The Origins of Vernacular Language and How It Spread

Running head: UNIT 2 INDIVIDUAL PROJECT TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES

Unit 2 Individual Project

Topics in Cultural Studies

Abstract

In this assignment I will be researching the origins of vernacular language and how it spread. I will assess and evaluate the impacts of the spread of vernacular languages on cultures during this period.

A vernacular language or mother tongue is the native language of a population, country, or locality (American dictionary, 2010). The use of vernacular languages for the written word had something of a fluctuating history, with a general tendency to increase towards the later part of the middle ages. Language is the most important and powerful symbol of ethnicity.

Latin, which is an ancient Indo-European language, was originally spoken in Italy, in the region around Rome called Latium, from which Latin language derives its name. The name of the region also was the tribal designation of the ancient population of Latin's, from whom the Romans originated. The city of Rome in fact grew from settlements around a ford on the river Tiber; a crossroads of traffic and trade and according to archaeological evidence, Rome was probably founded by the Latin's on the Palatine Hill in the 9th-8th century BC, perhaps in 753 BC. Latin gained wide usage as the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, after the initial city-state of Rome became the most important city in the Western world, as the capital of the expansive Roman Empire that ultimately embraced Italy of course, France, England (up to Antoine's Wall), Spain, Portugal, part of modern Germany, Austria, Swiss, Hungary, ex Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Greece, most of Asia west of the Euphrates(i.e. Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Iraq) and the islands of the Mediterranean sea.

Latin was spoken by a nation as a regular language. More over Latin became the formal language of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire and therefore it was spoken in Europe, in northern Africa and most of Asia west of the Euphrates. All Romance languages Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian derive from Vulgar Latin and many words adapted from Latin are found in other modern languages, such as English.

Latin remained the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for over a thousand years, being replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the 19th. Latin is still the language of the Roman Catholic Church today as well as the language of the Vatican .The sharing of a common language no longer enhanced the sense of European unity and, while Latin remained