romance" (given the caveats I added in the section on Proto-Romance).  Given this, a lot of the current discussion in this Vulgar Latin article is inappropriate, since it covers changes over much longer periods, basically all the changes leading up to the modern Romance languages.  The article Romance languages seems a much more obvious place to put this.  Currently there's a quite random separation of subject matter with a great deal of overlap.  I'm planning on moving much of the discussion of sound changes, grammatical changes, etc. to the Romance languages article, since there isn't really any obvious way to separate out the developments during the Roman Empire from later developments; nor would you want to.
Scholarly works bear me out on this.  Discussions of sound changes, vowel changes, loss of case, etc. usually go in works titled "The Romance Languages" or similar.  Works titled "Vulgar Latin" are much more limited in their focus, and have greater detail.  They attempt to specifically reconstruct the speech of the common people during the Roman Empire using documentary evidence (e.g. works like the Appendix Probi, works with misspellings and other "vulgar" works).
Compare e.g. Germanic languages with Proto-Germanic.
Comments?
Benwing (talk) 05:59, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree.  I made the same comment below. 108.254.160.23 (talk) 18:04, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Planning to move lots of stuff to [[Romance languages]] 

message: I'm not sure if the interpretation given in this article is really indisputable. In Oscan, there is a clear distinction between the two inherited types of ending: the primary ending -t and the secondary -d. Secondary endings appear in all subjunctive forms. Final -d was lost after unstressed syllables in Latin (like in the ablative singular), and the secondary ending -d is still found in some Old Latin texts I believe. So it's quite possible that valia actually is an archaism here, and reflects the loss of -d rather than of -t. This doesn't apply to ama of course, but in classical Latin the primary -t eventually replaced the secondary -d/ø, and there's no reason as such that in vulgar speech the analogy couldn't work the other way around too. That is, amat lost its ending to conform to valea, which had lost it regularly. CodeCat (talk) 21:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I wish that before starting theoreticizing on these forms, scholars took a look at the source of that inscription, its general credibility and the reliability of the widespread reading. I especially recommend CIL and the comments the editor has left there. -89.65.254.38 (talk) 18:25, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "quisque ama valia" 

message: In the section "Loss of distinctive length and near-close mergers", the passage "In the 3rd century AD, Sacerdos mentions the tendency..." requires disambiguation. According to this source, Sacerdos is a Roman grammarian, the same identified by this other source] in full as Marius Plotius Sacerdos. There is an article on the Slovak Wikipedia (sk:Marius Plotius Sacerdos) if anyone would like to translate. In the meantime I have replaced the disambiguation link with an interlanguage redlink. Ivanvector (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sacerdos? 

message: The second paragraph of the article begins with the sentence: "The broad term Vulgar Latin should not be confused with the more specific term Proto-Romance..." No Problem. Thank you very much for that particular info. BUT, immediately following the second paragraph is the article's Table of Contents, and following that, lo and behold, the FIRST section that should be dealing with specifics or details as to what Vulgar Latin is, is the section dealing with "Proto-romance".
Since the second paragraph of the article (quoted above) clearly states that Vulgar Latin and Proto-Romance are two distinct items I think the entire section on Proto-Romance should be moved to the end of the article altogether or made an article or stub of its own with a link from Vulgar Latin to get to it, perhaps directly from the second paragraph where the concept is referred to first. My reasoning for this change is simple. Not everyone coming to this page will be a linguist, English major or Latin language specialist. Chances are they will want to know about the article's primary raison d'etre, and I find it foolish to have detail posted about something else altogether in the lead-off paragraph immediately following the Table of Contents. Ultimately, if what the article currently says about Proto-Romace is true, it seems that Proto-Romance is another subject altogether or is some sort of lateral "sibling" concept or derivative of the subject of this article, so therefore it should be posted at the end of this article as a "see also" or something to that effect. 
To have an article about another subject, not to mention with dubious sources or lack thereof (as noted in the Proto-Romance heading), is hardly good article formatting / Editing. I'm not about to re-write this article as I am not an expert on this (these) particular subject(s) or WikiPedia programming, so I'm requesting that another more capable editor will take it upon them self to move the Proto-Romance section en masse to where they think is a more appropriate place in the article on Vulgar Latin further down in the article's details, or at the end of the article or make it it's own article or stub altogether as I suggested above. But to leave "Proto-Romance" where it currently is, (immediately following the Table of Contents), only serves to confuse the definition of Vulgar Latin which is the primary purpose of this article. Therefore it's just foolish and - dare I say "unprofessional" - to have "Proto-Romance" inserted where it currently is. The current article format shows a lack of "Capital E" Editorial clarity and purpose as regarding the subject at hand. Thank You.    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bblegacy (talk • contribs) 05:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Format / Section on Proto-Romance 

message: Article states "in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la." But for Italian is this incomplete. Italian articles are :
:singular:
# il, (masculine), il pomodoro (the tomato)
# lo, (masculine), lo specchio (the mirror)
# l', (masculine), l'uomo (the man)
# l', (feminine),  l'ulivo (the olive)
# la, (feminine), la polizia (the police)
:the same words in plural
# i, (masculine), i pomodori (the tomatoes)
# gli, (masculine), gli specchi (the mirrors)
# gli, (masculine), gli uomini (the men)
# le, (feminine), le olive (the olives)
# le, (feminine), le politiche (the polices)
: Please note article "l'" is always followed by a vowel and might be either masculine or feminine, which can be seen in the plural forms "gli" or "le".
: And the contracted words of preposition + article are many more than in any of the other Latin based languages. Spanish has only two of those (al = a + el , del = de + el) but Italian has dei, del, degli, delle , della, just for the preposition "di" (from in English). This is rather exciting as Italian elsewise is regarded as the closest modern language to Latin. 
:Spanish comparance
# el, (masculine), el tomate (the tomato)
# la, (feminime), la policía (the police)
:
# los, (masculine), los tomates (the tomatoes)
# las, (feminime), las policías (the polices)
There are no more (definite) articles and the two only contractions (al, del) are explained. Hence do I feel that the part 7.1 calls for some looking over. Boeing720 (talk) 10:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erropr in 7.1 - Italian articles 

message: The "semi" phonetic hybrid transcription of the Oaths of Strasbourg in Old French appears rather strange.  Before, no attempt was made to represent 9th century French phonology and the excerpt just read in regular text.  If we are trying to represent hypothetical Old French phonology, could someone restore the actual text to regular spelling while adding an actual IPA transcription?  Keep in mind also, that the only change I see here that makes it "phonetic" is the inclusion of the vowel /ɘ/ for 'a'.  IPA would be much more helpful.  
Also, this page makes only a few brief mentions of the sound shift of /w/> consonantal /β/ (most Romance varieties further to /v/) in 'u': first in mentioning the Appendix Probi and the "levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /w/ between vowels ('brauium non brabium')" and then in the discussion of the diphthong /au/ which "did not participate in the sound shift from /w/ to /β̞/."  However, these seem to be too subtle and indirect of comments on what should be considered a major phonological development.  I suggest it be included in a new section under Consonant development.  
Iotacist (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note on "semi-phonetic" transcription of Strasbourg Oaths: IPA instead?  Also: clearer notes on /w/>/β/ shift

message: The terms Late Latin and Low Latin both redirect here, but neither is defined here. The term Late Latin is even used several times, but the reader is never told what it means. --Zundark (talk) 08:40, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The redir of "Late Latin" pointing to here is definitely wrong, as the Late Latin is the litterary language after 200 AD, whereas Vulgar Latin is the spoken language over all periods, so these are two different things. Mamurra (talk) 12:35, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the Late Latin redirect seems wrong to me too. (I'm not so sure about "Low Latin", as that seems to have more than one meaning.) So what's the best solution? Make a new article for Late Latin? --Zundark (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely. Late Latin is a much more important thing than the Vulgar Latin (and much better defined, sourced, substantial, too). Mamurra (talk) 11:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any such article, what's holding you up? Is this "why don't the rest of you work" day? This is getting to be like education: it isn't the teacher who does the educating it is the student. Without the student's management of and participation in the education it isn't going to happen. Nothing ventured nothing gained. The gauntlet you have to run may be painful but you can't get to the other side without running it.Dave (talk) 14:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

text: There are two usages of the term Late Latin. One refers to the literary language only, post approximately 200 AD; the other is to Latin as it naturally developed, written (by no means necessarily literary) and spoken, but before those charged with writing finally gave up and tried to write the language they actually used. See Roger Wright's 1972 book, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France, Liverpool: Cairns.70.176.80.120 (talk) 14:59, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Late Latin and Low Latin 

message: Passage deleted from article:
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 variations. In light of fields such as sociolinguistics, dialectology, and historical linguistics, Vulgar Latin is the sociological, geographical and historic variations in Latin that excludes the speech and the writings of the educated classes.
These sociolinguistic ramblings don't have a thing to do with the topic. What are you saying, you don't like standard-non-standard dichotomies? So what? If vulgar Latin is one, how can it be a precursor to sociolinguistics, which abhors it? Sorry, I don't see any logic in this or any reason for its being there. How have sociolinguists helped us here, or are you just throwing around educated words? Moreover, we've been over the educated class bit three or four times already. Your additions have to fit the article, we don't care if you personally look educated or not.Dave (talk) 12:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Granted that the passage deleted is a bit much and needed reworking, but sociolinguistics has everything to do with the topic of Vulgar Latin (better labeled Popular Latin, but we seem stuck with the traditional term). Before ranting, note that your own declarations can be strange: whence the idea that (the field of?) sociolinguistics abhors Vulgar Latin? Note also that while, with time, a dichotomy between natural native speech and the prescribed standard did arise as the standard became ever more archaic, at the time of, say, Cicero, we have to assume a diastratic continuum of registers in Rome (with, for Cicero, some degree of agility in diatopic differentiation between Rome and Arpinum). In short, sociolinguistics at every turn, omnipresent.70.176.80.120 (talk) 15:43, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Sociolinguistic excursions

message: Since Latin didn't die, but evolved into a plethora of Romance "dialects", this requires some elaboration: the death of Latin after the fall of the empire. I have no idea what's intended by the statement, and I've studied and taught Romance Linguistics for decades. The average reader is surely going to be either baffled or greatly misled by "the death of Latin." 70.176.80.120 (talk) 03:03, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed the wording accordingly. --Jotamar (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure if it's entirely clear, but it is better. Thanks.70.176.80.120 (talk) 17:07, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Claim of Latin death under Sources 

message: I feel that the article is mixing these two up.  Vulgar Latin, as I understand, should refer to a group of dialects spoken alongside Classical Latin in ancient times.  When we cite examples from 722 and 842, I think that's too late for us to be speaking of Vulgar Latin - at that point, it's reached the point of Proto-Romance.  (Indeed, the article Oaths of Strasbourg refers to it as Old French.) 108.254.160.23 (talk) 17:56, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No suggestions here, just a comment that that's an interesting observation, on various levels. Vulgar Latin is, pretty much by definition, Proto-Romance (in terms of real-world linguistic evolution, not P-R as a reconstruction exercise). As natively spoken Latin, it just continues. The Strasbourg Oaths are French-ish, and they're old, but it's more than a bit iffy -- on grounds of syntax, morphology, phonology, and lexicon -- to label the language therein Old French, if by that is meant the linear precursor of what we think of as Middle French and Modern French. That quibble aside, yes and no: by 842 we have clear evidence that Vulgar Latin has evolved to the point that it is recognizable as Romance (but well past proto stage) when an effort is made to write it. I'm not sure how much of the confusion is conceptual, and how much is due to labeling, assuming that the two can be teased apart.70.176.80.120 (talk) 18:07, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vulgar Latin vs. Proto-Romance 

message: Hello. The article is very good indeed. I have just got a suggestion: talking about the diphthongization of VL short e and o in Spanish, it is said that "Spanish ... diphthongized in all circumstances." It would be a good idea to stress that this takes place in accented syllables only: morir (to die) - muero, mueres, muere (I die, you die, s/he dies), mortal - muerte (death); vejez (old age) - viejo/a (old man/woman), pelaje (fur) - piel (skin). I am a native Spanish-speaker, so I know what I am talking about. Best wishes!--Alpinu (talk) 22:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The title of the section where that statement appears is "Stressed vowels" and the role of stress/accent is already repeated several times throughout. I am more puzzled by the second part of the sentence: "… resulting in a simple five-vowel system in both stressed and unstressed syllables". I don't see what that has to do with diphthongization. CapnPrep (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is correct.  Italo-Western Romance had seven stressed vowels and five unstressed vowels.  Spanish converted two of the stressed vowels into rising diphthongs, best analyzed as sequences of two phonemes; hence only five vowels left. Benwing (talk) 04:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

text: And -- perhaps partly as a result -- neither [e]/[ɛ] nor [o]/[ɔ] can form contrasting minimal pairs in Spanish (as they can in, for example, Italian).96.42.57.164 (talk) 01:54, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Spanish diphthongization

message: This is simply untrue as a blanket statement: By the end of the first millennium, dialectization pressures had caused such divergence that mutual intelligibility of the spoken language was gone. Mutual intelligibility of which varieties of spoken language, where? Quite plausible that the average Picard and the average Pugliese would have had trouble understanding each other at the millenium. But even today, people from Spain and Italy can understand each other rather well if they choose to, and the San Clemente inscriptions in Rome (presumably late 11th century) e.g. "Fili de le pute, traite," would almost certainly have been comprehensible to most speakers of Romance at the time. Also, this and the Romance languages had become distinct, while true, is most likely misleading on two levels for an uninformed reader, who may think the reference is to today's national standard(ized) languages, which did not exist as such in the year 1000, and who may think that distinct necessarily implies mutually unintelligible (Bolognese and Ferrarese, for example, were distinct then and are now, but mutual intelligibility continues unabated). All evidence and principles point to Romania continua as being what Charles Hockett called L-complex, i.e. an unbroken chain of local differentiation such that, in principle and with appropriate caveats, intelligibility (due to sharing of features) attenuates with distance.70.176.80.120 (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: We could argue about the mutual intelligibility of those languages, but what concerns me more is the intelligibility of the paragraph itself. It reads like a university student trying to impress his tutor. Patrick Neylan (talk) 11:29, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for your edits.  The resulting paragraph is now truly intelligible, without being "dumbed down" or less accurate than it was before. — Lawrence King (talk) 22:05, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Au contraire. It has, indeed, been dumbed down, and it's less accurate -- to the point of containing what is very likely a falsehood re mutual intelligibility -- while also fundamental information has been removed. Massaging text to make it accessible is very welcome, indeed. It takes some skill to do that, though, and the skill does not include replacing the distilled knowledge of a century and more of scholarship with unfounded dubious claims nor brute deletion of information that enhances understanding the material. Chainsaws are seldom the best tools for surgery. 96.42.57.164 (talk) 23:23, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Under History: mutual intelligibility 

message: This is, at best, a speculative reconstruction, and should be labeled clearly as such. Beyond that, if it belongs in the article, the source needs to be identified (not an anonymous web page), and more importantly, the purpose: what purpose is it intended to serve? There's no reason to assume that the language of the Oaths is in any sense proto-Parisian or of any area nearby, i.e. that it is a linear precursor of what would become the national lanuguage. Nithard's text does illustrate very nicely a probably somewhat koiné version of vaguely central Gallo-Romance of the 9th century, thus of what Spoken Latin had become by that time in an indeterminate locale. Why include speculation of a version from two centuries (see below) earlier? — Now to sourcing and labeling. The unsourced text claimed to be "Vulgar Latin of Paris, circa 5th c. AD" is labeled "Latin parlé (vers le Vème siècle)" on the web page it's linked to; no mention of Paris. The reconstruction is identical to reconstructed text described as "Spoken Latin, Seventh Cent." (no Paris, two centuries after 5th) on p. 78 of Frank Frost Abbott's 1912 book, The Common People of Ancient Rome: Studies of Roman Life and Literature, and Abbott quite honestly cites Ferdinand Brunot's Histoire de la langue française, p. 144 as his source (more precisely: Histoire de la language française des origines à 1900, Tome 1, De l'époque latine à la Renaissance, 1905). Sure enough, there it is in Brunot's text, labeled Latin parlé (vers le VIIe siècle), and his intro on the previous page appears to indicate that the reconstruction is his. The time he states clearly. He makes no claim that it is intended to represent Parisian. — Does Brunot's reconstructed text belong here? That's a judgment call. It's of some interest to the history of Romance Philology that a scholar of his stature would propose it. It might be of interest to readers if it were described as what it was meant to be: an educated hypothesis of the Spoken Latin/Early Romance of two centuries earlier than the Oaths that illustrates, by comparing the two, changes that he assumed took place during those two centuries. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 23:03, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vulgar Latin of Paris, circa 5th c. AD (again) 

message: For many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Vulgar Latin continued to coexist with a written form of Late Latin, 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's codifications of Roman law on the one hand, and by the Catholic Church on the other, was eventually unified by the medieval copyists; it continued to exist as a Dachsprache in the Middle Ages, and a lingua franca well beyond them.
This is pretty much incomprehensible; for example, Medieval Latin is after Late Latin except that some authors tag it as a brand of mediaeval. And what do you mean "continued to exist with a written form ... Vulgar Latin is not written. And so on. Most of it is tagged and since we aren't likely to find sources for this editorial hamburger, out it comes. Dave (talk) 13:18, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The text deleted is not only quite comprehensible, but also pretty accurate. A tiny bit of editing might be in order, but not much. One obvious aid to readers would be to use "roof language", Dachsprache perhaps in parentheses, with the link going directly to roofing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstand_and_ausbau_languages#Roofing). The sources are the obvious ones for the topic (Banniard, Van Uytfanghe, Wright, etc.). --47.32.20.133 (talk) 23:33, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: For many centuries

message: Doubtful if "desde el punto de vista de la lingüística moderna" is needed, but with or without that, the statement clarifies a number of misunderstandings in relatively few words, leaving no impression that "Vulgar Latin" was anything other than a range of registers of Latin.  
: Sin embargo conviene aclarar, desde el punto de vista de la lingüística moderna, que el latín vulgar como tal es una expresión basada en una hipótesis antigua y equivocada, que suponía la existencia de dos lenguas paralelas: un latín "culto" y uno "vulgar"; pero, verdaderamente, el latín vulgar era el latín mismo, un idioma vivo y en constante evolución, mientras que el latín clásico sólo se mantenía en la literatura y administración como el lenguaje escrito culto, para facilitar la comunicación entre las provincias romanas.47.32.20.133 (talk) 15:17, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excellent piece of intro in the Spanish-language version of the topic 

message: Presumably not standardized at all beyond normal native-speaker (self-) monitoring, but the more troubling bit to be addressed here is the notion "was spoken as a living language until the 8th century." An ingenuous reader might take that literally and actually believe it, thus totally miss the point that Romance languages didn't "derive from" colloquial spoken Latin (that inexplicably stopped being a living language), but are its continuation. 2600:8800:A580:DAC0:1837:E103:7DCE:1C26 (talk) 17:13, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vulgar Latin is less standardized and was spoken as a living language until the 8th century.  

message: Is there any information on the status of learned pronunciations from the late imperial period up to 1000 CE? I am wondering because the Classical Latin reconstruction seems to make clear that by the imperial period, final /m/ was regularly lost and replaced with nasalization on the previous vowel, and then of course there are the near-close allophones [ɪ] and [ʊ] for short vowels /i/ and /u/. But while in VL. the graphic omission of 'm' indicates the lost of nasalization, and the 'e/i' 'o/u' confusion indicates the vowel mergers, later medieval Ecclesiastical Latin seems to follow a learned spelling pronunciation according to the local Romance dialect, restoring the consonantal status of final /m/ and pronouncing former short vowels the same as their former long counterparts, so [ɪ] and [iː] > [i] and [ʊ] and [uː] > [u] instead of [ɪ] > [e], [iː] > [i] and [ʊ] > [o] and [uː] > [u] in VL. 
I presume that learned speakers would have followed the general patterns of most other VL./Proto-Romance consonant developments, so pre-palatal /k/ > /tʃ/ or /ts/, /g/ > /dʒ/, lost of /h/, etc. But my issue is, when would the restoration of spelling pronunciations that we see in medieval Latin, like final /m/, near-close vowel elimination, etc., have taken place? For example, while a Classical Latin speaker would have pronounced ad dominum as [ad ˈdɔmɪnũː] would Jerome or Boethius have already said [ad ˈdɔminum], as in later ecclesiastical Latin, while their contemporary VL./Proto-Romance speakers would have said something like [a ˈdɔmnu] or 
[a ̍dɔmno]? 
PS: regarding some of the comments above, I agree that something needs to be done about the questionable reconstruction of 5th century 'Gallo-Romance' in the chart next to the Oaths of Strasbourg.
Iotacist (talk) 20:34, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Good questions. Many are answered here: Wright, Roger (1982). Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Francis Cairns. And Wright provides the perspective for exploring further. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question on the status of learned pronunciations in late-Roman/early medieval era paralleling development of Proto-Romance 

message: A true linguistic wording is classical latin was orthography but the pronunciation always vulgar. thus, the sociolectal variation was always minimal. like we write english this way so antiquated and dont get bothered by it. since its "standard" .  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yoandri Dominguez Garcia (talk • contribs) 09:26, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. There are many other issues besides that, such as sparse citation and various misconceptions. If nobody objects to this within a month, I will simply replace or revise the entire article. --Excelsius (talk) 01:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The article does need a good bit of cleaning up, and some updating (inspired in part by the points raised in Paul Lloyd's article). Best done by editing the present text, though, with clear sourcing of anything "controversial." Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:18, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article should be deleted as scholarship is too old