Vernacular language

Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to linguas franca, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language. For instance, in Western Europe up until the 17th century, most scholarly work had been written in Latin, so works written in a native language were said to be in the vernacular. Also, In the history of European literature, there can be said to have been various periods of “vernacularization” when, for example, those languages now referred to as Romance languages started to produce literatures of their own. The Divine Comedy, the Cantar de mio Cid, and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in those languages that would one day be called Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia (1305), which he wrote before the Divine Comedy, was an important justification of the need to start writing literature in the vernacular, the language of the people. (See Vernacular literature)

The vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language (in linguistics, the relationship between these "High" and "Low" languages or varieties of a language is referred to as diglossia). For example, until the 1960s, Latin Rite Roman Catholics held Masses in Latin rather than in local vernacular language, to this day the Coptic Church holds liturgies in Coptic; though parts of Mass are read in Amharic, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez, etc. The Reformation was spread by the publication of Bibles and other religious writings in the vernacular, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular liturgies in Roman Catholicism.

Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit (long after its use as a spoken language) or in Tamil in the Tamil land (since Sangam era). With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in other languages Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and many other Indian languages throughout the different regions of India. For example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such as Ramacharitamanasa a Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th century poet Tulsidas.

Vernacular in sociolinguistics

Within the subcategory of sociolinguistics, the term vernacular has been applied to several concepts, leading to confusion among scholars regarding what is actually being referred to. This term had not been heard in the western world until the late 1800s. One use of the term, as exemplified by Poplack (1993) and Labov (1972), defines vernacular varieties as casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously. It could also be described as informal talk used in intimate situations. Linguists consider the vernacular to be the first form of speech acquired by a person.

Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) on the other hand define vernacular varieties as nonstandard, local dialects, particularly because of the nonstandard grammatical features that they contain. They also state that there is a continuum between the vernacular and the standard.

Similar approaches have been made to define vernacular culture: Cheshire (1982) sees vernacular culture as a non-standard or counter culture that is expressed through participation in particular activities or clothing styles, whereas Edwards (1992) defines it as a local culture determined by the connectedness to a certain neighbourhood.

First vernacular grammars

Through metalinguistic publications vernaculars acquired the status of official languages. Between 1437 and 1586 the first grammars of Italian, Spanish, French, German and English were written, though not always immediately published.

Italian grammar

Leon Battista Alberti’s Grammatichetta vaticana was written between 1437 and 1441, but not printed until 1908, which is why its influence is debated. Alberti was concerned with showing that dialects also had structures by mapping them onto Latin, whereas his fellow grammarians Giovanni Francesco Fortunio (Regole grammaticali della vulgar lingua, 1516) and Pietro Bembo (Prose della vulgar cunnilingua, 1525) strived to establish a norm dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language.

Spanish grammar

The first (contrastive) Spanish grammar by Antonio de Nebrija (Gramática Castellana, 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each: Books 1-4 describe the Spanish language grammatically in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish speaking readers. Book 5 contains a phonetical and morphological overview of Spanish for nonnative speakers.

German grammar

In Germany, the first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects. Like Nebrija, Valentin Ickelsamer (Ein Teütsche Grammatica, 1534) stresses the importance of understanding the structure of the national language in order to learn other languages, above all Latin.

English grammar

William Bullokar (Pamphlet for Grammar, 1586) was the first to learn a proper English grammar, preceded only by Richard Mulcaster’s general plea for mother tongue education in England, The first part of the elementary, 1582. Bullokar followed leading Latin grammarians in England to prove that English was, like Latin, governed by rules.

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