Vulgar Latin (review)

Reviews 203 London printers. Others examine those books, and, importantly, their contexts, published especially for gentlemen and gentlewomen, and, for a wider readership, devotional use (among which it is noted that the primer remained central throughout the politico-religious upheavals) and music, where the interest in this period of the exalted 'literate amateur' (p. 550) such as Henry VIII is shown to have made a difference to the number and need for music books. In even shorter terms, every contribution in this volume is essential reading for serious scholars ofthis period across the disciplines. Janet Hadley Williams Department ofEnglish and Theatre Studies Australian National University Herman, Jozsef, Vulgar Latin, trans. Roger Wright, University Park PA, Penn State University Press, 2000; paper; pp. xiv, 130; R.R.P. US$17.95; ISBN 0271020016. This is a marvellous and definitive book, having been written by one who is a acknowledged master in hisfield,and translated by a man w h o is now his equal. Thus twofirst-classminds come together and their mastery of the subject is conveyed (as true mastery often is) with easy, charming and limpid simplicity. The result is an essential book for specialists, which will also be attractive (mirabile dictul) to all amateurs of language. The title is perhaps deceptive. This book in fact lays to rest the Piltdown Man ofwestern linguistics, the myth that a distinct vernacular known as Vulgar Latin emerged, in the twilight of the Roman Empire, as the missing link or matrix from which the m o d e m romance tongues were born and followed their separate paths. The reality is more subtle and very much more interesting than that. Relying on his apparently encyclopedic knowledge of inscriptions which, with the exception of rare oddities such as the Cena Trimalchionis, must inevitably and logically be our sole contemporary record of the spoken Latin ofthe classical and later periods, Herman demonstrates the seamless process by which Latin evolved into the romance languages, until the day came when speakers, with new metalinguistic insight, began to feel that their own speech was radically different from that which went before or (which amounts to the same thing) felt obliged to acknowledge that the language of their forefathers had become impenetrable and foreign to them. This insight, of course, came early to some and later to 204 Reviews others. Charlemagne's conservative and archaising reforms drove a wedge between the formal Latin of the church and of civil administration and the ordinary speech of the people, which launched French into linguistic independence . In Italy the divide was evident two centuries later, in Spain perhaps even later. By Vulgar Latin Herman means the speech (not the writing, except in so far as inscriptions genuinely record speech) of the c o m m o n man in the Latinspeaking world. And what delightful epigraphic surprises he presents us with, to broaden our minds and even overthrow some of our comfortable delusions! M y own favourite (p. 41) is this inscription from, incredibly, Pompeii (giving a terminus ante quern of 19 A D ) : quisquis ama valia, peria qui nosci amare [quisquis amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare] I have no doubt that if this inscription had been undated many scholars would claim it as medieval - early or proto-Italian - for it startlingly prefigures the distinctive phonology of the Italian verb. The book abounds in other examples of 'Italian' phonetic features appearing in Latin at a very early date. Evidence has always been available for the reduction of the diphthongs ae and oe, for the distinctive treatment of c and g before front vowels, for the pronunciation of consonantal u as a fricative, and for the loss offinalconsonants, particularly -m, and the confusion of the vowels o/u. By way of illustrating the subtlety of the processes involved, the last two phenomena make it very difficult to determine when, precisely, a Latin second declension noun could properly be said to have evolved into an 'Italian' masculine noun in -o. Herman reviews all the evidence for phonetic changes of this kind, refines it and corroborates it with well chosen examples. Interesting lexical material abounds, too. Herman shows that Latin words which, even during...