Re: Who SPOKE Classical Latin in Rome?

Artem Kouzminykh wrote:

> I wander could someone suppose that social groups or people in Ancient Rome
> actually used Classical Latin, not Vulgar one, i.e. spoke it in theirs usual
> everyday life, for everyday communication? Poets, orators, high classes?..
> Who else?
As others have already mentioned, Classical Latin, as such, did not exist in
its pure, standardized form, much as there are no speakers of modern Standard
American English or RP, nor could there be.    Ancient Roman society probably
had diglossia:   two speech forms are used side by side, with one usually being
used as a prestige dialect or language and the other being used for day to day
affairs.
It is a good question whether Classical Latin was really a different language;
it probably
was just a highly divergent, highly archaized and therefore somewhat artificial
dialect,
and indeed, sometimes entirely so:  the 3rd person plural perfect ending -e:runt

(with long /e:/) probably never existed at any stage in the development of
Latin.
The educated also had an education in Greek letters as a matter of course, which

naturally affected their Latin.

> You see, I'd like to make them the ancestors of my Romula conlang speakers,
> to explain why Romula is so close to Classical (not Vulgar) Latin in
> vocabulary, so archaic.
Well, that depends on where Romula is located.  Certain Romance languages,
like Sardinian, managed not to undergo the palatalization of Classical /k/ to
/tS/ like most (all?) other Romance dialects.  If the people speaking Romula
are highly isolated (like those on Sardinia were), they might not undergo
changes
that were prevalent elsewhere in the Latin-speaking world.   This seems to me
a more likely situation to have happened than mass-education, as no region of
Western Europe after the collapse of the Empire had the economy to maintain
such a social service for everyone.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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