Challenge: Preserve Latin as a spoken language until the present.

Could a movement emerge in the Church like the extreme forms of the King James Only movement in Protestant churches (exemplified by Peter Ruckman), proclaiming the Vulgate as the most perfect translation of the Bible, divinely inspired, and superior to all others, along with claims like everyone in the New Testament was speaking the Latin of the Vulgate?

Perhaps a movement like this spreads around rural Italy (or another Romance-speaking country) in the Middle Ages. And like the circumstance involving the modern Sanskrit-speaking villages in India, a village or two might end up speaking a language very identifiable as Latin, though likely corrupt to some degree or another.
 
I think such movement more or less happened in Middle-Ages, not with such contents at their teaching core tough. But, anyway, a semi-heterodoxial movement based on rural policies (meaning peasant uprising led by low clergy and low nobility) is going to be recieved as much warmly than all semi-rural jeterodoxial (if not outright heretic) revendications : death glare and repression.

We can't overestimate how the Catholic church was really wary of any religious movement (especially protestary ones) rehardless of them being more conservative or progressist socially or theologically : even more or less inoffensive and not really heretic (but more or less heterodoxial) practices were seen with some distrust : I mean look how Franciscans or Dominicans had to do to be accepted.
Any theological change would have to not only be considered by the Pope, but coming right from the Church to begin with, if it wants to be seriously accepted.
 
Which is basically the definition of Romance Languages, such as Castillan, French, Occitan, Romanian, etc. and especially Italian. What Romans used as an everyday language even in the imperial age was Vulgar Latin, which diverged since the IInd century BC from Classical Latin which became more and more of an institutional language.

So, I'd say that, without a PoD in early Republican Rome, ensuring that the geographical spawn of Latin remain mostly stuck in Italy, you'd be bound to have a growing gap between Classical and Vulgar Latin.
Now, another PoD could lead to a different result than you ask for in your OP, but close enough : the survival of a Roman state and centralized institution could lead (albeit with some difficulties) to a rough equivalent to the situation of Arabic languages today : a more or less international written Arabic language, with diverse spoken languages related to it and themselves, but growingly non-mutually intelligible.

It's hard to say how long such could be maintained, tough.
I don´t understand, why would the language be intelligible at first but not later. Given the more you go the better transport technology and probably roads, wouldn´t that make the environment to create divergent languages be less less present than before? So why would the language diverge later instead of being that way from the beginning of the romanization?
 
Intelligible language doesn't mean non-diverging languages. It justs means that they either diverge slowly enough for them being mutually understable : for instance, Romance languages didn't really became distinct before the VIIIth/Xth century, while you probably had the first dialectical distinction by the Ist century.

As for technology meaning linguistical unficiation : it's not because the Arabo-Islamic world was a continuum and that was connected trough good roads and common cultural features that it did prevented Arabic dialects to be more and more divergents, at the point being unintelligible for some.

So why would the language diverge later instead of being that way from the beginning of the romanization?
Well, that's one of the point : the language probably diverged from "standard" Vulgar Latin from the beggining, with distinct substrated (Gallic for Gallo-Roman for instance) influence for exemple. Some words as "testa", were absent of provincial Roman while being popularily used in Italy; for instance.
 
Intelligible language doesn't mean non-diverging languages. It justs means that they either diverge slowly enough for them being mutually understable : for instance, Romance languages didn't really became distinct before the VIIIth/Xth century, while you probably had the first dialectical distinction by the Ist century.

As for technology meaning linguistical unficiation : it's not because the Arabo-Islamic world was a continuum and that was connected trough good roads and common cultural features that it did prevented Arabic dialects to be more and more divergents, at the point being unintelligible for some.


Well, that's one of the point : the language probably diverged from "standard" Vulgar Latin from the beggining, with distinct substrated (Gallic for Gallo-Roman for instance) influence for exemple. Some words as "testa", were absent of provincial Roman while being popularily used in Italy; for instance.
But why would the language when spread through romanization be more intelligible than the one of population that were under roman control for longer and for more generations? It strikes me as highly counter intuitive. To me it would make sense that the first generations have a hybrid watered down language and consequent generations are put more in line to the Italian Romans, to a limited extent created by distance and geography.
 
I didn't said that one of the Romance speeches would be more intelligible than another specifically : for short, I never said that Gallo-Romance ITTL would be more undestable for than Italo-Romance for an Hispano-Romance speaker (altough it's likely to happen in many forms, would it be only trough dialectal proximity in this Romance continuum). I said that Romances speeches in general would be more understable to each other thanks to the institutional preeminance of a "written Romance" (aka post-classical Latin) in all these region : meaning that the general divergence would be slower and less radical.
 
The problem is that for a language to be more or less the same - no mutually incomprehensible or difficult dialects - over a large area there has to be some structure keeping it that way. In the Roman Empire the "official" language was Latin, government business was in Latin, and because of the mobility of peoples (army units, government officials etc) you had to keep a relatively standard Latin across the Empire. Also literacy was relatively decent, especially compared to post-imperial times, which helped to keep things stable. Once the western empire broke up, and governmental units became smaller, the trend towards local languages as opposed to dialects rapidly accelerated. Using France as an example, you had several major Latin derived languages in addition to what we might call French including Occitan and Provençal. It took literally centuries of France being a relatively unitary state, and then increasing literacy in the vernacular for most of France to speak "French". The same goes for other countries that were Latin based (Spain, Italy, etc) and this holds true for other languages such as German and English.
 
I didn't said that one of the Romance speeches would be more intelligible than another specifically : for short, I never said that Gallo-Romance ITTL would be more undestable for than Italo-Romance for an Hispano-Romance speaker (altough it's likely to happen in many forms, would it be only trough dialectal proximity in this Romance continuum). I said that Romances speeches in general would be more understable to each other thanks to the institutional preeminance of a "written Romance" (aka post-classical Latin) in all these region : meaning that the general divergence would be slower and less radical.
I think we are missing each others point.


What I was doubting was the idea that a specific area(Aquitania for example) is Romanized and only later would the language derived from Latin diverge more, to me it sounds more plausible that the language they start speaking is already super diverged and that with time depending on the communication and connection with other area the distance deepens or shortens. I mean if the distance is the factor for a language diverging I don´t see why it wouldn´t be a even bigger factor in the Romanization of the place.
 
It's not only the distance that's playing a role, tough it is playing one : you have as well substrates (which did played a role IOTL even during imperial era), political-issued divergence (ansbausprache, such as Catalan diverging from Occitan), superstrates (it would be really astonishing that no other influence would appear in the timeline), etc.

I think there's as well a misconception about romanisation : it's not an historical change that would make a province or a region a (culturally-wise) Xerox copy of Roman Italy, https://www.jstor.org/stable/507271?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentshttps://www.jstor.org/stable/507271?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents which can takes many form, as for the eastern provinces of Romania that are more or less importantly romanized, in spite of having very few Romance-speaking regions compared to the western provinces (whom some regions can arguably be considered less romanized in spite of being Romance-speaking).
Meaning that, from the very start, the provincial Romance speeches are diverging from Vulgar Latin : as Classical Latin remains the institutional language, it doesn't show off much except on popular writings, but Romance speeches didn't simply appeared by the Vth century, altough you had to wait for the VIIIth at best to have really distinct languages emerging and more importantly to be definitely unintelligible for a "pure" (and probably abstract) Latin speaker.

So it's neither a "Xerox copy" or "super-diverged" but have enough distinctivness to growingly be its own thing, on which other historical influences can play. ITTL I proposed, the maintain of a Romans state would certainly slow down most of these influences : before the appearance of a "imperial-wide" school system with every (or virtually so) children being taught a standard form of Latin/Romance, and with only scholar or elites being versed on it, you'd still have still dialectical differences that would know inner developments.
That's something you can see in many exemples : either with Arab, French, English, Spanish, German, etc. and in spite of some exemples having a relatively limited geographical extent (at the contrary of Latin/Romance and Arab) you quickly end up with a collection of dialects (not always that mutually intelligible) that would be the envy of any Pokemon master.
 
More people ought to learn linguistics so threads like this don't get posted without some serious rewording:p

At any rate, personally the only thing that I can think might preserve Latin itself (because romance languages already fulfill the other categories you describe perfectly- except perhaps French) is if it is made far more important liturgically than it was OTL so that in the modern era, barring protestant interference, it can be made into a european common language much like how Classical Arabic is to the modern Arab world.
 
It's not only the distance that's playing a role, tough it is playing one : you have as well substrates (which did played a role IOTL even during imperial era), political-issued divergence (ansbausprache, such as Catalan diverging from Occitan), superstrates (it would be really astonishing that no other influence would appear in the timeline), etc.

I think there's as well a misconception about romanisation : it's not an historical change that would make a province or a region a (culturally-wise) Xerox copy of Roman Italy, https://www.jstor.org/stable/507271?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentshttps://www.jstor.org/stable/507271?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents which can takes many form, as for the eastern provinces of Romania that are more or less importantly romanized, in spite of having very few Romance-speaking regions compared to the western provinces (whom some regions can arguably be considered less romanized in spite of being Romance-speaking).
Meaning that, from the very start, the provincial Romance speeches are diverging from Vulgar Latin : as Classical Latin remains the institutional language, it doesn't show off much except on popular writings, but Romance speeches didn't simply appeared by the Vth century, altough you had to wait for the VIIIth at best to have really distinct languages emerging and more importantly to be definitely unintelligible for a "pure" (and probably abstract) Latin speaker.
I know I can seem very thick, but I still find weird that the "different but intelligible" Romance speeches are actually intelligible, I mean now I´ve got the confirmation that the Latin spoke in the provinces was never the Roman Latin but now I find myself only a step ahead on understanding the process.
like I said before to me it sound counterintuitive that even with substrates and superstrates the language will diverge further, I mean before romanization the previous language was a completely different one, if during centuries the area was assimilated to an accent-rich and semi-creolized language why would the language diverge even more? I mean the area was just semi assimilated so it means that in some ways any distance, political or communication problem has already affected the spread and how the Latin was spoke. I just don´t follow how it would diverge further and just why. I guess the political division of the post Roman Europe might be a reason but we have Chinese as a counter point, it is also quite divergent even with its history.

So it's neither a "Xerox copy" or "super-diverged" but have enough distinctivness to growingly be its own thing, on which other historical influences can play. ITTL I proposed, the maintain of a Romans state would certainly slow down most of these influences : before the appearance of a "imperial-wide" school system with every (or virtually so) children being taught a standard form of Latin/Romance, and with only scholar or elites being versed on it, you'd still have still dialectical differences that would know inner developments.
That's something you can see in many exemples : either with Arab, French, English, Spanish, German, etc. and in spite of some exemples having a relatively limited geographical extent (at the contrary of Latin/Romance and Arab) you quickly end up with a collection of dialects (not always that mutually intelligible) that would be the envy of any Pokemon master.

But Chinese languages even with political unity are super divergent, I personally think ones needs some kind of modern transportation or mass communication system to have such a large country speak a lingua france understandable from each extremity of the country.


To wrap this up, maybe it would crush my doubts if we like had examples of vernacular latin in Gaul, Iberia or such places, especially in different periods. I guess that´s a hard thing to do given every text is probably going to have heave Roman and Literary Latin influence.
 
I know I can seem very thick, but I still find weird that the "different but intelligible" Romance speeches are actually intelligible
That's historically what happened, at least up to the Xth century when Italian became a really distinct language from the overall Romance speeches that existed before (admittedly old French was quite distinct from the late VIIIth century) : Strasbourg Oaths are a good exemple of this, as it's not really easy to say if it's old French, old Occitan, Gallo-Romance speech, or a more or less artificial combinasion of all of these.

By the classical Middle-Ages, the linguistical divergence continues, but you have still a lot of common features, enough for some exemples of multual intelligibility.

Or, someone that know how to read Occitan generally have good chances to read (again, not that fluently of course) a text in Catalan (altough it's another story for spoken discussion).

On this regard, it wasn't really different from what existed for a long while in the Arabo-Islamic world where, while clearly distinct, two Arabic speakers one from Morrocoo, one from Iraq, could converse (if not as fluently than with their own neighbours)

like I said before to me it sound counterintuitive that even with substrates and superstrates the language will diverge further, I mean before romanization the previous language was a completely different one, if during centuries the area was assimilated to an accent-rich and semi-creolized language why would the language diverge even more?
Again : distance (a bit like distance allowed French Canadian and French metropolitain to diverge in spite of French Canadian being largely representative of some archaic features in French), political distinctivness, popular evolution (without mass schooling and mass media, popular dialects are basically living their own regional life), etc.

I'm under the impression that you treat Roman Empire like it was a current nation-state, that centralized cultural and liguistical features. It didn't. It couldn't.
Look at any other european state before the XIXth : it's a mess of intelligible, related but diverging dialects (at the point you show someone an exemple of Picard dialect compared to French, he's not likely to really understand it). I agree that being used to a dialectal complexity can lead to a better overall understanding, but as long you have decentralized cultural core including in institutions (schools, chanceries, etc.) you won't have much odds to prevent popular speeches to live their own.

Again, that's what happened historically, with relatively close Romance speeches that diverged further and further for centuries at the point forming different languages. I mean,it's not being counter-intuitive or not, that's a fact. That was happening.

But Chinese languages even with political unity are super divergent, I personally think ones needs some kind of modern transportation or mass communication system to have such a large country speak a lingua france understandable from each extremity of the country.
A lingua franca doesn't really needs that to happen : I mean, the historical lingua franca did existed in late Middle-Ages.
But if you meant a standardized language on a national/imperial scale; you'd rather need a mass education (while not mandatory), a centralized cultural policy (such as, for exemple, Richelieu's Académie Française), and mass medias (the importance of newspaper and radios in the XXth on this regard can't be overestimated). Basically, it's about having states enforcing cultural standards one way or another.

A living on Roman state wouldn't be able to pull all of this from nothing, but by virtue having maintained institutions all over a continental scale, would probably slow down the linguistical divergence among provincial elites with themselves would have some influence over their own places. It's, again, more or less what happened with Arab that had to be maintained (for cultural/religious/political reasons) among the various Arabo-Islamic states; and allowed the maintain of an economical and cultural continuum.
It's this kind of continuity that should be searched in order to end up with a Roman language on two levels : institutional Romance (Latin), and provincial Romance, that would be still closely related (would it be only because a living on Roman state would undergo institutional Latin changes on a more global scale).

To wrap this up, maybe it would crush my doubts if we like had examples of vernacular latin in Gaul, Iberia or such places, especially in different periods. I guess that´s a hard thing to do given every text is probably going to have heave Roman and Literary Latin influence.
Well, Oaths of Strasbourg are probably an exemple of vernacular Romance, or at least the very first exemple of first Romance speeches.

Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai, qui meon vol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit

If it's indeed Old French, it's then quite close to Old Occitan, up to vocabulary. Of course, it's a bit more complex as no medieval Romance text closely follow ONE dialect, but rather mixes them all with one or two dialects or uses dominating the other.

There's some other texts, if as you say, aren't that common at disposal but I don't have access to these texts right now. I could make a medley of what Cantaluse gathered, tough.
That said, I'd point you the Council of Tours of 813 that acts that latin is no longer clearly understable to people speaking the lingua romana rustica. Implying, that at some point, it did.
 
That's historically what happened, at least up to the Xth century when Italian became a really distinct language from the overall Romance speeches that existed before (admittedly old French was quite distinct from the late VIIIth century) : Strasbourg Oaths are a good exemple of this, as it's not really easy to say if it's old French, old Occitan, Gallo-Romance speech, or a more or less artificial combinasion of all of these.
But how can we say that the use of the Literary languages mirrors the characteristics of the Vernacular or Vulgar one? Or that Latin was mixed into it and it didn´t exactly reflect the spoken language? For example there is the example of "high and low style" in Russian, with Old Church Slavonic and vernacular being used at different degrees in different periods. the language peasants spoke was always the low style though.

Or, someone that know how to read Occitan generally have good chances to read (again, not that fluently of course) a text in Catalan (altough it's another story for spoken discussion).
But that´s it, even today the spoken language is harder to understand while the written one is easier(probably also because of aligning some of the writing forms to latin or to other romance languages), I would argue that´s true for the past as well, in the sense of the texts always being more Latin-like than they were or outright not representative of the Vernacular.

On this regard, it wasn't really different from what existed for a long while in the Arabo-Islamic world where, while clearly distinct, two Arabic speakers one from Morrocoo, one from Iraq, could converse (if not as fluently than with their own neighbours)
But is that really the case? In what period specifically? I mean that´s something like 3 thousand and more kilometres without modern transport, the time you take to reach the place you probably learn the other variant through the dialectal continuum of Arabic during the way.

Again : distance (a bit like distance allowed French Canadian and French metropolitain to diverge in spite of French Canadian being largely representative of some archaic features in French), political distinctivness, popular evolution (without mass schooling and mass media, popular dialects are basically living their own regional life), etc.
But all those factors are stronger at the time of the Romanization so why would they led to a divergence when those factors are going to be generally weaker in the future?

I'm under the impression that you treat Roman Empire like it was a current nation-state, that centralized cultural and liguistical features. It didn't. It couldn't.
Look at any other european state before the XIXth : it's a mess of intelligible, related but diverging dialects (at the point you show someone an exemple of Picard dialect compared to French, he's not likely to really understand it). I agree that being used to a dialectal complexity can lead to a better overall understanding, but as long you have decentralized cultural core including in institutions (schools, chanceries, etc.) you won't have much odds to prevent popular speeches to live their own.
I´m not sure what you make think that, I know Roman Empire was not super centralized, this is why I think the language couldn´t have been that intelligible to begin with.

Again, that's what happened historically, with relatively close Romance speeches that diverged further and further for centuries at the point forming different languages. I mean,it's not being counter-intuitive or not, that's a fact. That was happening.
But are we sure is not a symptom of the Vernacular language being used more in writings? I know it´s more or less a fact but if someone was telling me something that doesn´t really follow logically I would try to understand why that is actually following logically or if I´m getting something wrong, or if that thing is actually wrong itself.

A lingua franca doesn't really needs that to happen : I mean, the historical lingua franca did existed in late Middle-Ages.
But if you meant a standardized language on a national/imperial scale; you'd rather need a mass education (while not mandatory), a centralized cultural policy (such as, for exemple, Richelieu's Académie Française), and mass medias (the importance of newspaper and radios in the XXth on this regard can't be overestimated). Basically, it's about having states enforcing cultural standards one way or another.
Oh, I mean a universally spoken lingua franca, so technically a standardized one like you said.

A living on Roman state wouldn't be able to pull all of this from nothing, but by virtue having maintained institutions all over a continental scale, would probably slow down the linguistical divergence among provincial elites with themselves would have some influence over their own places. It's, again, more or less what happened with Arab that had to be maintained (for cultural/religious/political reasons) among the various Arabo-Islamic states; and allowed the maintain of an economical and cultural continuum.
It's this kind of continuity that should be searched in order to end up with a Roman language on two levels : institutional Romance (Latin), and provincial Romance, that would be still closely related (would it be only because a living on Roman state would undergo institutional Latin changes on a more global scale).
Personally I think until the advent of the modern era the local languages are probably going to be not that different, I mean IOTL we have many examples of relatinization(in various phases also) so one could say that the absence of the roman empire is not as relevant as one might think. Maybe somewhat more similar, but I doubt the history of the roman empire would one of unity, probably more division than what China experienced.

Well, Oaths of Strasbourg are probably an exemple of vernacular Romance, or at least the very first exemple of first Romance speeches.

Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul plaid nunquam prindrai, qui meon vol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit

If it's indeed Old French, it's then quite close to Old Occitan, up to vocabulary. Of course, it's a bit more complex as no medieval Romance text closely follow ONE dialect, but rather mixes them all with one or two dialects or uses dominating the other.

There's some other texts, if as you say, aren't that common at disposal but I don't have access to these texts right now. I could make a medley of what Cantaluse gathered, tough.
That said, I'd point you the Council of Tours of 813 that acts that latin is no longer clearly understable to people speaking the lingua romana rustica. Implying, that at some point, it did.
Argh, why doesn´t it sound good to me!
 
Let me make an example of what I think was the situation:

1AD:

Gaulish is the Vernacular

Latin is the written language for the bureaucrats

400AD:

Provincial Roman is the Vernacular(let´s say the difference from Latin is a 5, random number for now)

Latin is still the written language but now for the general upper class and maybe also Middle.

900AD:

Old French is the Vernacular( difference from latin 6-7)

Hybrized Old French(difference from latin 3-4, possibly lower than the Provincial Roman) and Latin

1300AD:

Middle French Vernacular(difference 8-9)

Middle French is used as a literary language


So in a sense I think that while the vernacular did keep diverging(because outside influence and political fragmentation, plus destruction of Roman roads), I think the literary language only reach the vernacular gradually and maybe not even completely.
 
Last edited:
Or that Latin was mixed into it and it didn´t exactly reflect the spoken language?
There's a good exemple with Cicero's letters : in his speeches, he always made a point using the most correct latin, but he was much more "relaxed" in his letters as using some vulgar features : Clodia instead of Claudia for instance.

I would argue that´s true for the past as well, in the sense of the texts always being more Latin-like than they were or outright not representative of the Vernacular.
It depend which texts, and arguably, by the Late Empire, administrative texts were more relaxed when it came to using a perfect classical patrician Latin.
Even clerical Latin wasn't that correct, on Ciceronian standards, before the Carolingian renaissance.

But is that really the case? In what period specifically?
At least for what matters Islamic geographers and travellers accounts : they never really mention an unability to communicate as far as the modern era for what I know (and it's mostly because I don't know that much of modern Arabo-Islamic world). @John7755 يوحنا is probably more fit to answer this on the long-run.
I mean that´s something like 3 thousand and more kilometres without modern transport, the time you take to reach the place you probably learn the other variant through the dialectal continuum of Arabic during the way.

But all those factors are stronger at the time of the Romanization so why would they led to a divergence when those factors are going to be generally weaker in the future?
Ah, I think where the misunderstranding lies : I said that the divergences would be still a thing ITTL, they'll continue to exist. Just that the divergence would be slowed down (not reversed at all) by the maintain of a Roman state.
 
There's a good exemple with Cicero's letters : in his speeches, he always made a point using the most correct latin, but he was much more "relaxed" in his letters as using some vulgar features : Clodia instead of Claudia for instance.
Yeah, also interesting that this difference was also semi-officialized as "Clodio" and such names were seen as name of the normal people and to become a spokesman(tribunus plebis) for those people changing your name from a Patrician one to a Plebeian one was a thing, funny enough I think there was a Claudius/Clodious that did this during the period and he was Caesar´ally I think.

It depend which texts, and arguably, by the Late Empire, administrative texts were more relaxed when it came to using a perfect classical patrician Latin.
Even clerical Latin wasn't that correct, on Ciceronian standards, before the Carolingian renaissance.
This is what makes me think that while the local languages did diverge they were hardly intelligible with Latin to begin with. Clerical latin did have quite a few pronunciation changes, outside what the written form was. Classical Latin might even sound weird to most of us given we are probably more used to the Church version.

Ah, I think where the misunderstranding lies : I said that the divergences would be still a thing ITTL, they'll continue to exist. Just that the divergence would be slowed down (not reversed at all) by the maintain of a Roman state.
I wasn´t speaking about OP´s alternate timeline, I was discussing what I think happened in history IOTL. :winkytongue:

I will reword myself for that particular point: at the time of romanization the political, social and general geographical limitation were larger than what you would find later. So the romanization would make the language spoken there only just similar to latin and probably only gradually, and given examples of other places like China I have hard time to think the language would reach a intelligible status at least for peasants(this why it baffles me the Tours situation).

To add on that, if the area was romanized what would stop it from being re-latinized from time to time? Because apparently the logical rules for a gradual assimilation of a completely different language are different from the one of the gradual divergence of similar ones
 
Top