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Thiais ( French pronunciation: [tjɛ] ) is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris , France . It is located 10.3 km (6.4 mi) from the center of Paris .

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76-561: The name Thiais comes from Medieval Latin Theodasium or Theodaxium , meaning "estate of Theodasius", a Gallo-Roman landowner. The Austrian writer Joseph Roth , exiled due to his opposition to the Nazi regime, lived at Thiais at the end of the 1930s and is buried at the local cemetery. The tomb of Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin is also there. Expatriate American journalist and novelist William Gardner Smith died there in 1974. Thiais

152-471: 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

228-500: 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

304-478: 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

380-560: A fundamentally different language. There is no real consensus on the exact boundary where Late Latin ends and Medieval Latin begins. Some scholarly surveys begin with the rise of early Ecclesiastical Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around 500, and still others with the replacement of written Late Latin by written Romance languages starting around the year 900. The terms Medieval Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin are sometimes used synonymously, though some scholars draw distinctions. Ecclesiastical Latin refers specifically to

456-587: 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 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

532-517: A knowledge of Classical or Old Latin by the use of rare or archaic forms and sequences. Though they had not existed together historically, it is common that an author would use grammatical ideas of the two periods Republican and archaic, placing them equally in the same sentence. Also, many undistinguished scholars had limited education in "proper" Latin, or had been influenced in their writings by Vulgar Latin. Many striking differences between classical and Medieval Latin are found in orthography . Perhaps

608-497: A living language and was instead a scholarly language of the minority of educated men (and a tiny number of women) in medieval Europe, used in official documents more than for everyday communication. This resulted in two major features of Medieval Latin compared with Classical Latin, though when it is compared to the other vernacular languages, Medieval Latin developed very few changes. There are many prose constructions written by authors of this period that can be considered "showing off"

684-673: 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

760-421: 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

836-498: A rebirth of Latin literature and learning after the depressed period following the final disintegration of the authority of the Western Roman Empire. Although it was simultaneously developing into the Romance languages, Latin itself remained very conservative, as it was no longer a native language and there were many ancient and medieval grammar books to give one standard form. On the other hand, strictly speaking there

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912-642: 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

988-555: 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

1064-530: 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 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

1140-421: 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

1216-550: Is Venantius Fortunatus ( c.  530  – c.  600 ). This was also a period of transmission: the Roman patrician Boethius ( c.  480 –524) translated part of Aristotle 's logical corpus, thus preserving it for the Latin West , and wrote the influential literary and philosophical treatise De consolatione Philosophiae ; Cassiodorus ( c.  485  – c.  585 ) founded an important library at

1292-868: 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

1368-521: Is a useless and dangerously misleading term ... To abandon it once and for all can only benefit scholarship. Lloyd called to replace 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,

1444-458: 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

1520-402: Is best known for its cemetery , the second largest of Paris. Thiais is served by Pont de Rungis–Aéroport d'Orly station on Paris RER line C . It is also served by Choisy-le-Roi station on Paris RER line C. This station, although administratively located on the territory of Choisy-le-Roi , lies closer to the town center of Thiais than Pont de Rungis – Aéroport d'Orly station does, and

1596-859: 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,

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1672-571: 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 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

1748-408: 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

1824-420: Is that the term "Vulgar Latin" is regarded by some modern philologists as an essentially meaningless, but unfortunately very persistent term: 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"

1900-510: 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 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,

1976-676: 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

2052-694: Is thus used by people in Thiais. The commune has: This Val-de-Marne geographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages . In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned as

2128-593: The syntax of some Medieval Latin writers, although Classical Latin continued to be held in high esteem and studied as models for literary compositions. The high point of the development of Medieval Latin as a literary language came with the Carolingian Renaissance , a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage of Charlemagne , king of the Franks . Alcuin was Charlemagne's Latin secretary and an important writer in his own right; his influence led to

2204-558: The 5th century saw the literary activities of the great Christian authors Jerome ( c.  347 –420) and Augustine of Hippo (354–430), whose texts had an enormous influence on theological thought of the Middle Ages, and of the latter's disciple Prosper of Aquitaine ( c.  390  – c.  455 ). Of the later 5th century and early 6th century, Sidonius Apollinaris ( c.  430 – after 489) and Ennodius (474–521), both from Gaul, are well known for their poems, as

2280-485: The English People . Many Medieval Latin works have been published in the series Patrologia Latina , Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum and Corpus Christianorum . Medieval Latin was separated from Classical Latin around 800 and at this time was no longer considered part of the everyday language. The speaking of Latin became a practice used mostly by the educated high class population. Even then it

2356-521: The Germanic tribes, who invaded southern Europe, were also major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of parts of the Roman Empire that they conquered, and words from their languages were freely imported into the vocabulary of law. Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse. Latin

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2432-517: 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

2508-538: The Latin vocabulary that developed for them became the source of a great many technical words in modern languages. English words like abstract , subject , communicate , matter , probable and their cognates in other European languages generally have the meanings given to them in Medieval Latin, often terms for abstract concepts not available in English. The influence of Vulgar Latin was also apparent in

2584-699: 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

2660-414: 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

2736-574: 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

2812-411: The characteristics described above, showing its period in vocabulary and spelling alone; the features listed are much more prominent in the language of lawyers (e.g. the 11th-century English Domesday Book ), physicians, technical writers and secular chroniclers. However the use of quod to introduce subordinate clauses was especially pervasive and is found at all levels. Medieval Latin had ceased to be

2888-584: The classical Latin practice of generally placing the verb at the end, medieval writers would often follow the conventions of their own native language instead. Whereas Latin had no definite or indefinite articles, medieval writers sometimes used forms of unus as an indefinite article, and forms of ille (reflecting usage in the Romance languages) as a definite article or even quidam (meaning "a certain one/thing" in Classical Latin) as something like an article. Unlike classical Latin, where esse ("to be")

2964-648: The classical forms, testifies to the declining significance of classical education in Gaul. At the same time, good knowledge of Latin and even of Greek was being preserved in monastic culture in Ireland and was brought to England and the European mainland by missionaries in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries, such as Columbanus (543–615), who founded the monastery of Bobbio in Northern Italy. Ireland

3040-408: 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

3116-490: 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

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3192-415: 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

3268-609: 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,

3344-512: The following sources: An oft-posed question 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

3420-686: The form that has been used by the Roman Catholic Church (even before the Middle Ages in Antiquity), whereas Medieval Latin refers to all of the (written) forms of Latin used in the Middle Ages. The Romance languages spoken in the Middle Ages were often referred to as Latin , since the Romance languages were all descended from Vulgar Latin itself. Medieval Latin would be replaced by educated humanist Renaissance Latin , otherwise known as Neo-Latin . Medieval Latin had an enlarged vocabulary, which freely borrowed from other sources. It

3496-547: 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 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

3572-745: 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

3648-956: 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

3724-481: The main medium of scholarly exchange, as the liturgical language of the Church , and as the working language of science, literature, law, and administration. Medieval Latin represented a continuation of Classical Latin and Late Latin , with enhancements for new concepts as well as for the increasing integration of Christianity. Despite some meaningful differences from Classical Latin, its writers did not regard it as

3800-400: 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

3876-588: The monastery of Vivarium near Squillace where many texts from Antiquity were to be preserved. Isidore of Seville ( c.  560 –636) collected all scientific knowledge still available in his time into what might be called the first encyclopedia , the Etymologiae . Gregory of Tours ( c.  538 –594) wrote a lengthy history of the Frankish kings. Gregory came from a Gallo-Roman aristocratic family, and his Latin, which shows many aberrations from

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3952-410: The most striking difference is that medieval manuscripts used a wide range of abbreviations by means of superscripts, special characters etc.: for instance the letters "n" and "s" were often omitted and replaced by a diacritical mark above the preceding or following letter. Apart from this, some of the most frequently occurring differences are as follows. Clearly many of these would have been influenced by

4028-508: 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

4104-614: The need for long distance correspondence arose. Long distance communication in the vernacular was rare, but Hebrew, Arabic and Greek served a similar purpose among Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox respectively. until 75 BC Old Latin 75 BC – 200 AD Classical Latin 200–700 Late Latin 700–1500 Medieval Latin 1300–1500 Renaissance Latin 1300– present Neo-Latin 1900– present Contemporary Latin Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin , also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin ,

4180-636: 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

4256-444: 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

4332-414: The notice of contemporaries. Petrarch , writing in the 14th century, complained about this linguistic "decline", which helped fuel his general dissatisfaction with his own era. The corpus of Medieval Latin literature encompasses a wide range of texts, including such diverse works as sermons , hymns , hagiographical texts, travel literature , histories , epics , and lyric poetry . The first half of

4408-401: 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

4484-619: 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

4560-583: The pleadings given in court. Even then, those of the church still used Latin more than the rest of the population. At this time, Latin served little purpose to the regular population but was still used regularly in ecclesiastical culture. Latin also served as a lingua franca among the educated elites of Christendom — long distance written communication, while rarer than in Antiquity, took place mostly in Latin. Most literate people wrote Latin and most rich people had access to scribes who knew Latin for use when

4636-430: The same can be said of Latin. For instance, philologist József Herman agrees that 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

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4712-409: 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

4788-593: 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

4864-468: The spelling, and indeed pronunciation, of the vernacular language, and thus varied between different European countries. These orthographical differences were often due to changes in pronunciation or, as in the previous example, morphology, which authors reflected in their writing. By the 16th century, Erasmus complained that speakers from different countries were unable to understand each other's form of Latin. The gradual changes in Latin did not escape

4940-400: 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 the written language, and the written, formalised language exerting pressure back on speech. Vulgar Latin

5016-559: 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 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

5092-558: 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

5168-552: The use of medieval Latin among the learned elites of Christendom may have played a role in the spread of those features. In every age from the late 8th century onwards, there were learned writers (especially within the Church) who were familiar enough with classical syntax to be aware that these forms and usages were "wrong" and resisted their use. Thus the Latin of a theologian like St Thomas Aquinas or of an erudite clerical historian such as William of Tyre tends to avoid most of

5244-517: 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

5320-414: The written and spoken, nor between the language of 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

5396-419: Was also spread to areas such as Ireland and Germany , where Romance languages were not spoken, and which had never known Roman rule. Works written in those lands where Latin was a learned language, having no relation to the local vernacular, also influenced the vocabulary and syntax of Medieval Latin. Since subjects like science and philosophy, including Rhetoric and Ethics , were communicated in Latin,

5472-489: Was also the birthplace of a strange poetic style known as Hisperic Latin . Other important Insular authors include the historian Gildas ( c.  500  – c.  570 ) and the poet Aldhelm ( c.  640 –709). Benedict Biscop ( c.  628 –690) founded the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow and furnished it with books which he had taken home from a journey to Rome and which were later used by Bede ( c.  672 –735) to write his Ecclesiastical History of

5548-465: Was heavily influenced by the language of the Vulgate , which contained many peculiarities alien to Classical Latin that resulted from a more or less direct translation from Greek and Hebrew ; the peculiarities mirrored the original not only in its vocabulary but also in its grammar and syntax. Greek provided much of the technical vocabulary of Christianity . The various Germanic languages spoken by

5624-593: Was no single form of "Medieval Latin". Every Latin author in the medieval period spoke Latin as a second language, with varying degrees of fluency and syntax. Grammar and vocabulary, however, were often influenced by an author's native language. This was especially true beginning around the 12th century, after which the language became increasingly adulterated: late Medieval Latin documents written by French speakers tend to show similarities to medieval French grammar and vocabulary; those written by Germans tend to show similarities to German, etc. For instance, rather than following

5700-472: Was not frequently used in casual conversation. An example of these men includes the churchmen who could read Latin, but could not effectively speak it. Latin's use in universities was structured in lectures and debates, however, it was highly recommended that students use it in conversation. This practice was kept up only due to rules. One of Latin's purposes, writing, was still in practice; the main uses being charters for property transactions and to keep track of

5776-467: Was the only auxiliary verb, Medieval Latin writers might use habere ("to have") as an auxiliary, similar to constructions in Germanic and Romance languages. The accusative and infinitive construction in classical Latin was often replaced by a subordinate clause introduced by quod or quia . This is almost identical, for example, to the use of que in similar constructions in French. Many of these developments are similar to Standard Average European and

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