77-517: Dampremy ( Walloon : Dårmè ) is a town of Wallonia and district of the municipality of Charleroi , located in the province of Hainaut , Belgium . It was a municipality of its own before the fusion of the Belgian municipalities in 1977. This Hainaut Province location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Walloon language Walloon ( / w ɒ ˈ l uː n / ; natively walon ; French : wallon )
154-471: A (elision of -l- is a common feature of Portuguese) and Italian il , lo and la . Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse , ipsa an intensive adjective ( 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
231-484: A dead language . Today it is scarcely spoken among younger people, with the vast majority of its native speakers being the elderly (aged 65 and over). In 2007, the number of people with knowledge of the language was estimated at 600,000. Numerous associations, especially theatre companies, are working to keep the language alive. Formally recognized as a langue régionale endogène (regional indigenous language) of Belgium since 1990, Walloon has also benefited from
308-437: A language . The phonological divisions of regional languages of southern Belgium were studied by the contemporary linguist E.B. Atwood. He defined the precise geographical repartition of the four chief dialects of Walloon. In addition, he defined them against the dialects of Picard , Lorrain and Champenois . Since then, most linguists (among them Louis Remacle ), and gradually also Walloon politicians, regard Walloon as
385-500: A companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Koine Greek , which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force. Another indication of
462-478: A consonant and before another vowel) became [j], which palatalized preceding consonants. /w/ (except after /k/) and intervocalic /b/ merge as the bilabial fricative /β/. The system of phonemic vowel length collapsed by the fifth century AD, leaving quality differences as the distinguishing factor between vowels; the paradigm thus changed from /ī ĭ ē ĕ ā ă ŏ ō ŭ ū/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/. Concurrently, stressed vowels in open syllables lengthened . Towards
539-613: A continued corpus planning process. The "Feller system" (1900) regularized transcription of the different accents. Since the 1990s, a common orthography was established (the Rifondou walon [ wa ; fr ] ), which allowed large-scale publications, such as the Walloon Misplaced Pages officially in 2003. In 2004, a Walloon translation of a Tintin comic was released under the name L'èmerôde d'al Castafiore ; in 2007 an album consisting of Gaston Lagaffe comic strips
616-513: A dozen Walloon magazines publish regularly. The Société de Langue et de Littérature Wallonne , founded in 1856, promotes Walloon literature and the study ( dialectology , etymology , etc.) of the regional Roman languages of Wallonia. There is a difference between the Walloon culture, according to the Manifesto for Walloon culture , and the Walloon language (even if the latter is a part of
693-479: A large collection of literary works in Walloon, quite possibly the largest outside Belgium, and its holdings are representative of the output. Out of nearly a thousand works, twenty-six were published before 1880. Thereafter the numbers rise gradually year by year, reaching a peak of sixty-nine in 1903. After that, publications in Walloon fell markedly, to eleven in 1913. Yves Quairiaux counted 4,800 plays for 1860–1914, published or not. In this period, plays were almost
770-673: 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 BC. The three grammatical genders of Classical Latin were replaced by a two-gender system in most Romance languages. The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases identical with the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The confusion had already started in Pompeian graffiti, e.g. cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum ("dead body"), and hoc locum for hunc locum ("this place"). The morphological confusion shows primarily in
847-421: A prepositional case, displacing many instances of the ablative . Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case. Despite increasing case mergers, nominative and accusative forms seem to have remained distinct for much longer, since they are rarely confused in inscriptions. Even though Gaulish texts from the 7th century rarely confuse both forms, it
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#1732798003683924-650: A regional language, the first in importance in Wallonia . It is the only one to have originated from that part of Belgium. The eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica identified Walloon as the "northernmost Romance language". Walloon is spoken in the Wallonia Region in Belgium. In addition, it is spoken in: Although Walloon was widely spoken until the mid-20th century, today only
1001-642: A result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic one . The genitive case died out around the 3rd century AD, according to Meyer-Lübke , and began to be replaced by "de" + noun (which originally meant "about/concerning", weakened to "of") as early as the 2nd century BC. Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, certain fossilized expressions and some proper names. For example, French jeudi ("Thursday") < Old French juesdi < Vulgar Latin " jovis diēs "; Spanish es menester ("it
1078-555: A shift in meaning. Some notable cases are civitas ('citizenry' → 'city', replacing urbs ); focus ('hearth' → 'fire', replacing ignis ); manducare ('chew' → 'eat', replacing edere ); causa ('subject matter' → 'thing', competing with res ); mittere ('send' → 'put', competing with ponere ); necare ('murder' → 'drown', competing with submergere ); pacare ('placate' → 'pay', competing with solvere ), and totus ('whole' → 'all, every', competing with omnis ). Front vowels in hiatus (after
1155-409: A small proportion of the inhabitants of the region are fluent in the language. Those born since the 1970s usually know little more than a few idiomatic expressions , often profanities . The Walloon language is still part of the Walloon heritage; it is one component of Walloon identity. Four dialects of Walloon developed in four distinct zones of Wallonia: Despite local phonetic differences, there
1232-421: 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 "that which is good", from bueno : good. The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of several case endings in the nominal and adjectival declensions. Some of the causes include: the loss of final m , the merger of ă with ā , and
1309-528: Is William Dunker ( b. 15 March 1959). Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin , also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin , is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Vulgar Latin as a term is both controversial and imprecise. Spoken Latin existed for a long time and in many places. Scholars have differed in opinion as to the extent of
1386-482: Is a Romance language that is spoken in much of Wallonia and, to a very small extent, in Brussels , Belgium; some villages near Givet , northern France; and a clutch of communities in northeastern Wisconsin , United States. It belongs to the langues d'oïl dialect continuum , the most prominent member of which is French . The historical background of its formation was the territorial extension since 980 of
1463-868: Is a borrowing from French); the same for lignum ("wood stick"), plural ligna , that originated the Catalan feminine singular noun (la) llenya , Portuguese (a) lenha , Spanish (la) leña and Italian (la) legna . Some Romance languages still have a special form derived from the ancient neuter plural which is treated grammatically as feminine: e.g., BRACCHIUM : BRACCHIA "arm(s)" → Italian (il) braccio : (le) braccia , Romanian braț(ul) : brațe(le) . Cf. also Merovingian Latin ipsa animalia aliquas mortas fuerant . Alternations in Italian heteroclitic nouns such as l'uovo fresco ("the fresh egg") / le uova fresche ("the fresh eggs") are usually analysed as masculine in
1540-409: Is a regional movement towards the adoption of a common spelling, called the Rifondou walon . This orthography is diasystemic , reflecting different pronunciations for different readers, a concept inspired by the spelling of Breton . The written forms attempt to reconcile current phonetic uses with ancient traditions (notably the reintroduction of xh and oi that were used for writing Walloon until
1617-510: Is believed that both cases began to merge in Africa by the end of the empire, and a bit later in parts of Italy and Iberia. Nowadays, Romanian maintains a two-case system, while Old French and Old Occitan had a two-case subject-oblique system. This Old French system was based largely on whether or not the Latin case ending contained an "s" or not, with the "s" being retained but all vowels in
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#17327980036831694-859: Is considered regular as it is more common than in Italian. Thus, a relict neuter gender can arguably be said to persist in Italian and Romanian. In Portuguese, traces of the neuter plural can be found in collective formations and words meant to inform a bigger size or sturdiness. Thus, one can use ovo (s) ("egg(s)") and ova (s) ("roe", "collection(s) of eggs"), bordo (s) ("section(s) of an edge") and borda (s ) ("edge(s)"), saco (s) ("bag(s)") and saca (s ) ("sack(s)"), manto (s) ("cloak(s)") and manta (s) ("blanket(s)"). Other times, it resulted in words whose gender may be changed more or less arbitrarily, like fruto / fruta ("fruit"), caldo / calda ("broth"), etc. These formations were especially common when they could be used to avoid irregular forms. In Latin,
1771-408: Is necessary") < "est ministeri "; and Italian terremoto ("earthquake") < " terrae motu " as well as names like Paoli , Pieri . The dative case lasted longer than the genitive, even though Plautus , in the 2nd century BC, already shows some instances of substitution by the construction "ad" + accusative. For example, "ad carnuficem dabo". The accusative case developed as
1848-503: Is often regarded as the father of modern Romance philology . Observing that the Romance languages have many features in common that are not found in Latin, at least not in "proper" or Classical Latin, he concluded that the former must have all had some common ancestor (which he believed most closely resembled Old Occitan ) that replaced Latin some time before the year 1000. This he dubbed la langue romane or "the Romance language". The first truly modern treatise on Romance linguistics and
1925-676: Is the replacement of the highly irregular ( suppletive ) verb ferre , meaning 'to carry', with the entirely regular portare . Similarly, the verb loqui , meaning 'to speak', was replaced by a variety of alternatives such as the native fabulari and narrare or the Greek borrowing parabolare . Classical Latin particles fared poorly, with all of the following vanishing in the course of its development to Romance: an , at , autem , donec , enim , etiam , haud , igitur , ita , nam , postquam , quidem , quin , quoad , quoque , sed , sive , utrum , vel . Many words experienced
2002-525: Is why (or when, or how) Latin “fragmented” into several different languages. Current hypotheses contrast the centralizing and homogenizing socio-economic, cultural, and political forces that characterized the Roman Empire with the centrifugal forces that prevailed afterwards. By the end of the first century CE the Romans had seized the entire Mediterranean Basin and established hundreds of colonies in
2079-582: The Borinage dialect under the pen-name Bosquètia . In the 20th century, Joseph Houziaux (1946) published a selection of 50 fables in the Condroz dialect. The motive among Walloon speakers in both France and Belgium was to assert regional identity against the growing centralism and encroachment of the language of the capital, on what had until then been predominantly monoglot areas. There are links between French literature and Walloon literature. For instance,
2156-592: The Low Countries . One might say that the period which saw the establishment of the unifying supremacy of the Burgundians in the Walloon country was a turning-point in their linguistic history. The crystallization of a Walloon identity, as opposed to that of the thiois (i.e. Dutch-speaking) regions of the Low Countries, established "Walloon" as a word for designating its people. Somewhat later,
2233-639: The Principality of Liège to the south and west. Walloon is classified as "definitely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger . Despite its rich literature, beginning anonymously in the 16th century and with well-known authors since 1756, the use of Walloon has decreased markedly since France's annexation of Wallonia in 1794 . This period definitively established French as
2310-440: The "real" Vulgar form, which had to be reconstructed from remaining evidence. Others that followed this approach divided Vulgar from Classical Latin by education or class. Other views of "Vulgar Latin" include defining it as uneducated speech, slang, or in effect, Proto-Romance . The result is that the term "Vulgar Latin" is regarded by some modern philologists as an essentially meaningless, but unfortunately very persistent term:
2387-461: The Feller system ( sistinme Feller ) and Unified Walloon ( rifondou walon or rfondou walon ). Walloon is distinguished from other languages in the langue d'oïl family both by archaism coming from Latin and by its significant borrowing from Germanic languages, as expressed in its phonetics, its lexicon , and its grammar . At the same time, Walloon phonetics are singularly conservative:
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2464-517: The Latin nominative/accusative nomen , rather than the oblique stem form * nomin- (which nevertheless produced Spanish nombre ). Most neuter nouns had plural forms ending in -A or -IA ; 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
2541-699: The Romance vernaculars as to their actual use: in Romanian, the articles are suffixed to the noun (or an adjective preceding it), as in other languages of the Balkan sprachbund and the North Germanic languages . The numeral unus , una (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases (again, this is a common semantic development across Europe). This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with
2618-513: The Walloon population speak their ancestral language. Breaking the statistics down by age, 70–80% of the population aged over 60 speak Walloon, while only about 10% of those under 30 do so. Passing knowledge of Walloon is much more widespread: claimed by some 36–58% of the younger age bracket. Laurent Hendschel estimates there are 1,300,000 bilingual people in Wallonia (Walloon-French, Picard-French...). Many French words that pertain to mining and to
2695-505: The academic language, French became the object of a political effort at normalization; La Pléiade posited the view that when two languages of the same language family coexist, each can be defined only in opposition to the other. Around the year 1600, the French writing system became dominant in the Wallonia. From this time, too, dates a tradition of texts written in a language marked by traces of spoken Walloon. The written language of
2772-414: The adoption of the nominative ending -us ( -Ø after -r ) in the o -declension. In Petronius 's work, one can find balneus for balneum ("bath"), fatus for fatum ("fate"), caelus for caelum ("heaven"), amphitheater for amphitheatrum ("amphitheatre"), vinus for vinum ("wine"), and conversely, thesaurum for thesaurus ("treasure"). Most of these forms occur in
2849-574: The articles fully developed. Definite articles evolved from demonstrative pronouns or adjectives (an analogous development is found in many Indo-European languages, including Greek , Celtic and Germanic ); compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille , illa , illud "that", in the Romance languages , becoming French le and la (Old French li , lo , la ), Catalan and Spanish el , la and lo , Occitan lo and la , Portuguese o and
2926-500: The connection between Rommand to Vualon : Et ceux cy [les habitants de Nivelles] parlent le vieil langage Gallique que nous appellons Vualon ou Rommand (...). Et de ladite ancienne langue Vualonne, ou Rommande, nous usons en nostre Gaule Belgique: Cestadire en Haynau, Cambresis, Artois, Namur, Liège, Lorraine, Ardenne et le Rommanbrabant, et est beaucoup differente du François, lequel est plus moderne, et plus gaillart. And those people [the inhabitants of Nivelles] speak
3003-408: The conquered provinces. Over time this—along with other factors that encouraged linguistic and cultural assimilation , such as political unity, frequent travel and commerce, military service, etc.—led to Latin becoming the predominant language throughout the western Mediterranean. Latin itself was subject to the same assimilatory tendencies, such that its varieties had probably become more uniform by
3080-411: The continued use of "Vulgar Latin" is not only no aid to thought, but is, on the contrary, a positive barrier to a clear understanding of Latin and Romance. ... I wish it were possible to hope the term might fall out of use. Many scholars have stated that "Vulgar Latin" is a useless and dangerously misleading term ... To abandon it once and for all can only benefit scholarship. Lloyd called to replace
3157-471: The culture). Walloon-language literature has been printed since the 16th century, or at least since the beginning of the 17th century. It had its "golden age" during the peak of the Flemish immigration to Wallonia in the 19th century: "That period saw an efflorescence of Walloon literature, plays and poems primarily, and the founding of many theaters and periodicals." The New York Public Library holds
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3234-463: The differences, and whether Vulgar Latin was in some sense a different language. This was developed as a theory in the nineteenth century by Raynouard . At its extreme, the theory suggested that the written register formed an elite language distinct from common speech, but this is now rejected. The current consensus is that the written and spoken languages formed a continuity much as they do in modern languages, with speech tending to evolve faster than
3311-490: The end of the Roman Empire /ɪ/ merged with /e/ in most regions, although not in Africa or a few peripheral areas in Italy. It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article , absent in Latin but present in all 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
3388-415: The feminine derivations (a) pereira , (la) perera . 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 , Romanian mânu> mână , pl. mâini / (reg.) mâni , Catalan (la) mà , and Portuguese (a) mão , which preserve
3465-609: 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 still have neuter pronouns. French celui-ci / celle-ci / ceci ("this"), Spanish éste / ésta / esto ("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"). In Spanish,
3542-554: The first to apply the comparative method was Friedrich Christian Diez 's seminal Grammar of the Romance Languages . Researchers such as Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke characterised Vulgar Latin as to a great extent a separate language, that was more or less distinct from the written form. To Meyer-Lübke, the spoken Vulgar form was the genuine and continuous form, while Classical Latin was a kind of artificial idealised language imposed upon it; thus Romance languages were derived from
3619-745: The fragmentation of Latin into the incipient Romance languages. Until then Latin appears to have been remarkably homogeneous, as far as can be judged from its written records, although careful statistical analysis reveals regional differences in the treatment of the vowel /ĭ/, and in the frequency of the merger of (original) intervocalic /b/ and /w/, by about the fifth century CE. Over the centuries, spoken Latin lost certain words in favour of coinages ; in favour of borrowings from neighbouring languages such as Gaulish , Germanic , or Greek ; or in favour of other Latin words that had undergone semantic shift . The “lost” words often continued to enjoy some currency in literary Latin, however. A commonly-cited example
3696-479: The language has stayed fairly close to the form it took during the High Middle Ages . From a linguistic point of view, Louis Remacle has shown that a good number of the developments that we now consider typical of Walloon appeared between the 8th and 12th centuries. Walloon "had a clearly defined identity from the beginning of the 13th century". In any case, linguistic texts from the time do not mention
3773-417: The language of social promotion, far more than it was before. After World War I , public schools provided French-speaking education to all children, inducing a denigration of Walloon, especially when accompanied by official orders in 1952 to punish its use in schools. Subsequently, since the middle of the 20th century, generational transmission of the language has decreased, resulting in Walloon almost becoming
3850-400: The language, although they mention others in the langue d'oïl family, such as Picard and Lorrain . During the 15th century, scribes in the region called the language "Roman" when they needed to distinguish it. It is not until the beginning of the 16th century that first occurrence of the word "Walloon" appeared in the current linguistic sense. In 1510 or 1511, Jean Lemaire de Belges made
3927-540: The late 19th century) and the language's own phonological logic. Other regional languages spoken in Wallonia, outside the Walloon domain, are: The Picard, Lorrain and Champenois dialects spoken in Wallonia are sometimes also referred to as "Walloon", which may lead to confusion. The Walloon alphabet generally consists of the basic ISO Latin Alphabet , and six types of diacritic . It also makes frequent use of digraphs. Various orthographies have been used, most notably
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#17327980036834004-956: The 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 through eccum , a contracted form of ecce eum . This is the origin of Old French cil (* ecce ille ), cist (* ecce iste ) and ici (* ecce hic ); Italian questo (* eccum istum ), quello (* eccum illum ) and (now mainly Tuscan) codesto (* eccum tibi istum ), as well as qui (* eccu hic ), qua (* eccum hac ); Spanish and Occitan aquel and Portuguese aquele (* eccum ille ); Spanish acá and Portuguese cá (* eccum hac ); Spanish aquí and Portuguese aqui (* eccum hic ); Portuguese acolá (* eccum illac ) and aquém (* eccum inde ); Romanian acest (* ecce iste ) and acela (* ecce ille ), and many other forms. On
4081-400: The merger of ŭ with ō (see tables). Thus, by the 5th century, the number of case contrasts had been drastically reduced. There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they had not become homophonous (like the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates that nominal declension was shaped not only by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors. As
4158-508: 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
4235-701: The nominative and -Ø in the accusative in both words: murs , ciels [nominative] – mur , ciel [oblique]. For some neuter nouns of the third declension, the oblique stem was productive; for others, the nominative/accusative form, (the two were identical in Classical Latin). Evidence suggests that the neuter gender was under pressure well back into the imperial period. French (le) lait , Catalan (la) llet , Occitan (lo) lach , Spanish (la) leche , Portuguese (o) leite , Italian language (il) latte , Leonese (el) lleche and Romanian lapte (le) ("milk"), all derive from
4312-444: The non-standard but attested Latin nominative/accusative neuter lacte or accusative masculine lactem . 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 , Leonese, Portuguese and Italian nome , Romanian nume ("name") all preserve
4389-401: The noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf" – from * lupum illum ) and omul ("the man" – *homo illum ), possibly a result of being within the Balkan sprachbund . 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 daemon sodalis peccati ("The devil is
4466-515: The old Gallic language which we call Vualon or Rommand (...). And we use the said old Vualon or Rommand language in our Belgian Gaul: That is to say in Hainaut, Cambrai, Artois, Namur, Liège, Lorraine, Ardennes and Rommand Brabant, and it is very different from French, which is more fashionable and courtly. The word "Walloon" thus came closer to its current meaning: the vernacular of the Roman part of
4543-509: The only popular entertainment in Wallonia. The Walloon-language theatre remains popular in the region; theatre is flourishing with more than 200 non-professional companies playing in the cities and villages of Wallonia for an audience of over 200,000 each year. During the 19th-century renaissance of Walloon-language literature, several authors adapted versions of Aesop's Fables to the racy speech (and subject matter) of Liège. They included Charles Duvivier (in 1842); Joseph Lamaye (1845); and
4620-619: The other hand, even in the Oaths of Strasbourg , dictated in Old French in AD 842, no demonstrative appears even in places where one would clearly be called for in all the later languages ( pro christian poblo – "for the Christian people"). Using the demonstratives as articles may have still been considered overly informal for a royal oath in the 9th century. Considerable variation exists in all of
4697-405: The preceding centuries, scripta , was a composite language with some Walloon characteristics but it did not attempt to be a systematic reproduction of the spoken language. Walloon was the predominant language of the Walloon people until the beginning of the 20th century, although they had a passing knowledge of French. Since that time, the use of French has spread to the extent that now only 15% of
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#17327980036834774-409: The singular and feminine in the plural, with an irregular plural in -a . 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. The same alternation in gender exists in certain Romanian nouns, but
4851-410: The social elites and that of the middle, lower, or disadvantaged groups of the same society. Herman also makes it clear that Vulgar Latin, in this view, is a varied and unstable phenomenon, crossing many centuries of usage where any generalisations are bound to cover up variations and differences. Evidence for the features of non-literary Latin comes from the following sources: An oft-posed question
4928-474: The source. Jacques Ancion also wanted to develop a regular adult audience. "From the 19th century he included the Walloon play Tati l'Pèriquî by E. Remouchamps and the avant-garde Ubu roi by A. Jarry ." The scholar Jean-Marie Klinkenberg writes, "[T]he dialectal culture is no more a sign of attachment to the past but a way to participate to a new synthesis". Walloon is also being used in popular song. The best-known singer in Walloon in present-day Wallonia
5005-593: The speech of one man: Trimalchion, an uneducated Greek (i.e. foreign) freedman . In modern Romance languages, the nominative s -ending has been largely abandoned, and all substantives of the o -declension have an ending derived from -um : -u , -o , or -Ø . E.g., masculine murus ("wall"), and neuter caelum ("sky") have evolved to: Italian muro , cielo ; Portuguese muro , céu ; Spanish muro , cielo , Catalan mur , cel ; Romanian mur , cieru> cer ; French mur , ciel . However, Old French still had -s in
5082-405: The team of Jean-Joseph Dehin (1847, 1851–1852) and François Bailleux (1851–1866), who covered books I-VI. Adaptations into other dialects were made by Charles Letellier (Mons, 1842) and Charles Wérotte (Namur, 1844). Decades later, Léon Bernus published some hundred imitations of La Fontaine in the dialect of Charleroi (1872); he was followed during the 1880s by Joseph Dufrane , writing in
5159-399: The term is problematic, and therefore limits it in his work to mean the innovations and changes that turn up in spoken or written Latin that were relatively uninfluenced by educated forms of Latin. Herman states: it is completely clear from the texts during the time that Latin was a living language, there was never an unbridgeable gap between the written and spoken, nor between the language of
5236-645: The textile trade derive from the Walloon-Picard complex. Legally, Walloon has been recognized since 1990 by the French Community of Belgium , the cultural authority of Wallonia, as an "indigenous regional language" which must be studied in schools and encouraged. The Walloon cultural movement includes the Union Culturelle Wallonne , an organization of over 200 amateur theatre circles, writers' groups, and school councils. About
5313-558: The time the Empire fell than they had been before it. That is not to say that the language had been static for all those years, but rather that ongoing changes tended to spread to all regions. The rise of the first Arab caliphate in the seventh century marked the definitive end of Roman dominance over the Mediterranean. It is from approximately that century onward that regional differences proliferate in Latin documents, indicating
5390-568: The transition from Latin or Late Latin through to Proto-Romance and Romance languages. To make matters more complicated, evidence for spoken forms can be found only through examination of written Classical Latin , Late Latin , or early Romance , depending on the time period. During the Classical period , Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their own language as sermo plebeius or sermo vulgaris , meaning "common speech". This could simply refer to unadorned speech without
5467-468: The use of "Vulgar Latin" with a series of more precise definitions, such as the spoken Latin of a particular time and place. Research in the twentieth century has in any case shifted the view to consider the differences between written and spoken Latin in more moderate terms. Just as in modern languages, speech patterns are different from written forms, and vary with education, the same can be said of Latin. For instance, philologist József Herman agrees that
5544-512: The use of rhetoric, or even plain speaking. The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to the Renaissance , when Italian thinkers began to theorize that their own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literary Classical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect. The early 19th-century French linguist François-Just-Marie Raynouard
5621-515: The vernacular of these people became more clearly distinct from central French and other neighbouring langues d'oïl , prompting the abandonment of the vague term "Roman" as a linguistic, ethnic, and political designator for "Walloon". Also at this time, following the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539, the French language replaced Latin for all administrative purposes in France. Established as
5698-517: The weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with praedictus , 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 no longer felt to be strong or specific enough. In
5775-407: The writer Raymond Queneau set the publication of a Walloon Poets' anthology for Editions Gallimard . Ubu roi was translated into Walloon by André Blavier , an important 'pataphysician of Verviers , and friend of Queneau, for the new and important Puppet theater of Liège of Jacques Ancion. The Al Botroûle theater operated "as the umbilical cord" in Walloon, indicating a desire to return to
5852-415: The written language, and the written, formalised language exerting pressure back on speech. Vulgar Latin is itself often viewed as vague and unhelpful, and it is used in very different ways by different scholars, applying it to mean spoken Latin of differing types, or from different social classes and time periods. Nevertheless, interest in the shifts in the spoken forms remains very important to understand
5929-560: Was published in Walloon. Walloon is more distinct as a language than Belgian French , which differs from the French spoken in France only in some minor points of vocabulary and pronunciation . Linguists had long classified Walloon as a dialect of French, which in turn is a langue d'oïl . Like French, it descended from Vulgar Latin . Arguing that a French-speaking person could not understand Walloon easily, especially in its eastern forms, Jules Feller (1859–1940) insisted that Walloon had an original "superior unity", which made it
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