Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or locality. In general
linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to linguae francae, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard
dialects of a global language.
For instance: in Western Europe up until the 17th century, most scholarly work was
written in Latin, so works written in a native language were said to be in the
vernacular.
The vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language (in
linguistics, the relationship between these "High" and "Low" languages or varieties of a
language is referred to as diglossia). For example, until the 1960s, Latin Rite Roman Catholics held masses in Latin rather than in local vernacular language, to this day the Coptic Church holds liturgies in Coptic; though parts of mass are read in Amharic, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez, etc. The Reformation was spread by the publication
of Bibles and other religious writings in the vernacular, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular liturgies in Roman Catholicism.
Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in
Sanskrit long after its use as a spoken language. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada,
Telugu and many other Indian languages throughout the different regions of India. For
example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such
as Ramacharitamanasa, a Hindi version of the
Ramayana by the 16th century poet Tulsidas, and Kambaramayanam in Tamil by the poet Kamban.
Vernacular in sociolinguistics
Within the subcategory of sociolinguistics, the term vernacular has been
applied to several concepts, leading to confusion among scholars regarding what is actually being referred to. This term had not
been heard in the western world until the late 1800's. One use of the term, as exemplified by Poplack (1993) and Labov (1972), defines vernacular varieties as casual varieties used spontaneously rather than
self-consciously. It could also be described as informal talk used in intimate situations. Linguists consider the vernacular to
be the first form of speech acquired by a person.
Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) on the other hand
define vernacular varieties as nonstandard, local dialects, particularly because of the
nonstandard grammatical features that they contain. They also state that there is a continuum
between the vernacular and the standard.
Similar approaches have been made to define vernacular culture: Cheshire (1982) sees
vernacular culture as a non-standard or counter culture that is expressed through participation in particular activities or
clothing styles, whereas Edwards (1992) defines it as a local culture determined by
the connectedness to a certain neighbourhood.
First vernacular grammars....
Through metalinguistic publications vernaculars acquired the status of
official languages. Between 1437 and 1586 the first grammars of Italian, Spanish, French, German and English were written, though not always immediately
published.
Italian grammar
Leon Battista Alberti’s Grammatichetta vaticana was written between
1437 and 1441, but not printed until 1908, which is why its influence is debated. Alberti was
concerned with showing that dialects also had structures by mapping them onto Latin, whereas his fellow grammarians Giovanni
Francesco Fortunio (Regole grammaticali della vulgar lingua, 1516) and Pietro Bembo
(Prose della vulgar lingua, 1525) strived to establish a norm dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national
language.
Spanish grammar
The first (contrastive) Spanish grammar by Antonio de
Nebrija (Gramática Castellana, 1492) was divided into parts for native and
nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each: Books 1-4 describe the Castillian language grammatically in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish speaking
readers. Book 5 contains a phonetical and morphological overview of Castillian for nonnative speakers.
French grammar
The first (methodical) grammar of French was not written in France but in England and aimed at foreign speakers intending to
learn the language. An interest in learning French had already been expressed before John
Palsgrave wrote Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse in 1530 by his
contemporaries Alexander Barclay (Here begynneth the
introductory to wryte and to pronounce frenche, 1521), Pierre Valence (Introductions in frensshe, 1528) and Giles du Wes (An introducterie for to lerne to rede to prononce and to speke Frenche trewly, 1532-1533).
Palgrave’s instructive work was based on literary examples, following the model of
Theodorus Gaza’s grammar of Greek (1495).
German grammar
In Germany, the first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many
regional dialects. Like Nebrija, Valentin Ickelsamer
(Ein Teütsche Grammatica , 1534) stresses the importance of understanding the structure of
the national language in order to learn other languages, above all Latin.
English grammar
William Bullokar (Pamphlet for Grammar, 1586) was the first to write a proper
English grammar, preceded only by Richard Mulcaster’s general plea for mother tongue
education in England, The first part of the elementary, 1582. Bullokar followed leading Latin grammarians in England to
prove that English was, like Latin, governed by rules.
First vernacular dictionaries
The first vernacular dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars. As can be
seen from the section above, many of the new grammars were based on traditional Latin ones, comparing the structure of both
languages. This preservation of traditional form does not apply for the new type of dictionaries. Although they kept the
macrostructure and elements of the microstructure
of old dictionaries, there was more drastic change than in the case of grammars.
Up to the mid-fifteenth century, glosses and dictionaries were mostly
bilingual and served the teaching of Latin. For reading and translation of Latin texts, dictionaries would usually display the sequence Latin lemma (unknown) followed by explanatory vernacular expression (known). Dictionaries with reversed
order would serve the more active tasks of speaking and writing. Both types were solely concerned with the study of Latin, but at
the same time they unintentionally documented the development of vernaculars at a time that these were not considered worth
writing about.
With the emergence of monolingual dictionaries vernaculars arrived at their breakthrough. The gradual formation of nation
states and the growing importance of national languages (that are briefly explained in the section Early Vernacular
Studies) led to the publication of multilingual vernacular dictionaries in various
combinations.
Some early bilingual vernacular dictionaries include:
Italian/French
- Nathanael Duez : Dittionario italiano e francese/Dictionnaire italien et François, Leiden, 1559-1560
- Gabriel Pannonius: Petit vocabulaire en langue françoise et italienne, Lyon, 1578
- Jean Antoine Fenice : Dictionnaire fraçois et italien, Paris, 1584
Italian/English
- John Florio : A Worlde of Words, London,
1598
- John Florio: Queen Anna’s New World of Words,
London, 1611
Italian/Spanish
- Cristobal de las Casas: Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y
castellana, Sevilla, 1570
- Lorenzo Franciosini: Vocabulario italiano e spagnolo/
Vocabulario espanol e italiano, Roma, 1620.
Some early monolingual vernacular dictionaries:
Italian
- Francesco Alunno: Le richezze della lingua volgare,
1543
- Francesco Alunno: La fabbrica del mondo, 1548
- Giacomo Pergamini: Il memoriale della lingua
italiana, 1602
- Accademia della Crusca: Vocabolario degli
Accademici della Crusca, 1612
Spanish
- Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco: Tesoro de la lengua castellana
o española, 1611
French
- Maurice de la Porte: Epitheta, 1571
- Jean Nicot: Thresor de la langue fracoyse, tant ancienne que
moderne, 1606
- Pierre Richelet : Dictionnaire françois contenant les mots
et les choses, 1680
- Académie française : Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694
German
- Georg Heinisch: Teütsche Sprache und Weißheit,
1616
- Johann Christoph Adelung : Versuch eines
vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches Der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774-1786
Language can blur into vernacular architecture, where the local vernacular is
sometimes reflected in the form of the styles of naive/vernacular typography & hand
lettering seen on signs and shopfronts. Similarly the word may be used to describe local
craft - e.g. "vernacular ceramic wares".
In literature, it may apply to works that have been written to emulate the everyday speech
of the middle class or the working class. Sometimes,
this means that slang and colloquial speech is
included.
Such material may also use different rules of grammar and punctuation than other writings, both academic and literary.
In the Three Stooges' film short Disorder in
the Court, the prosecuting attorney admonishes Curly, who his holding a Derby hat, for using slang while on the witness
stand. He asks Curly to "Please drop the vernacular", whereby Curly points at the hat and responds, "Vernacular? That's a
Derby."
See also
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