ROMANCE LANGUAGES. The name given to the seven groups of languages, viz., Portuguese, Spanish, Provencal (in cluding Catalan), French, Italian, the Rhaeto-Romanic idioms and Rumanian.
They are called "romance" (from post-classical Latin romanice, derived from Latin romanus) because their basis is the Latin which was spoken in the Imperium Romanum. They are some times called "daughter languages" (langues filles) of Latin, though in no sense daughters, but Latin itself in the transformed state it has reached in the various countries in which it was spoken. The word Neo. Latin has been used for "Romance" by some scholars.
The comparative method systematically used by F. Diez 1876) in his Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, of which the first volume appeared in 1836, demonstrated conclusively that each of the above-mentioned languages was directly evolved from Vulgar or Popular Latin.
Within a few years of the appearance of Diez's studies new tendencies began to be felt, tendencies which Diez had himself approved but for lack of opportunity had not embodied. First, chiefly under the impulse of Paul Meyer (184o-19I7) the docu ments preserved in the archives were taken into account ; next came the study of the patois instigated by Gaston Paris 1903) keenly pursued by investigators such as abbe Rous selot (1846-1924) and Gilheron (1854-1926), and yielding fresh materials for phonetic and lexicographical research ; finally, the study of semantics began simultaneously in different countries.
W. Meyer-Luebke, availing himself of the philological material now accessible in recorded dialect and patois, completely revised Diez's grammar and compiled a new Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen (4 vols. 189o-19o2) on a much broader basis. This achievement marks the close of this period of romance philology.
The opening of the latest period is distinguished by the use of "linguistic geography" initiated by the appearance of the Atlas historique de la France by Gillieron and Edmont, containing 2,319 maps, 1,92o for France proper (1902-191o) and 399 for Corsica (1914). Similar surveys have been attempted in other countries, but few have attained successful completion. Alone worthy of mention as regards romance languages are Weigand, Linguisticher Atlas des dacorumanischen Sprachgebietes (Leipzig, 1909), con taining 67 maps only and none of the Banat ; Ch. Guerlin de Guer, Atlas dialectologique de la Normandie (1903), comprising 123 maps but unfinished; Griera, Atlas linguistique de catalunya, which is to form 10 volumes (2,00o maps) vols. i., ii., and iii., with 586 maps having so far appeared (Barcelona, With Latin, as with all languages, there existed from the out set divergences between the written and spoken idioms affecting the vocabulary and various portions of the grammar.
The name Popular Latin, especially applied to the spoken lan guage with all its individual and dialectical idiosyncrasies, was also termed inconditus, cotidianus, usualis, vulgaris, plebeius, pro letarius and rusticus, as opposed to the written language from which it was progressively differentiated by the operation of social influences and the growth of literature. Thus the contact of Latin with Greek, and particularly Greek philosophy, science and art, resulted in the coinage of learned terms, e.g., epistola, grammatica, schola, stylus, poeta, poesis, poems, papyrus, para graphus, heros, aer, aether, encaustum, podagra, sarcophagus, horo logium. These were Greek words with Latin endings. In forma tion they were contrary to the genius of the native Latin which enriched its word-stock by its traditional system of composition and derivation, especially by means of suffixes, destined to play such an important role in the romance languages. Till the end of the 1st century A.D. however, the classical language withstood the assaults of Popular Latin which it dominated in some degree by the prestige of its literary masterpieces, by the exigencies of the administration which compelled all officials to employ the higher language, and by the influence of the schools in which teaching was given in the sermo urbanus. But, with the passing of the
golden age, the written language became even more artificial. When in A.D. 212 Caracalla conferred by edict the dignity of Roman citizenship upon all free-born inhabitants of the Empire, he introduced into Rome, according to the picturesque phrase of Isidore of Seville (Origines, ii. 31) "vitia et verborum et morum" (sins of speech and morality) and thenceforth the evolution of Popular Latin in all provinces, as far as we can trace, proceeded to all intents unchecked conformably with its inherent character. Two fresh historical factors next intervened, hastening the down fall of classical Latin, the religious revolution and the invasions of the Barbarians. Of the Christian propagandists the vast major ity belonged to the lower classes; among the most zealous were many slaves and women, the language they used was essentially popular and even the educated among them found that to carry out their evangelisation efficiently they must resort to the vulgar tongue. The greatest of the Fathers of the Church, notwithstand ing he had been a professor of rhetoric, wrote without hesitating: "Non timemus ferulas grammaticorum, dum tamen ad veritatem solidam et certiorem perveniamus. Melius est quod reprehendant nos grammatici quam non intelligent populi." (S. Augustinus, Enar ratzones in Psalmos, 138, 20.) "We don't fear the schoolmaster's cane if only we can arrive at a sure and more weighty truth. It were better to be reproved by the pedants than to be not under stood by the people." Pope Gregory the Great appeals to Almighty God against the tyranny of the declensions : "Casus servare con temno quia indignum vehementer esistimo ut verba coelestis orac uli restringam sub regulis Donati." (Praefatio, Job, i. 6.) "I re fuse the slavery of the declensions because I think strongly that it is not fitting that I should force the words of the Divine Message into the rules of Donatus." The anarchy which ensued when the Roman empire was over thrown proved eminently favourable to the growth of dialects and special idioms. Vulgar Latin and pre-literary Romance was a spoken language, but can in some measure be reconstituted from the information derived from the treatises composed by gram marians, the Latin Bible, the early Latin manuscripts, inscriptions, collection of formulae of the laws of the Barbarians, divers glos saries, literary, historical and technical texts ranging from the 4th to the 8th century, and the coins and charters of the Merovingian and Carolingian epochs. Thus the Appendix Probi (most prob ably of the 3rd century) contains remarks on declension, conjuga tion, orthography and the meaning of words. It is a kind of man ual of "don'ts," interesting from the philological standpoint pre cisely on account of the forms quoted as mistakes to be avoided. The mention porphireticum marmor fi purpureticum murmur at tests the popular pronunciation of ph, in which Vulgar Latin dropped the aspiration, and the confusion of ö and speculum fi speclurn shows the dropping in popular pronunciation of the post tonic vowel in proparoxytones; pecten fi pectinis instances a nomi native formed by popular analogy. The Glossary of Reichenau (the ms. dates from the 8th century) translates certain words of the Vulgate no longer understood by words which, although given Latin case or verb inflexions, belonged in fact to a dialect of North western France. Thus in the sentence "Sed et serpens erat calli dior" (Genesis iii., I) callidior is rendered by vitiosior. This means that callidus had ceased to be intelligible (callidus has in fact to tally vanished from the romance languages), and that vitiosus had taken its place in Vulgar Latin (vitiosus survives indeed in Italian vezzoso, Spanish and Portuguese vicioso, and is represented in Old French by voisos).