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The Latin Language

As we have seen, the Spanish language is only the most recent in a series of stages in the evolution of a linguistic organism that has existed since before the beginning of recorded history. At the moment when the organism first appears, it is the language of a group of villages on both sides of the Tiber River in central Italy, which later forms the nucleus of the city of Rome. Because of the importance of this city and the empire that is born there, Latin becomes the European language of culture par excellence and remains so for more than a millennium. The many texts written in Latin throughout this period represent an incomparable resource for students of historical linguistics, especially those who specialize in the history of the Romance languages. These texts make it possible to compare the various stages in the life of this organism and to allow these stages to teach us— free, to a certain point, of the need to depend on a reconstructed protolanguage— what principles have determined the evolution of all its components.

Since the following chapters treat the linguistic evolution of Castilian, it is desirable to describe here, at the beginning, the linguistic features of the language that served as the starting point for this evolution. For this reason I present here, after a brief historical characterization, the principal phonological, morphological, and syntactic traits of Latin.

Due to the existence of a group of words shared among the Italic, Germanic, and Celtic branches of the Indo-European family, linguists posit a time when a subpopulation that eventually splits into these groups lives in central Europe, speaking a language that might be termed “Proto-Italic/Germanic/Celtic”. Later, around the tenth century b.c.,onegroupofthispopulationmigratestowardLatium, the central west region on the Italian Peninsula where later on Rome is to be founded. 1 The preliterary period ends and the preclassic begins in the third century b.c., with the translation into Latin of Homer’s Odyssey by a Greek slave named Livius Andronicus. The writings of authors such as Plautus and Terence show heavy Greek influence. In the political sphere, Rome establishes itself during this period as the dominant power on the Peninsula.

The high point of Roman literature, the classical period, 100– 14 b.c., coincides with the consolidation of Roman political power throughout the Mediterranean basin. From this era date works by some of the most brilliant authors in Latin literature: Cicero, Sallust, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Shortly after the founding of the Roman Empire in 27 b.c. and the subsequent spread of the Latin language throughout Europe and North Africa, the decline of Latin literature begins during the so-called postclassical period (14 b.c. to a.d. 200). At this time it becomes apparent that a divergence is taking place between the spoken and written varieties of the language.

This incipient diglossia becomes even more pronounced during the late period (a.d. 200– 600), such that by the end of this stage it might be justifiable to speak of two distinct languages, late Latin on the one hand and ProtoRomance on the other. The Latin language of this period is also characterized by growing regional heterogeneity.

It is likely that Latin is markedly different in each region where it is spoken, due to factors such as the presence of indigenous languages, the date and degree of Romanization, social class, geographical origins of Roman colonists, and contact with languages of invading peoples. We know from a comment made by the Roman historian Aelius Spartianus that when Emperor Hadrian, who was born in Hispania, gives a speech before the Roman Senate in the second century a.d., his regional accent is so pronounced that it provokes laughter among the senators. During the medieval or low period (seventh to thirteenth centuries), the two varieties of the language continue to coexist, one alive, dynamic, and spoken, the other artificial, static, and written. It is probable that at the beginning of this stage, speakers are not clearly conscious of this divergence, considering it to be a question more of register than of language. Later on, however, the practice of writing all documents in this archaic Latin ceases to be sustainable, and texts written in the vernacular begin to appear.

The previous chapter mentioned some of the works written in Romance vernacular at this decisive moment. In the face of flourishing vernacular literature, written Latin is relegated to the sphere of religion and used as a lingua franca among diplomats and scholars. It is true that during the renaissance (fourteenth through sixteenth centuries) some authors— notably Petrarch in Italy and Thomas More in England— try to recover in their literary works the glory of the Latin of the classical era through imitation of the best authors, but by the eighteenth century Latin is no longer used in diplomacy, and by the nineteenth, the beginning of the contemporary period, it ceases to be used as the language of instruction in universities. Latin loses its last important function in the twentieth century when, for the first time, vernacular languages are permitted in the Catholic liturgy.