Disputatio:Sermo vulgaris Latinus

English article is good, I suggest to translate something of it. Pepperoni e carciofi 15:15, 30 Ianuarii 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should this be titled sermo vulgaris Latina? all languages have a vulgar popular form--123.192.69.44 08:22, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but if we keep the word sermo, that's masculine, therefore Latinus --Iustinus 08:30, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would agree with "Sermo vulgaris Latinus". Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:39, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having found a source for exactly this phrase, and no one meanwhile opposing, I have moved to it. Was that OK? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:26, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dante's latium[fontem recensere]

The cited text has latium (twice), but one wonders if Dante didn't write a line over the i, a common medieval shorthand for adding an n. If Dante really meant latium, he was apparently using the adjective Latius, -a, um, which we might convert to English as 'Latian' ('of Latium'), referring to the place and its Romans; and the lemma might better then be Vulgare Latium, which will make many readers do a double-take. :/ IacobusAmor 12:29, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The edition of Dante's text that I have says "vulgare Latinum" in both cases. Was your source also a printed edition? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:47, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Click and see! IacobusAmor 13:49, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had to correct your links and then click. OK, well, (a) they don't say what edition they are using and (b) the next word after "latium" is definitely misspelt ("retrabentes" for "retrahentes"). So I wouldn't put too much trust in that page! But I quite agree with you, they might well be working from a text that had tildes in place of "n"s. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:11, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dante isn't talking about what we call "vulgar Latin". It was long forgotten in his time, and the sources we use for it were almost all unknown to him. He's talking about what we call medieval Italian vernaculars/dialects.

[Added afterwards:] I've just checked an English translation (1934, by A. G. Ferrers Howell). Phew, he agrees with me. He translates (1.10.5) "the vernacular Italian"; (1.19.1) "the Italian vernacular". But I'm not recommending that we use the phrase in Dante's sense: that would be confusing. It's just that Dante isn't a good source for "vulgare Latinum" in the sense we need here. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:47, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article's own link sends us to "Vulgar Latin . . . is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. . . . It is sometimes called colloquial Latin, Proto-Romance or Common Romance (particularly in the late stage)." IacobusAmor 13:49, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keyword: any. IacobusAmor 13:51, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sure, that's what "vulgar Latin" is, but the question here is, is the Latin phrase "vulgare Latinum" used in that sense? It may well be, but not by Dante.

But this is not a big deal. If you asked Dante how much the Italian vernaculars of his day differed from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire, 1000 years earlier, he couldn't have known. He might have supposed there was not much difference. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:16, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Opening paragraph[fontem recensere]

I made minor changes which I hope are all right. "Humilis" seemed POV and not supported by citation? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:06, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cassell's: "[colloquial] speech, sermo humilis. IacobusAmor 17:34, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Plebeius" is also POV, but there is a citation for that! Anyway I changed humilis to cottidianus. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:06, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Things may be getting confused: "Cicero reflects the sermo cottidianus of educated Romans" (Palmer 1988:151), but one wonders how humilis it was. IacobusAmor 17:34, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But maybe not too confused, because Quintilian has "humile ac cotidianum sermonis genus" as if they are semi-synonymous, and I would guess that's where Cassell's got it from ...

Given that, I have now added the word back in, and used it to eliminate the repetition of "noncanonicis". See if it's OK now. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:52, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't see why we said that the distinction was recognised in "the 9th century and long before", when we only cite sources from 1000 years earlier and none about the 9th century, Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:06, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original statement—that (as one recalls) the distinction was made in the ninth century—may illustrate the problem of writing articles "off the top of our heads," rather than translating texts that have already been edited. Since the distinction had first been made more than eight hundred years before the ninth century, adjustments were welcome. IacobusAmor 17:34, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

so I changed to 1st century BC. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:26, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about it further, I guess the point intended (at some stage in the wikipast) was that Romance vernaculars are written, as a consciously different language from Latin, from the 9th century onwards. That would be true, and is exemplified further on in the article, but the footnote didn't relate to it and I'm not sure how the point is to be related to vulgar Latin, so I think, as things stand, my change makes sense. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:06, 11 Iunii 2011 (UTC)[reply]