A debate has broken out in social media, if not in academia, about the very existence of "Vulgar Latin", a term to which I devote an entire chapter of my book and about which I have written regularly here.
What are we to make of this?
I think, fundamentally, the issue is not one of existence but of definition. On one side of the debate we appear to have people saying Vulgar Latin did not exist; and on the other, people saying that modern Romance languages derive specifically from Vulgar Latin rather than any other version (such as Classical).
The term "Vulgar" is unhelpful, perhaps, for two reasons. Firstly, it is often misunderstood by being given its modern English meaning, which is somewhat pejorative; secondly, it suggests something distinct from "Popular", "Common" or "Colloquial" (or just "Late"), any of which is probably a more helpful term. However, term "Vulgar" has stuck; it is on this basis that I entitled a chapter of my book "Vulgar Latin" but then explain that what I am in fact talking about would probably best be described as "Late Latin" which itself (at least for the sake of comparing modern languages with Latin origins) derives from "Popular Latin" - i.e. broadly the version spoken informally rather than the version written formally.
It is perhaps worth addressing the various terms used to refer to Latin; to do so, however, it is worth emphasising first of all that Latin like any other language was a language in flux - with every generation, it changed subtly just as any modern language does. Linguists like to classify languages into stages in time, but they all accept the boundaries in time are rather random, often referring to social or political changes rather than to actual linguistic shifts. For example, we tend to draw the boundary between "Middle" and "Modern" English at around the year 1500, largely because that is when the printing press was invented (which slowed down the pace of language change in much of Europe and elsewhere, at least in standard written forms, dramatically because suddenly the written form became so prevalent that it had to remain relatively stable in order to be understood widely).
In Latin, the tendency is to refer to "Early" or "Archaic Latin" (the Romans themselves typically used Prisca-) for the version used up until around 2200 years ago; then "Golden Age Latin" for the version used in the centuries either side of Caesar and Cicero; and then "Late Latin" from around Constantine (and the conversion of much of the West to Christianity) onwards. It is worth re-emphasising that these boundaries are relatively random, referring primarily to social change, but they have to be drawn somewhere to distinguish between different versions of the language through time.
"Golden Age Latin" is often used interchangeably with "Classical Latin", a term which implies "first class". This may not be helpful; "Classical" may, given what it is supposed to mean, be best reserved specifically for high register use of "Golden Age Latin" - the form used for great oratory and great literature, but distinct (as "standard" or "high" forms of languages generally are when their speakers are literate) from "lower" forms of the language used in more colloquial contexts. "Vulgar Latin", therefore, is also a form of "Golden Age Latin", existing at the same time as "Classical"; it refers, however, to "lower" registers used in colloquial settings, the evidence of which in writing is most commonly found in graffiti often written by less educated people but thus more representative of the way the language was actually spoken in regular conversation rather than in great literature.
It is inevitable in almost any language whose speakers are literate that it is in fact the "low" version which continues in time while the "classical" or "standard" version becomes often intentionally maintained in a relatively unchanging version; the very fact that the "standard" version is conservative is what gives it its prestige and its ongoing use in educated and formal contexts. Thus "Medieval" or "Ecclesiastical Latin", the version maintained in the Middle Ages for writing or recitation, for example in science or in religion, remained close to "Classical Latin" (essentially the standard version updated to take account of changes in society and technology); "Late Latin" on the other hand implies the spoken version of daily conversation, which became quite distinct from "Classical" and which was indeed derived from colloquial Latin spoken in the same time period as "Classical" but in different contexts: it is this colloquial Latin which is described as "Vulgar", hence the crossover in terminology between "Vulgar" and "Late". However, "Vulgar" refers to a register of a single language, and "Late" refers to a time period; although one became the other, it is technically no more accurate to say that "Late Latin" derived from "Vulgar Latin" than that it derived from "Classical Latin" because "Classical" and "Vulgar" were different registers of the same language. However, it is true, as ever, that later versions of the informal spoken language derived from what were once lower registers - it is ever so, as explained above, that "standard" versions of any language are more conservative than "colloquial" versions.
In turn, modern Romance languages (named for "Rome") are derived from both "Late" and "Golden Age" Latin, and from a single language which of course had several registers as any language with literate speakers (and many without) has. What is noteworthy is that many of the changes which are evident when comparing Classical Golden Age Latin (so, the formal language of 2100 years ago) and modern Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian and others had already taken place in the colloquial Latin before it broke up into mutually unintelligible dialects and ultimately different languages. It is this which leads people to insist they come from "Vulgar Latin" rather than "Classical Latin"; in fact, however, it may be better to say they derive more obviously from "(colloquial) Late Latin" rather than from "(formal) Golden Age Latin".
For all that, Latin was a single language, even if it had various registers over various time periods. It is most accurate to say simply that modern Romance languages derive from "Latin"; it is only natural that this would mean from more informal registers used in daily conversation and therefore we should not assume this to be solely the specific version typically taught in "Classics", so perhaps we should not really need to emphasise that point. Moreover, the truth is all modern Romance languages show evidence of all registers of Latin (some, interestingly, to a greater extent than others), and that is part of their fascination.
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