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Vulgar Latin


Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin
sermo vulgaris
Native to Roman Republic, Roman Empire
Era Antiquity; developed into Romance languages 6th to 9th centuries
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Linguist list
The Roman Empire in 117 AD

Vulgar Latin is a generic term of the nonstandard (as opposed to classical) sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. The word vulgar in this case refers to its original meaning of common or vernacular, and not the more pejorative usage, tasteless or indecent. Works written in Latin during classical times used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin (originally called sermo vulgaris), with very few exceptions (most notably sections of Gaius Petronius' Satyricon). Because of its nonstandard nature, Vulgar Latin had no official orthography. Vulgar Latin is sometimes also called colloquial Latin,[1] or Common Romance (particularly in the late stage). In Renaissance Latin, Vulgar Latin was called vulgare Latinum or Latinum vulgare.

The broad term Vulgar Latin should not be confused with the specific term Proto-Romance, which refers to the theoretical common ancestor to the modern Romance languages. Proto-Romance, however, may have been only one of the Vulgar Latin languages and only a very late stage language of its branch.


  • Proto-Romance 1
  • Origin of the term 2
  • Sources 3
  • History 4
  • Vocabulary 5
  • Phonology 6
    • Evidence of changes 6.1
    • Consonant development 6.2
      • Loss of final consonants 6.2.1
      • Lenition of stops 6.2.2
      • Loss of word-final m 6.2.3
      • Consonant cluster simplification 6.2.4
    • Vowel development 6.3
      • The system of Classical Latin 6.3.1
      • Monophthongization 6.3.2
      • Loss of distinctive length and near-close mergers 6.3.3
      • Phonologization of stress 6.3.4
      • Lengthening of stressed open syllables 6.3.5
  • Grammar 7
    • 7.1 Romance articles
    • Loss of neuter 7.2
    • Loss of oblique cases 7.3
    • Wider use of prepositions 7.4
    • Pronouns 7.5
    • Adverbs 7.6
    • Verbs 7.7
      • Copula 7.7.1
  • Notes 8
  • See also 9
    • History of specific Romance languages 9.1
  • References 10
    • General 10.1
    • Transitions to Romance languages 10.2
      • To French 10.2.1
      • To Italian 10.2.2
      • To Spanish 10.2.3
      • To Portuguese 10.2.4
      • To Occitan 10.2.5
  • External links 11


Vulgar Latin is often confused with Proto-Romance.[2] Proto-Romance is a proto-language, i.e. the latest stage common to all of the Romance languages. Because some of the less familiar Romance languages branched off early from the others (Sardinian in particular, followed by Romanian and related Eastern Romance languages), it is also common to reconstruct later stages: e.g. Proto–Continental Romance (after Sardinian branched off); Proto–Italo-Western Romance (after Sardinian and Romanian branched off); and Proto–Western Romance (after the branching-off of Sardinian, Romanian, and the central and southern Italian languages, including standard Italian).

Proto-Romance and the other proto-languages are theoretical, unitary linguistic constructions. Vulgar Latin, on the other hand, is the actual speech of the common people during the late Roman Empire. As a result, it is not simply theoretical but actually attested (if thinly), and is not unitary, with differences over both time and space. Hence, it is possible to speak of, for example, the loss of initial /j/ in unstressed syllables in the Vulgar Latin of Cantabria (an area in northern Spain), whereas it is inaccurate to speak of a similar change in the "Proto-Romance of Cantabria".

Origin of the term

The term "vulgar speech" (sermo vulgaris), which later became "Vulgar Latin", was used by inhabitants of the Roman Empire. Subsequently it became a technical term from Latin and Romance-language philology referring to the unwritten varieties of a Latinised language spoken mainly by Italo-Celtic populations governed by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Traces of their language appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements. The educated population mainly responsible for classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts depending on their socioeconomic background. The term was first used improperly in that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philology: François Juste Marie Raynouard (1761–1836) and Friedrich Christian Diez (1794–1876).

In the course of his studies on the lyrics of songs written by the troubadours of Provence, which had already been studied by Dante Alighieri and published in De vulgari eloquentia, Raynouard noticed that the Romance languages derived in part from lexical, morphological, and syntactic features that were Latin but were not preferred in classical Latin. He hypothesized an intermediate phase and identified it with the Romana lingua, a term that in countries speaking Romance languages meant "nothing more or less than the vulgar speech as opposed to literary or grammatical Latin."[3]


Diez, in his flagship work on the topic, Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, "Grammar of the Romance Languages," first published in 1836–1843 and multiple times thereafter, after enumerating six Romance languages that he compared: Italian and Wallachian (i.e. Romanian) (east); Spanish and Portuguese (southwest); and Provençal and French (northwest), asserts that they had their origin in Latin, but nicht aus dem classischen Latein, "not from classical Latin," rather aus der römischen Volkssprache oder Volksmundart, "from the Roman popular language or popular dialect".[5] These terms, as he points out later in the work, are a translation into German of Dante's vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and the Italian of Boccaccio, latino volgare.[6] These names in turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman republic.




It cannot be supposed that the spoken language was a distinct and persistent language so that the citizens of Rome would be regarded as bilingual. Instead, Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language throughout its range from the hypothetical prisca latinitas of unknown or poorly remembered times in early Latium to the death of Latin after the fall of the empire. Although making it clear that sermo vulgaris existed, the ancients said very little about it. Because it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indirectly. Knowledge comes from these chief sources:[7]

  1. Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts.


Extract of the Oaths of Strasbourg, the earliest French text.

Vulgar Latin developed differently in the various provinces of the Roman Empire, gradually giving rise to the different Romance languages. József Herman states:




From approximately this point on, the Latin vernaculars began to be viewed as separate languages, developing local norms and, for some, orthographies of their own, so that Vulgar Latin must be regarded not as extinct – since all modern Romance varieties are its continuation – but as replaced conceptually and terminologically by multiple labels recognizing regional differences in linguistic features.

Romance (Old French) Approximate Vulgar Latin Equivalent Translation
Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament, d'ist di in auant, in quant Deus sauir et podir me dunat, si saluarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa si cum om per dreit son fradra saluar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet. Et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai qui meon uol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit. "Pro Deu(m) amore(m) et pro christianu(m) populu(m) et nostro commune(m) salvamentu(m), de istu(m) die(m) in ab ante, in quantu(m) Deus sapere et potere mihi dat, sic salvare(h)a(b)eo ecc'istu(m) meum fratre(m) Carolu(m), et in aiuta et in cata-una causa, sic quomo(do) (h)omo per directu(m) suum fratre(m) saluare debet, in (h)oc quo illoe mi(hi) alteru(m) sic faciat, et apu(d) Lothar(m) nullu(m) placitu(m) nunquam prendere(h)a(b)eo quod meum volu(m) ecc'istu(m) meu(m) fratre(m) Carolu(m) in damno sit." "For the love of God and for Christendom and our common salvation, from this day onwards, as God will give me the wisdom and power, I shall protect this brother of mine Charles, with aid or anything else, as one ought to protect one's brother, so that he may do the same for me, and I shall never knowingly make any covenant with Lothair that would harm this brother of mine Charles."





Evidence of changes


  • a process of syncope, the loss of unstressed vowels in medial syllables ("masculus non masclus");
  • the merger between pre-vocalic /e/ and short /i/ ("vinea non vinia");
  • levelling of the distinction between /b/ and /w/ between vowels ("bravium non brabium");
  • the loss of syllable-final nasals ("mensa non mesa") or their inappropriate insertion as a form of hypercorrection ("formosus non formunsus").

Many of the forms castigated in the Appendix Probi proved to be the productive forms in Romance; e.g., oricla (Classical Latin auricula) is the source of French oreille, Catalan orella, Spanish oreja, Italian orecchia, Romanian ureche, Portuguese orelha, "ear", not the Classical Latin form.

Consonant development

The most significant consonant changes affecting Vulgar Latin were palatalization (except in Sardinia); lenition (in areas north and west of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); and loss of final consonants.

Loss of final consonants


Lenition of stops


Loss of word-final m


Consonant cluster simplification

In general, many clusters were simplified in Vulgar Latin. For example, /ns/ was changed to /s/, reflecting the fact that /n/ was no longer consonantal. In some inscriptions, mensis > mesis ("month"), or consul > cosul ("consul").[11] Descendants of mensis include Portuguese mês, Spanish and Catalan mes, Old French meis, Italian mese.[11] In some areas (including much of Italy), the clusters [mn], [kt] ct, [ks] x were assimilated to the second element: [nn], [tt], [ss].[11] Thus, some inscriptions have omnibus > onibus ("all [dative plural]"), indictione > inditione ("indiction"), vixit > bissit ("lived").[11] Also, three-consonant clusters usually lost the middle element. For example: emptores > imtores ("buyers") [11]

Not all areas show the same development of these clusters, however. In the East, Italian has [kt] > [tt], as in octo > otto ("eight") or nocte > notte ("night"); while Romanian has [kt] > [pt] (opt, noapte).[11] By contrast, in the West, the [k] was turned into [j]. In French and Portuguese, this caused the diphthongization of the previous vowel (huit, oito; nuit, noite), while in Spanish, this developed further to [tʃ] (*oito > ocho, *noite > noche) [12]

Also, many clusters including [j] were simplified. Several of these groups seem to have never been fully stable (e.g. faciunt for facunt). This dropping have resulted in the word parietem ("wall") turning into: Italian parete, Romanian părete>perete, Portuguese parede, Spanish pared, or French paroi.[12]

The cluster [kw] qu was simplified to [k] in most instances. In 435, one can find the hypercorrective spelling quisquentis for quiescentis ("of the person who rests here"). Modern languages have followed this trend, for example Latin qui ("who") has become Italian chi, and French qui (both /ki/); while quem ("who") becomes quien (/kjen/) in Spanish and retains quem (/kẽ/) in Portuguese.[12] However, [kw] has survived in front of [a] in most areas, although not in French; hence Latin quattuor yields Spanish cuatro (/kwatro/), Portuguese quatro (/kwatro/), and Italian quattro (/kwattro/), but French quatre (/katʀ/), where the qu- spelling is purely etymological.[12]

Vowel development


The system of Classical Latin

Classical Latin had 10 different vowel phonemes, grouped into five pairs of short-long, ă – ā, ĕ – ē, ĭ – ī, ŏ – ō, ŭ – ū. It also had four diphthongs, ae, oe, au, eu (some authors also include ui). Finally, there were also long and short y, representing /y/, /yː/ in Greek borrowings, which however probably came to be pronounced /i/, /iː/ even before Romance vowel changes started.

At least since the 1st century AD, short vowels (except a) differed by quality as well as by length from their long counterparts, the short vowels being lower.[13][14] Thus the vowel inventory is usually reconstructed as /a – aː/, /ɛ – eː/, /ɪ – iː/, /ɔ – oː/, /ʊ – uː/.
General vowel changes in most Vulgar Latin
ă /a/ /a/
ā /aː/
ĕ /ɛ/
ē /eː/ /e/ /e/
ĭ /ɪ/
ī /iː/ /i/
ŏ /ɔ/
ō /oː/ /o/ /o/
ŭ /ʊ/
ū /uː/ /u/


Many diphthongs had begun their monophthongization very early. It is presumed that by Republican times ae had become /ɛː/ in unstressed syllables, a phenomenon that would spread to stressed positions around the 1st century AD.[15] From the 2nd century AD there are instances of spellings with ĕ instead of ae.[16] oe was always a rare diphthong in Classical Latin (in Old Latin, oinos regularly became unus ("one")), and became /e/ during early Imperial times. Thus, one can find penam for poenam.[15]

However, au lasted much longer. While it was monophthongized to /o/ in areas of north and central Italy (including Rome), it was retained in most Vulgar Latin, and it survives in modern Romanian (e.g. aur < aurum). There is evidence in French and Spanish that the monophthongization of au occurred independently in these languages.[15]

Loss of distinctive length and near-close mergers

Length confusions seem to have begun in unstressed vowels, but they were soon generalized.[17] In the 3rd century AD, Sacerdos mentions the tendency of people to shorten vowels at the end of a word, while some poets (like Commodian) show inconsistencies between long and short vowels in versification.[17] However, the loss of contrastive length only caused the merger of ă and ā, while the rest of pairs remained distinct in quality: /a/, /ɛ – e/, /ɪ – i/, /ɔ – o/, /ʊ – u/.[18]

Second, the near-close vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ became more open in most varieties, merging with /e/ and /o/, respectively.[18] As a result, the reflexes of Latin pira "pear" and vēra "true" rhyme in most Romance languages: Italian, and Spanish pera, vera. Similarly, Latin nucem "walnut" and vōcem "voice" become Italian noce, voce, Portuguese noz, voz.

There was likely some regional variation in pronunciation, as the Romanian languages and Sardinian evolved differently.[19] In Sardinian, all corresponding short and long vowels simply merged with each other, creating a 5-vowel system: /a, e, i, o, u/. In Romanian, the front vowels ĕ, ĭ, ē, ī evolved like the Western languages, but the back vowels ŏ, ŭ, ō, ū evolved as in Sardinian. A few southern Italian languages behave like Sardinian (e.g., southern Corsican, northernmost Calabria, southern Lucania) or Romanian (e.g., Vegliote (partially), western Lucania).[20]

Phonologization of stress


Lengthening of stressed open syllables

After the Classical Latin vowel length distinctions were lost in favor of vowel quality, a new system of allophonic vowel quantity appeared sometime between the 4th and 5th centuries. Around this time, stressed vowels in open syllables came to be pronounced long (but keeping height contrasts), whereas all the rest became short. For example, long venis /*ˈvɛː.nis/, fori /*fɔː.ri/, cathedra /*ˈkaː.te.dra/; versus short vendo /*ˈ, formas /*ˈfor.mas/.[21] However, in some region of Iberia and Gaul, all stressed vowels came to be pronounced long, for example porta /*ˈpɔːr.ta/, tempus /*ˈtɛːm.pus/.[21]


Romance articles

It is difficult to place the point in which the definite article, absent in Latin but present in all Romance languages, arose; largely because the highly colloquial speech in which it arose was seldom written down until the daughter languages had strongly diverged; most surviving texts in early Romance show the articles fully developed.

Definite articles evolved from demonstrative pronouns or adjectives; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative adjective ille, illa, (illud), in the Romance languages, becoming French le and la, Catalan and Spanish el and la, and Italian il and la. The Portuguese article a ultimately comes from the same source, while o is derived from hoc. Sardinian went its own way here also, forming its article from ipse, ipsa (su, sa); some Catalan and Occitan dialects have articles from the same source. While most of the Romance languages put the article before the noun, Romanian has its own way, by putting the article after the noun, e.g. lupul ("the wolf") and omul ("the man" – from lupum illum and *homo illum),[19] possibly a result of its membership in the Balkan sprachbund.

This demonstrative is used in a number of contexts in some early texts in ways that suggest that the Latin demonstrative was losing its force. The Vetus Latina Bible contains a passage Est tamen ille dæmon sodalis peccati ("The devil is a companion of sin"), in a context that suggests that the word meant little more than an article. The need to translate sacred texts that were originally in Greek, which had a definite article, may have given Christian Latin an incentive to choose a substitute. Aetheria uses ipse similarly: per mediam vallem ipsam ("through the middle of the valley"), suggesting that it too was weakening in force.[10]

Another indication of the weakening of the demonstratives can be inferred from the fact that at this time, legal and similar texts begin to swarm with prædictus, supradictus, and so forth (all meaning, essentially, "aforesaid"), which seem to mean little more than "this" or "that". Gregory of Tours writes, Erat autem. . . beatissimus Anianus in supradicta civitate episcopus ("Blessed Anianus was bishop in that city.") The original Latin demonstrative adjectives were felt no longer to be specific enough.[10] In less formal speech, reconstructed forms suggest that the inherited Latin demonstratives were made more forceful by being compounded with ecce (originally an interjection: "behold!"), which also spawned Italian ecco. This is the origin of Old French cil (*ecce ille), cist (*ecce iste) and ici (*ecce hic); Spanish aquel and Portuguese aquele (*eccu ille); Italian questo (*eccum istum), quello (*eccum illum) and obsolescent codesto (*eccum tibi istum); Spanish acá and Portuguese , (*ecce hic), Portuguese acolá (*ecce illic) and aquém (*ecce inde); Romanian acest (*ecce iste) and acela (*ecce ille), and many other forms.


The numeral unus, una (one) supplies the indefinite article in all cases. This is anticipated in Classical Latin; Cicero writes cum uno gladiatore nequissimo ("with a most immoral gladiator"). This suggests that unus was beginning to supplant quidam in the meaning of "a certain" or "some" by the 1st century BC.

Loss of neuter

First and second adjectival declension paradigm in Classical Latin. E.g. altus ("tall")
singular plural
masculine neuter feminine masculine neuter feminine
nominative altus altum alta altī alta altae
accusative altum altam altōs alta altās
dative altō altae altīs
ablative altō altā altīs
genitive altī altae altōrum altārum
The genders


The neuter gender of classical Latin was in most cases absorbed by the masculine both syntactically and morphologically. The syntactical confusion starts already in the Pompeian graffiti, e.g. cadaver mortuus for cadaver mortuum ("dead body"), and hoc locum for hunc locum ("this place"). The morphological confusion shows primarily in the adoption of the nominative ending -us ( after -r) in the o-declension. In Petronius' work, one can find balneus for balneum ("bath"), fatus for fatum ("fate"), caelus for caelum ("heaven"), amphitheater for amphitheatrum ("amphitheatre"), vinus for vinum ("wine"), and conversely, thesaurum for thesaurus ("treasure"). Most of these forms occur in the speech of one man: Trimalchion, an uneducated, Greek (i.e. foreign) freedman.



Typical Italian endings
Nouns Adjectives and determiners
singular plural singular plural
masculine giardino giardini buono buoni
feminine donna donne buona buone
neuter uovo uova buono buone







Loss of oblique cases

The Vulgar Latin vowel shifts caused the merger of several case endings in the nominal and adjectival declensions.[23] Some of the causes include: the loss of final m, the merger of ă with ā, and the merger of ŭ with ō (see tables).[23] Thus, by the 5th century, the number of case contrasts had been drastically reduced.[23]

Evolution of a 1st declension noun:
rosa ‘rose’ (feminine singular)
(c. 1st century)
(c. 5th cent.)
nominative rosa *rósa roză
accusative rosam
ablative rosā
dative rosae *róse roze
Evolution of a 2nd declension noun:
mūrus ‘wall’ (masculine singular)
(c. 1st cent.)
(c. 5th cent.)
Old French
(c. 11th cent.)
nominative mūrus *múros murs
accusative mūrum *múru mur
ablative mūrō *múro
genitive mūrī *múri

There also seems to be a marked tendency to confuse different forms even when they have not become homophonous (like in the generally more distinct plurals), which indicates nominal declension was not only shaped by phonetic mergers, but also by structural factors.[23] As a result of the untenability of the noun case system after these phonetic changes, Vulgar Latin shifted from a markedly synthetic language to a more analytic language. The genitive case died out around the 3rd century AD, according to Meyer-Lübke, and began to be replaced by de + noun as early as the 2nd century BC. Exceptions of remaining genitive forms are some pronouns, many fossilized combinations like sayings, some proper names, and certain terms related to the church. For example, French jeudi ‘Thursday’ < Old French juesdi < Vulgar Latin jovis diēs; Spanish es menester ‘it is necessary’ < est ministeri; terms like angelorum, paganorum; and Italian terremoto ‘earthquake’ < terrae motu as well as names like Paoli, Pieri.[24]


The accusative case developed as a prepositional case, displacing many instances of the ablative.[24] Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case. [26]

Evolution of a masculine noun
in Old French: veisin ‘neighbor’.
(definite article in parentheses).
Classical Latin
(1st cent.)
Old French
(11th cent.)
singular nominative vīcīnus (li) veisins
accusative vīcīnum (le) veisin
genitive vīcīnī
dative vīcīnō
plural nominative vīcīnī (li) veisin
accusative vīcīnōs (les) veisins
genitive vīcīnōrum
dative vīcīnīs

Wider use of prepositions



Classical Latin:


Vulgar Latin:



Classical Latin:


Vulgar Latin:



Reconstructed pronominal system of Vulgar Latin[28]
1st person 2nd person 3rd person
singular plural singular plural singular plural
Nominative *éo *nọs *tu *vọs




The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text.




In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel /awi/, and the /w/ sound was in many cases dropped; it did not participate in the sound shift from /w/ to /β̞/. Thus Latin amaui, amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and *amaut, yielding for example Portuguese amei, amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of /w/.[19]

Another major systemic change was to the future tense, remodelled in Vulgar Latin with auxiliary verbs. This may have been due to phonetic merger of intervocalic /b/ and /w/, which caused future tense forms such as amabit to become identical to perfect forms such as amauit, introducing unacceptable ambiguity. A new future was originally formed with the auxiliary verb habere, *amare habeo, literally "to love I have" (cf. English "I have to love", which has shades of a future meaning). This was contracted into a new future suffix in Western Romance forms which can be seen in the following modern examples of "I will love":



  • App'a istàre < appo a istàre 'I will stay'
  • App'a nàrrere < appo a nàrrer 'I will say'



Apart from the grammatical and phonetic developments there were many cases of verbs merging as complex subtleties in Latin were reduced to simplified verbs in Romance. A classic example of this are the verbs expressing the concept "to go". Consider three particular verbs in Classical Latin expressing concepts of "going": ire, vadere, and ambulare. In Spanish and Portuguese ire and vadere merged into the verb ir which derives some conjugated forms from ire and some from vadere. andar was maintained as a separate verb derived from ambulare. Italian instead merged vadere and ambulare into the verb andare. And at the extreme French merged all three Latin verbs with, for example, the present tense deriving from vadere and ambulare and the future tense deriving from ire. Similarly the Romance distinction between the Romance verbs for "to be", essere and stare, was lost in French as these merged into the verb être. In Italian, the verb essere inherited both Romance meanings of "being essentially" and "being temporarily of the quality of", while stare specialized into a verb denoting location or dwelling.


The copula (that is, the verb signifying "to be") of Classical Latin was esse. This evolved to *essere in Vulgar Latin by attaching the common infinitive suffix -re to the classical infinitive; this produced Italian essere and French être through Proto-Gallo-Romance *essre and Old French estre as well as Spanish and Portuguese ser (Romanian a fi derives from fieri which means "to become"). However, in Vulgar Latin a second copula developed utilizing the verb stare, which originally meant (and is cognate with) "to stand" to denote a more temporary meaning. That is, *essere signified the essence, while stare signified the state. Stare evolved to Spanish and Portuguese estar and Old French ester (both through *estare), while Italian and Romanian retained the original form.

The semantic shift that underlies this evolution is more or less as follows: A speaker of Classical Latin might have said: vir est in foro, meaning "the man is in/at the marketplace". The same sentence in Vulgar Latin should have been *(h)omo stat in foro, "the man stands in/at the marketplace", replacing the est (from esse) with stat (from stare), because "standing" was what was perceived as what the man was actually doing. The use of stare in this case was still actually correct assuming that it meant "to stand", but soon the shift from esse to stare became more widespread. In the Iberian peninsula esse ended up only denoting natural qualities that would not change, while stare was applied to transient qualities and location. In Italian, "stare" is used only for location and the eminently transient quality implied in a verb's progressive form, such as sto scrivendo for "I am writing". (Although it might be objected that in sentences like Spanish la catedral está en la ciudad, "the church is in the city" this is also unlikely to change, but all locations are expressed through estar in Spanish, as this usage originally conveyed the sense of "the church stands in the city").


  2. ^ (French) Robert A. Hall, Jr. Proto-Romance Phonology: (review by Michael Herslund). Revue Romane, Bind 13 (1978) 1.
  3. ^ Meyer (1906), p.239.
  4. ^ Meyer (1906), pp. 244–5.
  5. ^ Diez (1882), p. 1.
  6. ^ Diez (1882), p. 63.
  7. ^ Grandigent (1907), p.5.
  8. ^ Herman (2000), p.114.
  10. ^ a b c Harrington et al. (1997).
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Herman 2000, p. 47.
  12. ^ a b c d Herman 2000, p. 48.
  14. ^ Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 11.
  15. ^ a b c Palmer 1954, p. 157.
  16. ^ Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 118.
  17. ^ a b Herman 2000, p. 28-29.
  18. ^ a b Palmer 1954, p. 156.
  19. ^ a b c d Vincent (1990).
  20. ^ Michele Loporcaro, “Phonological Processes”, The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages: Structures, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011), 112-4.
  21. ^ a b Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 125.
  23. ^ a b c d e f Herman 2000, p. 52.
  24. ^ a b c Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 82.
  25. ^ Captivi, 1019.
  26. ^ a b c Herman 2000, p. 53.
  27. ^ Romanian Explanatory Dictionary (
  28. ^ a b Grandgent & Moll 1991, p. 238.

See also

History of specific Romance languages



  • Diez, Friedrich (1882). Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen (in German) (5 Auflage ed.). Bonn: E. Weber. 
  • Pulgram, Ernst (1950). "Spoken and Written Latin". Language 26 (4): 458–466.  
  • Väänänen, Veikko (1981). Introduction au latin vulgaire. Troisième édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Klincksieck.  
  • von Wartburg, Walther; Chambon, Jean-Pierre (1928–). Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch: eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes (in German, French). Bonn: F. Klopp. 

Transitions to Romance languages

To French


To Italian


To Spanish


To Portuguese


To Occitan


External links

  • Batzarov, Zdravko (2000). "Orbis Latinus". Retrieved 19 September 2009. 
  • Norberg, Dag; Johnson, R.H. (Translator) (2009) [1980]. "Latin at the End of the Imperial Age". Manuel pratique de latin médiéval. New York: Columbia University Press, Orbis Latinus. 
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