Vidame ( French: [vidam] ) was a feudal title in France , a term descended from mediaeval Latin vicedominus . Like the avoué or advocatus , the vidame was originally a secular official chosen by the bishop of the diocese —with the consent of the count —to perform functions on behalf of the church's earthly interest that were religiously inappropriate; this especially included violence, even in the service of justice, and to act as protector.
42-410: Unlike the advocatus , however, the vice- dominus was at the outset an ecclesiastical official, who acted as the bishop's lieutenant ( locum tenens ) or vicar . But the causes that changed the character of the advocatus operated also in the case of the vidame . The title of Vidame de Chartres is much the best known, having been held by several people distinguished in various fields and known by
84-498: A dialect continuum , where the speech variety of a location differs only slightly from that of a neighboring location, but over a longer distance these differences can accumulate to the point where two remote locations speak what may be unambiguously characterized as separate languages. This makes drawing language boundaries difficult, and as such there is no unambiguous way to divide the Romance varieties into individual languages. Even
126-521: A house near the episcopal palace, a domain within and without the city, and sometimes the right to levy certain dues on the city. Dominus (title) Dominus is the Latin word for master or owner . Dominus was used as a Roman imperial title. It was also the Latin title of the feudal , superior and mesne , lords , and an ecclesiastical and academic title. The ecclesiastical title
168-598: A potential source of separatist movements; therefore, they have generally fought to eliminate it, by extensively promoting the use of the official language, restricting the use of the other languages in the media, recognizing them as mere "dialects", or even persecuting them. As a result, all of these languages are considered endangered to varying degrees according to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages , ranging from "vulnerable" (e.g. Sicilian and Venetian ) to "severely endangered" ( Franco-Provençal , most of
210-590: A prefix for the names of some saints as in jaundone Jakue , " St. James " and Donostia (the town of San Sebastian ). The term derives from the Proto-Italic * dom-o/u-no- meaning "[he] of the house," ultimately relating to the Proto-Indo-European root * dem- meaning "to build," through domus (house); hence, the dominus is the lord and ruler of the house. Originating from its use by slaves to address their masters,
252-846: A single country. Portuguese is the official language of six African countries ( Angola , Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau , Mozambique , Equatorial Guinea , and São Tomé and Príncipe ), and is spoken as a native language by perhaps 16 million residents of that continent. In Asia, Portuguese is co-official with other languages in East Timor and Macau , while most Portuguese-speakers in Asia—some 400,000 —are in Japan due to return immigration of Japanese Brazilians . In North America 1,000,000 people speak Portuguese as their home language, mainly immigrants from Brazil, Portugal, and other Portuguese-speaking countries and their descendants. In Oceania, Portuguese
294-913: Is Dame , a more narrow equivalent to Sir used for recipients of chivalric honors. (Damehood being the equivalent to the male knighthood .) Cambridge University continues to use both Dominus and Domina, abbreviated as Dnus. and Dna. respectively, for those who have achieved a BA , and its derived term Don continues to see use in reference to professors, lecturers, and fellows at Oxford and Cambridge. Romance languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Romance languages , also known as
336-742: Is Spanish , followed by Portuguese , French , Italian and Romanian , which together cover a vast territory in Europe and beyond, and work as official and national languages in dozens of countries. In Europe, at least one Romance language is official in France , Portugal , Spain , Italy , Switzerland , Belgium , Romania , Moldova , Transnistria , Monaco , Andorra , San Marino and Vatican City . In these countries, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Romansh and Catalan have constitutional official status. French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian are also official languages of
378-764: Is an official language in Spain and in nine countries of South America , home to about half that continent's population; in six countries of Central America (all except Belize ); and in Mexico . In the Caribbean , it is official in Cuba , the Dominican Republic , and Puerto Rico . In all these countries, Latin American Spanish is the vernacular language of the majority of the population, giving Spanish
420-422: Is limited, and the literature is often hard to interpret or generalize. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, and forced resettlers, and more likely to be natives of conquered lands than natives of Rome. In Western Europe, Latin gradually replaced Celtic and other Italic languages , which were related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated
462-1088: Is spoken by many residents of Alghero , on the island of Sardinia , and it is co-official in that city. Galician , with more than three million speakers, is official together with Spanish in Galicia , and has legal recognition in neighbouring territories in Castilla y León . A few other languages have official recognition on a regional or otherwise limited level; for instance, Asturian and Aragonese in Spain; Mirandese in Portugal; Friulian , Sardinian and Franco-Provençal in Italy; and Romansh in Switzerland. The remaining Romance languages survive mostly as spoken languages for informal contact. National governments have historically viewed linguistic diversity as an economic, administrative or military liability, as well as
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#1732793989943504-496: Is the second most spoken Romance language, after French, due mainly to the number of speakers in East Timor . Its closest relative, Galician, has official status in the autonomous community of Galicia in Spain , together with Spanish. Outside Europe, French is spoken natively most in the Canadian province of Quebec , and in parts of New Brunswick and Ontario . Canada is officially bilingual , with French and English being
546-628: The European Union . Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan were the official languages of the defunct Latin Union ; and French and Spanish are two of the six official languages of the United Nations . Outside Europe, French , Portuguese and Spanish are spoken and enjoy official status in various countries that emerged from the respective colonial empires . With almost 500 million speakers worldwide, Spanish
588-517: The Latin or Neo-Latin languages , are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin . They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family . The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are: The Romance languages spread throughout the world owing to the period of European colonialism beginning in
630-593: The Occitan varieties). Since the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, increased sensitivity to the rights of minorities has allowed some of these languages to start recovering their prestige and lost rights. Yet it is unclear whether these political changes will be enough to reverse the decline of minority Romance languages. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Roman Empire , together with its administrative and educational policies, made Latin
672-659: The Republic of Moldova , where it is the dominant language and spoken by a majority of the population, but neighboring areas in Serbia ( Vojvodina and the Bor District ), Bulgaria, Hungary, and Ukraine ( Bukovina , Budjak ) and in some villages between the Dniester and Bug rivers. As with Italian, Romanian is spoken outside of its ethnic range by immigrant communities. In Europe, Romanian-speakers form about two percent of
714-417: The declension system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions . By most measures, Sardinian and Italian are the least divergent languages from Latin, while French has changed the most. However, all Romance languages are closer to each other than to classical Latin . Documentary evidence about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of comprehensive research
756-499: The vidame de Picquigny was the representative of the Bishop of Amiens , the vidame de Gerberoy of the Bishop of Beauvais (since King Philip Augustus himself was a pair de France , i.e. peer of the realm ). In many sees there was no vidame , the functions being exercised by a viscount or a châtelain . With the growth of the central power and of that of the towns and cities, the vidames gradually lost their functions, and
798-482: The 15th century; there are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages found worldwide, mainly in the Americas , Europe , and parts of Africa . Portuguese, French and Spanish also have many non-native speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas . There are also numerous regional Romance languages and dialects. All of the five most widely spoken Romance languages are also official languages of
840-642: The European Union (with France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain being part of it). The term Romance derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice , "in Roman ", derived from romanicus : for instance, in the expression romanice loqui , "to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin vernacular ), contrasted with latine loqui , "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of
882-715: The Romanian and Italian languages, as well as their common Latin origin. The total of 880 million native speakers of Romance languages (ca. 2020) are divided as follows: Catalan is the official language of Andorra . In Spain, it is co-official with Spanish in Catalonia , the Valencian Community (under the name Valencian ), and the Balearic Islands , and it is recognized, but not official, in an area of Aragon known as La Franja . In addition, it
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#1732793989943924-546: The adoption of Latin. To some scholars, this suggests the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages was around during the time of the Roman Empire (from the end of the first century BC), and was spoken alongside the written Classical Latin which was reserved for official and formal occasions. Other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. With
966-462: The criterion of mutual intelligibility can become ambiguous when it comes to determining whether two language varieties belong to the same language or not. The following is a list of groupings of Romance languages, with some languages chosen to exemplify each grouping. Not all languages are listed, and the groupings should not be interpreted as well-separated genetic clades in a tree model . The Romance language most widely spoken natively today
1008-468: The dominant native language in continental Western Europe. Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain , the Roman province of Africa , western Germany , Pannonia and the whole Balkans . During the Empire's decline, and after its fragmentation and the collapse of its Western half in the fifth and sixth centuries, the spoken varieties of Latin became more isolated from each other, with
1050-561: The end of the colonial domination. As a result, Italian outside Italy and Switzerland is now spoken only as a minority language by immigrant communities in North and South America and Australia . In some former Italian colonies in Africa—namely Libya , Eritrea and Somalia —it is spoken by a few educated people in commerce and government. Romania did not establish a colonial empire. The native range of Romanian includes not only
1092-597: The language used in writing and formal contexts or as a lingua franca), and with barbarice loqui , "to speak in Barbarian " (the non-Latin languages of the peoples living outside the Roman Empire). From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice , or "in the Roman vernacular". Most of the Romance-speaking area in Europe has traditionally been
1134-547: The most native speakers of any Romance language. In Africa it is one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea . Spanish was one of the official languages in the Philippines in Southeast Asia until 1973. In the 1987 constitution, Spanish was removed as an official language (replaced by English), and was listed as an optional/voluntary language along with Arabic. It is currently spoken by a minority and taught in
1176-624: The official languages and government services in French theoretically mandated to be provided nationwide. In parts of the Caribbean, such as Haiti , French has official status, but most people speak creoles such as Haitian Creole as their native language. French also has official status in much of Africa, with relatively few native speakers but larger numbers of second language speakers. Although Italy also had some colonial possessions before World War II , its language did not remain official after
1218-584: The other continents to such an extent that about two-thirds of all Romance language speakers today live outside Europe. Despite other influences (e.g. substratum from pre-Roman languages, especially Continental Celtic languages ; and superstratum from later Germanic or Slavic invasions), the phonology , morphology , and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin. However, some notable differences exist between today's Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost
1260-597: The population in Italy , Spain , and Portugal . Romanian is also spoken in Israel by Romanian Jews, where it is the native language of five percent of the population, and is spoken by many more as a secondary language. The Aromanian language is spoken today by Aromanians in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Greece. Flavio Biondo was the first scholar to have observed (in 1435) linguistic affinities between
1302-530: The practice, and Tiberius in particular is said to have reviled it as sycophancy. Domitian encouraged its use, but none of the emperors used the term in any semi-official capacity until the reign of Aurelian in AD 274, where coins were issued bearing the inscription deus et dominus natus . However, under Diocletian the term dominus was adopted as part of the emperor's official titulature, forming part of Diocletian's radical reforms. It's from this use that
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1344-554: The rise of the Roman Empire, spoken Latin spread first throughout Italy and then through southern , western , central , and southeastern Europe , and northern Africa along parts of western Asia . Latin reached a stage when innovations became generalised around the sixth and seventh centuries. After that time and within two hundred years, it became a dead language since "the Romanized people of Europe could no longer understand texts that were read aloud or recited to them." By
1386-434: The school curriculum. Portuguese, in its original homeland, Portugal , is spoken by almost the entire population of 10 million. As the official language of Brazil , it is spoken by more than 200 million people, as well as in neighboring parts of eastern Paraguay and northern Uruguay . This accounts for slightly more than half the population of South America, making Portuguese the most spoken official Romance language in
1428-586: The term Dominate is sometimes used to refer to the period of Roman history beginning with the reign of Diocletian. The feminine form Domina was a title formerly given to noble ladies who held a barony in their own right in old English Law . Many female honorifics used in modern English trace their roots back to this title, through the Anglo-French and still extant in modern French , dame and madame . The most common are madam and its contracted form ma'am. Another notable example
1470-433: The title became merely honorary. The chief functions of a vidame were to protect the temporal holdings of the see (called accordingly le vidamé or la vidamie), to represent the bishop at the count's court of justice, to exercise the bishop's temporal jurisdiction in his name ( placitum or curia vice-domini ), and to exercise military command of feudal troops attached to the episcopal government. In return, he usually had
1512-398: The title of avoué being commonly reserved for a noble charged with the protection of an abbey , that of vidame for one guarding an episcopal see . With the crystallization of the feudal system in the 12th century the office of vidame , like that of avoué , had become hereditary. As a title, however, it was much less common and also less dignified than that of avoué . An advocatus
1554-700: The title was sporadically used in addressing emperors throughout the Principate , usually in the form of excessive flattery (or political invective) when referring to the emperor. As a title of sovereignty , the term under the Roman Republic had all the associations of the Greek Tyrannos ; refused during the early Principate, it finally became an official title of the Roman Emperors under Diocletian . Augustus actively discouraged
1596-461: The title. Although a vidame was in theory a relatively low-ranking title, in practice under the French medieval system it gained in prestige and seniority because of the unusually early dates the titles could be traced back to. During the Carolingian epoch, advocatus and vice-dominus were interchangeable terms; and it was only in the 11th century that they became generally differentiated:
1638-469: The western dialects coming under heavy Germanic influence (the Goths and Franks in particular) and the eastern dialects coming under Slavic influence. The dialects diverged from Latin at an accelerated rate and eventually evolved into a continuum of recognizably different typologies. The colonial empires established by Portugal , Spain , and France from the fifteenth century onward spread their languages to
1680-465: Was formerly also used as is, Dominus , for a Bachelor of Arts . Many romance languages use some form of the honorific Don , which derives from this term. Further, the Romanian word for God , Dumnezeu , derives from this title through the Latin phrase "Domine Deus." The Basque language uses jaundone (from Basque jaun , "lord", and Romance dom'ne ) and done as
1722-399: Was often a great baron who added the function of protector of an abbey to his own temporal sovereignty; whereas a vidame was usually a petty noble, who exercised his office in strict subordination to the bishop. A vidame usually took his title from the see he represented, but not infrequently a vidame styled himself, not after his official fief, but after his private seigneury . Thus,
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1764-812: Was rendered through the French seigneur in English as sir , making it a common prefix for parsons before the Reformation , as in Sir Hugh Evans in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor . Its shortened form Dom remains used as a prefix of honor for ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church , and especially for members of the Benedictine and other religious orders . The title
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