Vulgar Latin

Lore & Background

During the Classical period, Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their language as sermo plebeius or sermo vulgaris, meaning 'common speech.' The modern usage of 'Vulgar Latin' dates to the Renaissance, when Italian humanists theorized that their own language originated in a 'corrupted' Latin distinct from the literary Classical variety.

Reader's Guide

The term 'Vulgar Latin' has been used in different ways by different scholars, applied to spoken Latin of differing types, social classes, and time periods. However, research in the 20th century shifted the view to consider differences between written and spoken Latin in more moderate terms, with philologist József Herman agreeing the term is problematic and limiting it to innovations and changes relatively uninfluenced by educated forms. The continued use of 'Vulgar Latin' is regarded by some modern philologists as essentially meaningless and a barrier to clear understanding, with calls to replace it with more precise definitions such as the spoken Latin of a particular time and place.

Did You Know?

• The term 'Romance' derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, meaning 'in Roman', as in the expression romanice loqui, 'to speak in Roman'.
• The Romance languages are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family.
• There are more than 900 million native speakers of Romance languages worldwide, mainly in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa.
• The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish, with 475 million native speakers as of ca. 2020.
• Flavio Biondo was the first scholar to observe (in 1435) linguistic affinities between Romanian and Italian, as well as their common Latin origin.