ONE, TWO, MANY LATINS: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN AND LATINROMANCE DIGLOSSIA by KEVIN RICHARD ROTH (Under the Direction of Jared Klein) ABSTRACT From the modern perspective the divide between Latin and the Romance Languages is so well established that one is tempted to regard such a development as inevitable. The terms “Vulgar Latin” and “Classical Latin” are so familiar that it is easy to imagine that the former changed over time into the Romance Languages while the latter remained the same. This scenario, however, does not take into account the ability of languages to be sufficiently elastic that the written form can retain archaic grammar and vocabulary while the spoken form advances. The preponderance of surviving evidence supports the view that Latin and forms of Romance were not consciously distinguished from one another until the Carolingian Renaissance c. AD 800. This eventual dichotomy seems to have been prompted, not by natural development, but rather by a reform in the pronunciation of Latin that was promoted at this time by the monk Alcuin. The new pronunciation eventually occasioned written forms of the Romance Languages. INDEX WORDS: Latin, Romance Languages, Diglossia, Bilingualism, Alcuin of York, Carolingian Renaissance, Vulgar Latin, Medieval Latin, Latin grammarians ONE, TWO, MANY LATINS: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN AND LATINROMANCE DIGLOSSIA by KEVIN RICHARD ROTH B.A., Michigan State University, 2005 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2010 © 2010 Kevin Richard Roth All Rights Reserved ONE, TWO, MANY LATINS: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN AND LATINROMANCE DIGLOSSIA by KEVIN RICHARD ROTH Major Professor: Jared Klein Committee: Erika Hermanowicz Sarah Spence Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia July 2010 iv. DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this work to my mother, Frances Roth, who first encouraged me to pursue foreign languages and who bought me my first Latin textbook in 1998 (when I was in 9th grade), and to my future wife, Katie McLean, who has provided me with comfort and care throughout the entirety of my graduate study in Athens. Quod scripsi, scripsi. v. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 2 DIGLOSSIA………………………………………………………………………3 3 PHONETIC WRITING SYSTEMS………………………………………………5 4 CONTEMPORARY PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN…………………………...7 5 ROMANCE PHILOLOGY………………………………………………………20 6 VULGAR LATIN………………………………………………………………..22 7 THE IDEA OF EARLY LATINROMANCE BILINGUALISM……………….26 8 THE USUAL NARRATIVE VS. ALTERNATIVE…………………………….29 9 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LATIN AND ROMANCE…………………...32 10 SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHANALIBUS………………………….38 11 PETRONIUS…………………………………………………………………….45 12 ROMANCE INNOVATIONS…………………………………………………...64 13 MUTUAL COMPREHENSION IN ROMANCE……………………………….74 14 LITERACY IN THE DARK AGES……………………………………………..78 15 THE FEASIBILITY OF THE ESSENTIAL UNITY OF LATIN AND ROMANCE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES………………………………...94 16 NONSTANDARD FEATURES OF DOCUMENTS…………………………116 17 GRAMMARIANS’ EMPHASIS ON WRITING, NOT SPEAKING………….118 Velius Longus…………………………………………………………………..118 Quintilian……………………………………………………………………….120 Consentius………………………………………………………………………121 vi. Sextus Pompeius Festus………………………………………………………...121 St. Isidore of Seville…………………………………………………………….122 18 ALCUIN’S REFORMS………………………………………………………...125 19 MEDIEVAL LATIN……………………………………………………………136 20 THE BIRTH OF ROMANCE VERNACULAR WRITING…………………...142 French…………………………………………………………………………..143 Occitan………………………………………………………………………….148 Franco-Provençal……………………………………………………………….149 Spanish………………………………………………………………………….149 Portuguese………………………………………………………………………156 Catalan………………………………………………………………………….156 Italian…………………………………………………………………………...157 21 THE PERSISTENCE OF NONSTANDARD ROMANCE DIALECTS……..161 22 THE POSSIBILITY OF LATIN AS A MODERN LANGUAGE……………..163 23 THE UNIQUENESS OF LATIN……………………………………………….167 Russian………………………………………………………………………….168 Arabic…………………………………………………………………………...170 German………………………………………………………………………….172 Greek……………………………………………………………………………173 Chinese………………………………………………….………………………184 Norwegian………………………………………………………………………187 Turkmen…...……………………………………………………………………188 Sanskrit...……………………………………………………………………….191 Comparison of Latin to the Above Profiled Languages………………………..193 24 LATINO SINE FLEXIONE……………………………………………………195 vii. 25 LATIN AS A MODERN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE………………….199 26 THE DECLINE OF LATIN IN MODERN TIMES……………………………202 27 LATIN (AND GREEK) TODAY…………….………………………………...206 Italy……………………………………………………………………………..206 Greece…………………………………………………………………………..207 Russia…………………………………………………………………………...209 Spain …………………………………………………………………………...211 Portugal…………………………………………………………………………212 Germany...………………………………………………………………………212 The Netherlands………………………………………………………………...213 28 SPOKEN LATIN AND PEDAGOGY…………………………………………214 29 LATINROMANCE REGISTERS, DIGLOSSIA, AND BILINGUALISM…..225 30 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………231 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………232 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Of the many languages of the world that are written with alphabetic scripts, some use more phonetic systems than others, and Latin, as studied today, is generally considered to be a language whose orthography displays a close correlation between sound and symbol. There are no silent letters, the bane of students of English and French. For the most part each discreet sound is represented by only one symbol. Since Latin is today taught and studied with a phonetic orthographic system, it is easy to assume that it has had a continuous history of spoken usage in which speakers, ideally, pronounced words more or less as one would expect from spelling, as is done today (insofar as Latin continues to be spoken). There is a great deal of evidence, though, that Latin as we know it today is an artificial construct. The true Latin language evolved over time into the various modern Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, etc. Latin survived as a distinct and actively used language into modern times, alongside the Romance languages, because of a reformation that occurred at the court of Charlemagne during the Carolingian Renaissance around the year AD 800. Orthographic reforms are common phenomena, which strive to update spelling to reflect prevailing current pronunciation, but the reformation that Latin underwent at that time was an alternation in pronunciation based on spelling. Prior to this, as is clear through historical Romance linguistics, the ancient Latin language had changed sufficiently that it could more properly be called Romance. What we identify as Latin, though, remained in use as the written form of the language. The norms of written composition (in the form of syntax, vocabulary, etc.) as specified in the works of grammarians, were largely maintained as before, despite the ever-increasing discrepancy 2 between the written and spoken forms of the language. Such situations, though, are common, even among modern languages. The conceptual difference, within the minds of speakers between Latin and Romance did not emerge until a second, reformed pronunciation came into use. This change also gave rise to the need to have some way of indicating the pronunciation of the vernacular. Thus, written Romance came about when the phonetic principle, which had earlier been applied to pronunciation of the written language (thus creating Latin as a distinct written and spoken form), was applied in turn to the writing of the standard spoken vernacular (thus begetting the various Romance languages as distinct spoken and written forms). In this way, the unitary nature of Latin first evolved into a relationship of diglossia between formal and colloquial registers of Latin, and then was transformed into the status of bilingualism between Latin and the local forms of Romance, some of which eventually became literary languages in their own right, the modern Romance languages. 3 CHAPTER 2 DIGLOSSIA The reign of Charlemagne (768-814), a period which is often called the “Carolingian Renaissance” because of the reformation of education and revival of the study of ancient Latin literature, is a liminal era in the history of Latin and the Romance languages. It was during this period that we have the first clear contemporary reference to Latin-Romance diglossia. We must first establish what is meant by “diglossia,” since the term has acquired various meanings over time. In the eponymous 1959 article that introduced the term “diglossia,” linguist Charles Ferguson of Stanford University defined it thusly: A relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects of the language (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation. (Wei, 2000: 75). In this article, Ferguson used the example of four languages, each of which was dichotomized into high (H) and low (L) varieties: Classical vs. Egyptian Arabic; Standard vs. Swiss German; French