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Origins of Vernacular Language

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Sharon Hartman
AIU Online
ORIGINS OF VERNACULAR LANGUAGE

Abstract Several things were responsible for the spread of the vernacular language. The one thing that stood out as a consequence is religion. It seems only logical that the end result would have been what it was from all the factors that were responsible.

Vernacular refers to the speech used in a particular town or community. Up until the Fourteenth Century, Latin was the vernacular most widely used in the then civilized world. It was used by the religious leaders in the churches and by the aristocracy of the time. This was to show power and wealth and breeding. It was the noblewomen who commissioned works of music and literature and poetry into Latin to preserve it. Latin was the prevalent language as it comes from the Romans who had conquered most of the land and territories of Europe. As the Roman Empire grew, so did the Latin language, both spoken and written, no matter the native dialect. This made it easy to use in business but for religious purposes this created a problem. Business men knew that they could travel from port to port and speak to each other in a Latin with no inherent problems. Both spoke the same language for trading. However when the religious sect tried to convert other cultures to Roman Catholicism, if the people they were trying to convert were not of the rich and influential, the communication was hard. Eventually the vernacular language of the particular culture or territory took over and Latin was not used in these areas any longer. The Ronan Catholic Church wished to make Christianity available to everyone, not just the rich and powerful who could read and write Latin. Monks, who were well versed in science and the bible, as well as the vernacular languages, were commissioned to create alphabets in the common vernacular to translate the bible from Latin so that everyone could read it. This way it would be even easier to convert the native people in their own vernacular to Christianity. (Bouchard, 2004). This created a debate as to should the Christian mass be said in Latin or in the vernacular? This debate continued until the sixteenth century (Slavitt, 1999). The French were among the first to use their own vernacular for their literature in the fourteenth century (Sayre, 2010). Noblewomen were commissioned to translate great French works from French to Latin, or at the minimum, be able to read and write both. Vernacular language had empowered all classes of people to read and write, if wealthy, and speak to each other in a true understanding of their region. When traveling, which was among only the wealthy, it can then be inferred that Latin was still the most widely used language for a considerable length of time. However vernacular language was the established language for literature, history, and personal expression (McCash, 2008). Latin remained the official language for sciences and official proceedings since it is considered safe from changes (Vincze, 2009).

References
Bouchard, M. (2004). A critical reappraisal of the concept of the ‘Imagined Community’ and the presumed sacred languages of the medieval period. National Identities, 6(1), 3-24. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Chappell, P. (2011). Gutenberg’s Press Revisited: Invention and Renaissance in the Modern World. Agora, 46(2), 26-30. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
De Lange, N. (2006). Jewish Use of Greek in the Middle Ages: Evidence from Passover Haggadoth from the Cairo Genizah. Jewish Quarterly Review, 96(4), 490-497. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Deumert, A., & Vandenbussche, W. (2003). Germanic standardizations: past to present (Impact: studies in language and society. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Pub Co.Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=9027218560
McCash, J. (2008). The Role of Women in the Rise of the Vernacular. Comparative Literature, 60(1), 45-57. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Orme, N. (2006). What did Medieval Schools do for us?. History Today, 56(6), 10-17. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Reershemius, G. (2009). Post-Vernacular Language Use in a Low German Linguistic Community. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 21 , pp 131-147 doi:10.1017/S1470542709000221
Sayre, H. (2010). Discovering the humanities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Slavitt, D. R. (1999). The Decline and Fall of Latin (and the Rise of English). World & I, 14(10), 18. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Vincze, H. (2009). The stakes of translation and vernacularisation in early modern Hungary. European Review of History, 16(1), 63-78. doi:10.1080/13507480802655402 http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/langlit.html http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/whyread/latin.htm http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/bluedot/vernacular.html

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