Re: USAGE: Vulgate (was: Slezan)

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> > The Vulgate isn't written in VL as far as I
> > can tell!
>
> And you tell correctly :)   How anyone who has
> actually read any of
> the Vulgate can think it's Vulgar Latin beats
> me. It has all the
> full-blown morphology of Classical Latin.
I look at it like this: if it were written in VL,
why would they [linguists, et r] have to
_reconstruct_ VL from patchwork sources like
textual errors, spelling mistakes, Romance
languages, and all?

While it would be an interesting intellectual
exercise, it would be akin to "reconstructing"
Old English while Beowilf sits on the book shelf.


> Well, yes, to it's not quite so simple. Another
> common urban myth is that
> Jerome
> translated all the scriptures into Latin (for
> the first time).
Yeah. He used older (and numerous as the stars of
heaven) Latin texts.

> Some of the earlier versions had, apparently,
> become so familiar that
> Jerome tried, where
> possible to do no more than the odd 'tidying up
> job'.  But he did, of
> course, have a good
> deal of translation work to do to fill in the
> gaps and produce a whole,
> complete work.
Anyone interested in comparison can pick up the
"Celtic Gospels" (Oxford), which is one of the
Old Latin forms.

> There is simply no way he could have used
> Vulgar Latin; there was no standard form.
Well, he could have - and it would have been a
boon for all the North African Romance
conlangers! ;) I mean, when Dante wrote, there
was no standard Italian either!

Padraic.



=====
blaženi ništii duxom&#1100; &#283;ko t&#283;x&#1098; est&#1098; c&#283;sar&#1100;stvo
nebes&#1100;skoe!
    -- Mt.5:3

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