Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/267

* ROMANCE LANGUAGES. 243 ROMANCE LANGUAGES. the later coloiii.,t.^ cairiod «uli them a speech thiough the substitution o£ a number of in.le- ditlenng somewhat from that of their forerun- nemlent ^States in phice of a centralized i-overn- ners. It uui,t not be supposed, liowever, that ment, thus eutliu},' oil' free intercourse with Konie this spoken hinguage was precisely the same as they doubtless gave an impetus to the separation tjiat written by the master^s of classic literature, of the various dialects. .Moreover, they had some i"fl"ence upon the pronuneialiim and eiiiitributed considerably to the vocabulary, particularly terms connected with war. Even' before the bar- barian conquest a number of such terms had been in use among the Homans, owing probably to the presence of German troops in the Imperial armies, but the later additions are much more important and copious. In fact, no other ex- ternal influence upon the Komance languages can compare in weight and value with that of the German. The loss of the sentiiuentof nationality led, in the sixth and seventh centuries, to the rise of the Romance nations and of the Romance languages. uncliangeably fixed for later generations in the It was recognized that those speaking the linyiia. classic masterpieces, there existed a more careless rumaiia eoulil not understand Latin, nor could diction of everyday life, used by the uncultured, one using Latin understand the various forms of It is frequently referred to as scnno <(jttidiaiiiis, the Unyiui roinumi. iloreover French was seen prolctariiis, rusticiis, vulyaris, or militaris. Al- to be ditlerent from Rrovenyal. and l'roven^;al though much uncertainty prevails in regard to from Italian and Spanish. In each country, in- the relations between this language of the vulgar deed, a literature was developed in the vulgar Each grade of society, each part of the country, must have had its own linguistic peculiarities. Yet there seems to have been throughout the Roman dominions a remarkable uniformity both of grammatical forms and of vocabulary, politi- cal unity tending to break down dialect varia- tion. On the other hand, the pronunciation doubt- less varied largely, according to the native races who learned the tongue of their conquerors, much as English differs in the mouths of the various inhabitants of the British dominions in Asia, Africa, and America. Throughout the vast Roman Empire, then, be- sides the Latin of written books and formal speech, and that of literature, we may be sure that it was subject to comparatively rapid phonetic and grammatical change and that its vocabulary ad- mitted words upon which the purist frowned. In the course of time the quantity and quality of the vowels were altered. Short vowels became open, while long ones were closed. Then short vowels in free syllables were lengthened, long checked vowels shortened. Certain unstressed vowels disappeared and some final consonants, notably m, were dropped. Voiceless consonants between vowels became voiced, and then were lost, wliile in other positions different consonants un- derwent a variety of transformations. From the conjugation of verbs the future and the passive are lost. The cases of nouns fall together, and relations are largely expressed by prepositions. Vulgar words are often preferred to the more re- fined, as caballus, "nag," instead of eqiius, 'horse;' strong words to the more usual, as manducare, 'to chew, to devour,' instead of edere, "to eat;' sometimes new forms merely replace the old, as amicitas for amicitia. This vulgar or popular Latin was, as lias been said, comparatively uniform throughout the Ro- man Empire, though some differences must be as- sumed, due partly to the different ejjoclis at tongue. At first every author wrote in his na- tive dialect, but soon political and literary cen- tres began to exercise a powerful influence, and the dialect of Paris or Florence or Castile came to be the official and correct language, while thtf other dialects sank more and more into the mere patois of the uneducated ]ieasant. During all this development the literary Latin, the language of the Church and of learning, more or less rigidly written according to unchanging rules and models, never ceased to affect the popu- lar tongue. Borrowing went on without inter- ruption, giving rise to learned terms which often exist side by side with popular terms developed from the same Latin word. These learned terma can be distinguished by their closer resemblance to the original, since they have not passed through the natural phonetic development. We have, for example, from the Latin catisam, in French the doublets chose and ctitise, and in Ital- ian cosa and anisd. In 1>oriowing from other sources than Latin, German has given most to French, and Arabic to Spanish, but every modern language contributes to the vocabularj' of its neighbors. The evolution of the Latin into the Romance languages can best be studied in the concrete which the provinces were Romanized and partly case of one particular tongue such as French, to the character of the races inhabiting those provinces. Yet, on the whole, the indigenous tongues seem to have left upon the development of the lingua roniiina but faint traces of their influence. They doubtless had their ell'ect in modifying pronunciation, though there is but lit- tle certain knowledge on this subject, and they also contributed a few words to the vocaliulary. It is remarkable, however, how little can be traced even to so imjiortant a race as the Celts. In all the most significant linguistic elements, the Romance languages are nothing but Latin following a normal evolution in an unbroken tra- dition. The Teutonic invasions, though they destroyed Italian, or Spanish, but a few general remarks. by no means exhaustive, may be made. The Latin accent or stress usually remains on the syllable on which it was originally. Changes in the vowels are conditioned by the stress, by the fact of their being free or checked, by the in- fluence of preceding and following sounds. l>otli vowel and consonant, and by position, either ini- tial or final, before or after accent. The changes in consonants are conditioned chiefly by their posi- tion, initial, intervocalic, or final, and by their combination with other consonants. In the Ro- mance tongues the inflection of substantives has almost wholly disapi>eared. and there is but one case, usually derived from the Latin accusative; the unity of the Roman Empire, did not, in tlio.se the plural, at least in the written form, is dis- countrie's in which Latin was firmly established, tinguished from the singular: the neuter gender interrupt its linguistic development. By isolat- no longer exists. The personal pronouns have three ing the different communities, however, and or four cases, and both stressed and unstressed