Re: CHAT: oldest known records of vernacular languages [was Re:

On Thursday, June 27, 2002, at 10:03 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:
>
>> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>>
>>> Perhaps I have not been clear.  My purpose in using the word
>>> "vernacular" was in contradistinction to "classical", i.e.,
>>> learned languages after the fall of Rome.  Of course Greek
>>> constitutes a much older tradition, since Ancient Greek
>>> orthography still influences modern Greek Dimotiki, and of
>>> course, Chinese beats even that.  But this wasn't my question.
>>
>> Well, fair enough for Chinese, but I think that Greek writing can
>> soundly be called vernacular in Greece (including the Byzantine Empire),
>> though it was "classical" elsewhere.
>
> I'm not sure it's fair to describe the Greek that shows up
> in post-classical Greek texts vernacular in the normal sense
> of the word.  Procopius, among others, used an archaizing
> form of the language that would today be considered diglossia.
We know that!   And artificially archaizing "Attic" was a feature of
official
written language of Byzantium - a tradition which continued, in effect, up
to
Katherevousa of the 19th & 20th centuries.   Diglossia has been a feature
of Greek from the Hellenistic times till (almost) the present.

But vernacular Greek does certainly show up in post-Classical writings.
The texts in the Oxyrhynchus papyri are certainly not Atticized.  How else
does one describe their language than as vernacular Greek?

My dictionary defines vernacular thus:
"_adj_ (of language) indigenous, native, spoken by the people of the
country or of one's own country; of, in, or using the vernacular language.
.."

Thus, as I've said elsewhere, how does one describe the _pre-Classical_
inscriptions written in the local dialect of the community if not as
vernacular?

My contention, as I have said, is that Greek shows an continuous tradition
of vernacular writings from the 8th cent. BC to the present.

Ray.