Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 May 26

= May 26 =

Before non-Protestant churches switched to vernacular
How much of the church service would the average blue-collar farmer or unskilled worker understand at different times and places? Did they know more than they would of a speech even more different from the holy church language but as different from vernacular as vernacular is from ecclesiastical? If you hear it so much and it's important to you you'd realize some stuff even if you weren't taught right? Presumably the Romance area people and those closer in time to when the priests' vernacular was "corrected" would understand more than Germanic branch and 1+ millennium later people and the non-Indo Europeans would have the steepest learning curve of all. Also how different would the Romance tongues be now if the Western Empire borders more or less followed this timeline's fuzzy Western Christianity frontier and the educated Romans had tried to get everyone to speak Classical Latin or a compromise of the different Vulgar Latins? Maybe with compulsory education from 5 to 16? Not that I wish it, probably no one could predict butterfly effects enough to say which timeline they'd rather be born in all other things equal (i.e. level of birth luck and tech. I always wondered what year's tech would be most like now if Rome survived and if it'd conquer Earth like an asshole or be conquered by higher tech) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:28, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * As explained in the book "Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World" by Nicholas Ostler, before the ca. 800 AD reforms introduced by Alcuin, parish priests in Romance-speaking areas of Europe pronounced Latin texts out loud in the local spoken vernacular, and most of them were not really aware that the ancient Latin language had been different from their current local spoken vernacular. As late as Dante's time, some people were confused on this point, and he had to explain it in detail in his De vulgari eloquentia.  Preserving a correspondence with a written language in one's spoken language over the long term works best when you have a small somewhat isolated and homogenous community of language speakers, as conspicuously in the case of Iceland -- and even in that case, the phonology of Icelandic has changed a fair amount since the sagas were written down.  I really don't know how it could work in a large heterogenous realm such as the Roman Empire (united or disunited)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Would say Brandenburg or Moscow peasants know some words? A few roots could trickle down or be guessed from thousands of church services? Were the readings or even homily in God language too though presumably there'd be some vernacular i.e. confessions and teaching Christianity to youth. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:16, 27 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Not sure what Moscow has to do with it, since Latin was never the liturgical language there (unless very briefly during the Polish-Lithuanian occupation of Moscow). P.S. For a rather ugly version of a Roman Empire surviving until the 20th century, see the classic Murray Leinster short story "Sidewise in Time", which in some ways founded the whole alternative history genre.  For a more nuanced version, see "Roma Eterna" by Robert Silverberg... AnonMoos (talk) 02:28, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I thought they used Greek at times? Or did they switch to Slavic branch ASAP? (why were they more flexible using Slavic branch (vernacular?) in Old Church Slavonic area then (in at least some churches) fossilizing again? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The Roman Catholic mass was in Latin until Vatican II in 1965. I remember the mass being in Latin when I was a child (in the US). If I recall correctly, there were booklets in each pew containing the Latin text along with an English translation, so anyone who wished to do so could follow along and understand what was being said (assuming they could read English). I don't know when or where such translation booklets came into use. I don't really understand the last half of this question about Rome surviving or what that has to do with the language of the mass. CodeTalker (talk) 05:32, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * How similar would the Romance languages be if the educated Romans tried to nip Classical Latin fragmentation in the bud instead of not caring how the commoners spoke and if the Western Romans had also stayed united with borders similar to Western Christianity or the Roman Catholic Church? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:08, 28 May 2024 (UTC)


 * As a related matter, Haitian Vodou took on its local form because French priests insisted that African slaves attend Christian services conducted in Latin, but never bothered to teach them anything about what any of it meant, so the slaves adopted and adapted images of Catholic icons to portray the West African gods they remembered. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.2.67.173 (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Long before 1965, Catechisms occurred in the vernacular languages, sometimes translated orally on the fly by the catechizer, but with the rise of printing, printed vernacular catechism books increasingly appeared. The first book printed in the Quechua language (also the first in the Aymara language) was a catechism, as were the first books printed in some European languages (Finnish, Latvian, and Lithuanian), though in those cases usually Protestant.  Of course, in Saint-Domingue (French colonial Haiti) there was the additional issue of the French language vs. Haitian Creole... AnonMoos (talk) 04:37, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Voltan or Voltaic?
What would be the correct translation into English of the French 'voltaïque' (i.e. someone from Upper Volta)? Voltaic or Voltan? -- Soman (talk) 18:58, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The article Republic of Upper Volta gives "Upper Voltese" (demonym in the info box). --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:01, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That may be so, but Google Books Ngrams shows that "Upper Voltan" was by far the most common term of the three in the era between its independence and its name change to Burkina Faso. I know "Voltaic" (apart from its electrical sense) only as an older term for the Gur subfamily of languages. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:30, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You're right, the CIA agrees and I've changed the article accordingly. --Wrongfilter (talk) 21:40, 26 May 2024 (UTC)