Re: Classic, Normal, and Vulgar Lingo

At 8:23 pm -0500 19/1/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Mike Adams wrote:
>> I expect that since Classical was only understood by those who could
>> read it.
This is wrong.

Altho I have said two or three times recently that Classical Latin was
essentially a literary conlang, it does *NOT* mean that Classical Latin was
primarily a written language.  We must always be careful not to transfer
modern situations into the past.  Classical Roman society existed well
before the age of printing - books were scarce & precious.

No - Classical Latin was meant above all to _heard_.  The Romans would not
have been so concerned about rhythmic patterns in prose if it were not so.
Most Romans of the higher echelons did not get their literature by reading,
but by listening.  Good gracious - the script was single case; words were
not separated; there was no proper punctuation.  Far too time consuming.
They had specially trained slaves and/or freedmen to read to them.

The Romans did not, as we do, have the leisure to pour over a stanza of
Horace & see how the words relate to one another - they understood it as it
was being read.  This is often forgotten, meseems, by some moderns who
comment on the 'artificiality' of Latin verse.

How far a Ciceronian speech would have been intelligible to merchants in
the forum, one cannot tell.  I'd be surprised if they were not able to
follow the general gist & trend of the speech.  At any rate some slaves &
freedmen understood the Classical language well enough  :)

>> Normal Latin was spoken much like we speak upper class English,
>> but if we find ourselves with friends we speak a more relaxed English.
>
>Most people would've spoken a form somewhere on a continuum from Vulgar
>Latin to Classical Latin,
Yes, indeed.  I have argued much the same.  And probably most of the Roman
aristos in the Classical period were pretty much trilingual - Vulgar Latin,
a sort of 'katharevousa' Latin, and Greek.

>>There wasn't really any
>"Normal Latin", what was normal would depend on social class.  Normal
>speech for a senator would be very different than normal for a soldier,
>after all!
Quite - "normal" has little meaning in this context.

>I wonder if there were any examples of hypercorrection among the Romans,
>like, say, "hamare" for "amare"?
To which at 11:40 pm -0500 19/1/00, Padraic Brown replied:
[...]
>Appendix Probi has some interesting things in it. What I have of it
>has one of the above:
>
>ostiae non hostiae
Yes - I've come across some others - but I can't lay my hand on them at the
moment.

But even before Probus, Catullus tells of one Arrius:

'Chommoda' dicebat si quando 'commoda' uellet
   dicere, et 'insidias' Arrius 'hinsidias'.
et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum,
  cum quantum poterat dixerat 'hinsidias'.


"Hadvantages" 'Arry used to say whenever he wanted to say "advantages", and
"ambush" became "hambush".   He thought he'd
spoken marvellously if he said "hambush" as powerfully as he could.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================