Vernacular

For other uses, seeVernacular (disambiguation).

Vernacularis the ordinary, informal,spokenform of language,particularly whenperceivedas being of lowersocial statusin contrast tostandard language,which is morecodified,institutional,literary,or formal.More narrowly, a particular variety of a language that meets the lower-status perception, and sometimes even carriessocial stigma,is also called avernacular,vernacular dialect,nonstandard dialect,etc. and is typically its speakers'native variety.Despite any such stigma, modernlinguisticsregards all nonstandard dialects as full-fledged varieties of a language with their own consistent grammatical structure,sound system,body of vocabulary, etc.

Overview

Like any native dialect, a vernacular has an internally coherent system ofgrammar.It may be associated with a particular set ofvocabulary,and spoken using a variety ofaccents,styles,andregisters.As American linguistJohn McWhorterdescribes about a number of dialects spoken in theAmerican Southin earlier U.S. history, including olderAfrican-American Vernacular English,"the oftennonstandard speech of Southern white planters,nonstandardBritish dialectsof indentured servants, andWest Indian patois,[...] werenonstandard but notsubstandard. "In other words, the adjective "nonstandard" should not be taken to mean that these various dialects were intrinsically incorrect, less logical, or otherwise inferior, only that they were not the socially perceived norm or mainstream considered prestigious or appropriate for public speech; however, nonstandard dialects are indeed often stigmatized as such, due to socially-inducedpost-hocrationalization.Again, however, linguistics regards all varieties of a language as coherent, complex, and complete systems—even nonstandard varieties.

Adialector languagevarietythat is a vernacular may not have historically benefited from the institutional support or sanction that a standard dialect has. According to another definition, a vernacular is a language that has not developed astandard variety,undergonecodification,or established a literary tradition.

The oldest known vernacular manuscript inScanian(Danish, c. 1250). It deals with Scanian and ScanianEcclesiastical Law.

Anallegoryof rhetoric and arithmetic,Trinci Palace,Foligno, Italy, byGentile da Fabriano,who lived in the era of Italian language standardization

Vernacular may vary from moreprestigious speech varietiesin different ways, in that the vernacular can be a distinctstylistic register,a regionaldialect,asociolect,or an independent language. Vernacular is a term for a type ofspeech variety,generally used to refer to a local language or dialect, as distinct from what is seen as a standard language. The vernacular is contrasted withhigher-prestigeforms of language, such asnational,literary,liturgicalorscientificidiom, or alingua franca,used to facilitate communication across a large area.

As a border case, a nonstandard dialect may even have its own written form, though it could then be assumed that theorthographyis unstable, inconsistent, or unsanctioned by powerful institutions, like that of government or education. The mostsalientinstance of nonstandard dialects in writing would likely be nonstandard phonemic spelling of reported speech inliteratureor poetry (e.g., the publications of Jamaican poetLinton Kwesi Johnson) where it is sometimes described aseye dialect.

Nonstandard dialects have been used in classic literature throughout history. One famous example of this is Mark Twain,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.This classic piece of literature, commonly taught in schools in the U.S., includes dialogue from various characters in their own native vernaculars (including representations ofOlder Southern American EnglishandAfrican-American English), which are not written in standard English.

In the case of theEnglish language,while it has become common thought to assume that nonstandard dialects should not be taught, there has been evidence to prove that teaching nonstandard dialects in the classroom can encourage some children to learn English.

Etymology

First usage of the word "vernacular" is not recent. In 1688, James Howell wrote:

Concerning Italy, doubtless there were divers before the Latin did spread all over that Country; theCalabrian,andApulianspoke Greek, whereof some Relicks areto be found to this day;but it was an adventitious, no Mother-Language to them: 'tis confess'd thatLatiumit self, and all the Territories about Rome, had the Latin for its maternal and common firstvernacularTongue; butTuscanyandLiguriahad others quite discrepant,viz.theHetruscaneandMesapian,whereof though there be some Records yet extant; yet there are none alive that can understand them: TheOscan,theSabinand Tusculan, are thought to be but Dialects to these.

Here, vernacular, mother language and dialect are already in use in a modern sense.According toMerriam-Webster,"vernacular" was brought into the English language as early as 1601 from the Latinvernaculus( "native" ) which had been in figurative use inClassical Latinas "national" and "domestic", having originally been derived fromverna,a slave born in the house rather than abroad. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended wordsvernaculus, vernacula.Varro,the classical Latin grammarian, used the termvocabula vernacula,"termes de la langue nationale" or "vocabulary of the national language" as opposed to foreign words.

Concepts of the vernacular

General linguistics

In contrast with lingua franca

Allegory ofDante Alighieri,champion of the use of vernacular Italian for literature rather than the lingua franca, Latin. Fresco byLuca Signorelliin the cappella di San Brizio dome, Orvieto

Ratio of books printed in Europe in the vernacular languages to those in Latin in the 15th century

Ingeneral linguistics,a vernacular is contrasted with alingua franca,a third-party language in which persons speaking different vernaculars not understood by each other may communicate.For instance, inWestern Europeuntil the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written inLatin,which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written inRomance languagesare said to be in the vernacular. TheDivina Commedia,theCantar de Mio Cid,andThe Song of Rolandare examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively.

In Europe, Latin was used widely instead of vernacular languages in varying forms untilc. 1701,in its latter stage asNeo-Latin.

In religion,Protestantismwas a driving force in the use of the vernacular in Christian Europe, theBiblehaving been translated from Latin into vernacular languages with such works as the Bible in Dutch: published in 1526 byJacob van Liesvelt;Bible in French: published in 1528 by Jacques Lefevre d'Étaples (or Faber Stapulensis); GermanLuther Biblein 1534 (New Testament1522); Bible in Spanish: published in Basel in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina (Biblia del Oso); Bible in Czech: Bible of Kralice, printed between 1579 and 1593; Bible in English:King James Bible,published in 1611; Bible in Slovene, published in 1584 by Jurij Dalmatin. InCatholicism,vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin was used atTridentine Massuntil theSecond Vatican Councilof 1965. Certain groups, notablyTraditionalist Catholics,continue to practiceLatin Mass.InEastern Orthodox Church,fourGospelstranslated to vernacular Ukrainian language in 1561 are known asPeresopnytsia Gospel.

In India, the 12th centuryBhakti movementled to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular.

In science, an early user of the vernacular wasGalileo,writing in Italianc. 1600,though some of his works remained in Latin. A later example isIsaac Newton,whose 1687Principiawas in Latin, but whose 1704Optickswas in English. Latin continues to be used in certain fields of science, notablybinomial nomenclaturein biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular; seescientific nomenclaturefor details.

In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in the 1710s, due to the military power ofLouis XIV of France.

Certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese: seeVarieties of ArabicandChinese language.In the 1920s, due to theMay Fourth Movement,Classical Chinesewas replaced bywritten vernacular Chinese.

Further information:Vernacular literature

As a low variant in diglossia

The vernacular is also often contrasted with aliturgical language,a specialized use of a formerlingua franca.For example, until the 1960s, theRoman Riteof theCatholic Churchwas generally celebrated inLatinrather than in vernaculars. TheCoptic Churchstill holdsliturgiesinCoptic,not Arabic. TheEthiopian Orthodox Churchholds liturgies inGe'ez,but parts of the Mass are read inAmharic.

Similarly, inHinduculture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written inSanskrit(long after its use as a spoken language) or inTamilin Tamil country. Sanskrit was a lingua franca among the non-Indo-European languages of the Indian subcontinent and became more of one as the spoken languages, orprakrits,began to diverge from it in different regions. With the rise of thebhakti movementfrom the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in other languages:Hindi,Kannada,Teluguand many others. For example, theRamayana,one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit, had vernacular versions such asRanganadha Ramayanamcomposed in Telugu byGona Buddha Reddyin the 15th century; andRamacharitamanasa,a Awadhi version of the Ramayana by the 16th-century poetTulsidas.

These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers. According to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of a linguistic phenomenon termeddiglossia( "split tongue", on the model of the genetic anomaly). In it, the language is bifurcated: the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances uses the other. The one most frequently used is the low (L) variant, equivalent to the vernacular, while the special variant is the high (H). The concept was introduced to linguistics byCharles A. Ferguson(1959), but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers. It must not be a conversational form; Ferguson had in mind a literary language. For example, a lecture is delivered in a different variety than ordinary conversation. Ferguson's own example was classical and spoken Arabic, but the analogy betweenVulgar LatinandClassical Latinis of the same type. Excluding the upper-class and lower-class register aspects of the two variants, Classical Latin was a literary language; the people spoke Vulgar Latin as a vernacular.

Joshua Fishmanredefined the concept in 1964 to include everything Ferguson had excluded. Fishman allowed both different languages and dialects and also different styles and registers as the H variants. The essential contrast between them was that they be "functionally differentiated"; that is, H must be used for special purposes, such as a liturgical or sacred language. Fasold expanded the concept still further by proposing that multiple H exist in society from which the users can select for various purposes. The definition of an H is intermediate between Ferguson's and Fishman's. Realizing the inappropriateness of the term diglossia (only two) to his concept, he proposes the term broad diglossia.

Sociolinguistics

Withinsociolinguistics,the term "vernacular" has been applied to several concepts. Context, therefore, is crucial to determining its intended sense.

As an informal register

In variation theory, pioneered byWilliam Labov,language is a large set ofstylesorregistersfrom which the speaker selects according to the social setting of the moment. The vernacular is "the least self-conscious style of people in a relaxed conversation", or "the most basic style"; that is, casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously, informal talk used in intimate situations. In other contexts the speaker does conscious work to select the appropriate variations. The one they can use without this effort is the first form of speech acquired.

As a non-standard dialect

In another theory, the vernacular language is opposed to thestandard language.Thenon-standard varietiesthus defined are dialects, which are to be identified as complexes of factors: "social class, region, ethnicity, situation, and so forth". Both the standard and non-standard languages have dialects, but in contrast to the standard language, the non-standard language has "socially disfavored" structures. The standard language is primarily written (in traditional print media), whereas the non-standard language is spoken. An example of a vernacular dialect isAfrican American Vernacular English.

As an idealisation

A vernacular is not a real language but is "an abstract set of norms".

First vernacular grammars

Vernaculars acquired the status ofofficial languagesthroughmetalinguisticpublications. Between 1437 and 1586, the firstreference grammarsofItalian,Spanish,French,Dutch,GermanandEnglishwere written, though not always immediately published. It is to be understood that the first precursors of those languages preceded their standardization by up to several hundred years.

Dutch

In the 16th century, the "rederijkerskamers"(learned, literary societies founded throughoutFlandersandHollandfrom the 1420s onward) attempted to impose a Latin structure on Dutch, on the presumption that Latin grammar had a "universal character".However, in 1559,John III van de Werve, Lord of Hovorstpublished his grammarDen schat der Duytsscher Talenin Dutch;Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert(Eenen nieuwen ABC of Materi-boeck) followed five years after, in 1564. The Latinizing tendency changed course, with a joint publication, in 1584 by De Eglantier and the rhetoric society of Amsterdam; this was to be the first comprehensive Dutch grammar,Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst/ ófte Vant spellen ende eyghenscap des Nederduitschen taals.Hendrick Laurenszoon Spieghelwas a major contributor, with others contributing as well.

English

Further information:History of EnglishandHistory of English grammars

Modern Englishis considered to have begun at a conventional date of about 1550, most notably at the end of theGreat Vowel Shift.It was created by the infusion ofOld FrenchintoOld English,after theNorman conquestof 1066 AD, and of Latin at the instigation of the clerical administration. While present-day English speakers may be able to readMiddle Englishauthors (such asGeoffrey Chaucer),Old Englishis much more difficult.

Middle Englishis known for its alternative spellings and pronunciations. The British Isles, although geographically limited, have always supported populations of widely-varied dialects, as well as a few different languages; some examples of languages and regional accents (and/or dialects) within Great Britain include Scotland (Scottish Gaelic),Northumbria,Yorkshire,Wales(Welsh), theIsle of Man(Manx),Devon,andCornwall(Cornish).

Being the language of a maritime power, English was (of necessity) formed from elements of many different languages. Standardisation has been an ongoing issue. Even in the age of modern communications and mass media, according to one study,"…although the Received Pronunciation of Standard English has been heard constantly on radio and then television for over 60 years, only 3 to 5% of the population of Britain actually speaks RP… new brands of English have been springing up even in recent times...." What the vernacular would be in this case is a moot point: "… the standardisation of English has been in progress for many centuries."

Modern English came into being as the standard Middle English (i.e., as the preferred dialect of the monarch, court and administration). That dialect was of the East Midland, which had spread toLondon,where the king resided and from which he ruled. It contained Danish forms not often used in the north or south, as the Danes had settled heavily in the midlands. Chaucer wrote in an early East Midland style;John Wycliffetranslated theNew Testamentinto it, andWilliam Caxton,the first English printer, wrote in it. Caxton is considered the first modern English author.The first printed book in England was Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales,published by Caxton in 1476.

The first English grammars were written inLatin,with some inFrench,after a general plea for mother-tongue education in England:The first part of the elementary,published in 1582, byRichard Mulcaster.In 1586,William Bullokarwrote the first English grammar to be written in English, thePamphlet for Grammar.This was followed byBref Grammar,in that same year. Previously he had written theBooke at Large for the Amendment of Orthography for English Speech(1580), but his orthography was not generally accepted and was soon supplanted, thus his grammar shared a similar fate. Other grammars in English followed rapidly; Paul Greaves'Grammatica Anglicana(1594),Alexander Hume'sOrthographie and Congruitie of the Britain Tongue(1617), and many others.Over the succeeding decades, many literary figures turned a hand to grammar in English;Alexander Gill,Ben Jonson,Joshua Poole,John Wallis,Jeremiah Wharton,James Howell,Thomas Lye,Christopher Cooper,William Lily,John Coletand more, all leading to the massive dictionary ofSamuel Johnson.

French

Further information:Old French

French (asOld French) emerged as aGallo-Romance languagefromColloquial Latinduringlate antiquity.The written language is known from at least as early as the 9th century. That language contained many forms still identifiable as Latin. Interest in standardizing French began in the 16th century.Because of theNorman conquest of Englandand the Anglo-Norman domains in both northwestern France and Britain, English scholars retained an interest in the fate of French as well as of English. Some of the numerous 16th-century surviving grammars are:

• John Palsgrave,L'esclarcissement de la langue francoyse(1530; in English).
• Louis Meigret,Tretté de la grammaire françoeze(1550).
• Robert Stephanus:Traicté de la grammaire françoise(1557).

German

Further information:History of German

The development of a standard German was impeded by political disunity and strong local traditions until the invention of printing made possible a "High German-based book language ".Thisliterary languagewas not identical to any specific variety of German. The first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects for various reasons. Religious leaders wished to create a sacred language forProtestantismthat would be parallel to the use of Latin for theRoman Catholic Church.Various administrations wished to create a civil service, or chancery, language that would be useful in more than one locality. And finally, nationalists wished to counter the spread of the French national language into German-speaking territories assisted by the efforts of the French Academy.

With so many linguists moving in the same direction, a standard German (hochdeutsche Schriftsprache) did evolve without the assistance of a language academy. Its precise origin, the major constituents of its features, remains uncertainly known and debatable. Latin prevailed as alingua francauntil the 17th century, when grammarians began to debate the creation of an ideal language. Before 1550 as a conventional date, "supraregional compromises" were used in printed works, such as the one published by Valentin Ickelsamer (Ein Teutsche Grammatica) 1534. Books published in one of these artificial variants began to increase in frequency, replacing the Latin then in use. After 1550 the supraregional ideal broadened to a universal intent to create a national language fromEarly New High Germanby deliberately ignoring regional forms of speech,which practice was considered to be a form of purification parallel to the ideal of purifying religion inProtestantism.

In 1617, theFruitbearing Society,a language club, was formed inWeimarin imitation of theAccademia della Cruscain Italy. It was one of many such clubs; however, none became a national academy. In 1618–1619 Johannes Kromayer wrote the first all-German grammar.In 1641 Justin Georg Schottel inteutsche Sprachkunstpresented the standard language as an artificial one. By the time of his work of 1663,ausführliche Arbeit von der teutschen Haubt-Sprache,the standard language was well established.

Irish

Auraicept na n-Écesis a grammar of theIrish languagewhich is thought to date back as far as the 7th century: the earliest surviving manuscripts are 12th-century.

Italian

Further information:Italian language

Italian appears before standardization as thelingua ItalicaofIsidoreand thelingua vulgarisof subsequent medieval writers. Documents of mixed Latin and Italian are known from the 12th century, which appears to be the start of writing in Italian.

The first known grammar of a Romance language was a book written in manuscript form byLeon Battista Albertibetween 1437 and 1441 and entitledGrammatica della lingua toscana,"Grammar of the Tuscan Language". In it Alberti sought to demonstrate that the vernacular – here Tuscan, known today as modern Italian – was every bit as structured as Latin. He did so by mapping vernacular structures onto Latin.

The book was never printed until 1908. It was not generally known, but it was known, as an inventory of the library ofLorenzo de'Medicilists it under the titleRegule lingue florentine( "Rules of the Florentine language" ). The only known manuscript copy, however, is included in thecodex,Reginense Latino 1370, located at Rome in theVatican library.It is therefore called theGrammatichetta vaticana.

More influential perhaps were the 1516Regole grammaticali della volgar linguaof Giovanni Francesco Fortunio and the 1525Prose della vulgar linguaofPietro Bembo.In those works the authors strove to establish a dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language.

Occitan

The first grammar in a vernacular language in western Europe was published inToulousein 1327. Known as theLeys d'amorand written by Guilhèm Molinièr, anadvocateof Toulouse, it was published in order to codify the use of theOccitanlanguage in poetry competitions organized by the company of theGai Saberin both grammar and rhetorical ways.

Spanish

Further information:History of Spanish

Chronologically, Spanish (more accurately,lengua castellana) has a development similar to that of Italian. There was some vocabulary in Isidore of Seville, with traces afterward, writing from about the 12th century; standardisation began in the 15th century, concurrent with the rise ofCastileas an international power.The first Spanish grammar byAntonio de Nebrija(Tratado de gramática sobre la lengua Castellana,1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each. Books 1–4 describe theSpanish languagegrammatically, 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.

Welsh

TheGrammar Books of the Master-poets(Welsh:Gramadegau'r Penceirddiaid) are considered to have been composed in the early fourteenth century, and are present in manuscripts from soon after. These tractates draw on the traditions of the Latin grammars of Donatus and Priscianus and also on the teaching of the professional Welsh poets. The tradition of grammars of theWelsh Languagedeveloped from these through the Middle Ages and to the Renaissance.

First vernacular dictionaries

Adictionaryis to be distinguished from aglossary.Although numerous glossaries publishing vernacular words had long been in existence, such as theEtymologiaeofIsidore of Seville,which listed many Spanish words, the first vernaculardictionariesemerged together with vernacular grammars.

Dutch

Glossaries in Dutch began about 1470 AD leading eventually to twoDutch dictionaries:

• Christophe Plantin:Thesaurus Theutonicae Linguae,1573
• Cornelis Kiliaan:Dictionarium Teutonico-Latinum,1574 (becomingEtymologicumwith the 1599 3rd edition)

Shortly after (1579) theSouthern Netherlandscame under the dominion of Spain, then of Austria (1713) and of France (1794). TheCongress of Viennacreated theUnited Kingdom of the Netherlandsin 1815 from which southern Netherlands (being Catholic) seceded in 1830 to form theKingdom of Belgium,which was confirmed in 1839 by theTreaty of London.As a result of this political instability no standard Dutch was defined (even though much in demand and recommended as an ideal) until afterWorld War II.Currently theDutch Language Union,an international treaty organization founded in 1980, supports a standard Dutch in the Netherlands, whileAfrikaansis regulated byDie Taalkommissiefounded in 1909.

English

Standard Englishremains a quasi-fictional ideal, despite the numerous private organizations publishing prescriptive rules for it.No language academy was ever established or espoused by any government past or present in the English-speaking world.In practice the British monarchy and its administrations established an ideal of what good English should be considered to be,and this in turn was based on the teachings of the major universities, such asCambridge UniversityandOxford University,which relied on the scholars whom they hired. There is a general but far from uniform consensus among the leading scholars about what should or should not be said in standard English; but for every rule, examples from famous English writers can be found that break it.Uniformity of spoken English never existed and does not exist now,but usages do exist, which must be learnt by the speakers, and do not conform to prescriptive rules.

Usages have been documented not by prescriptive grammars, which on the whole are less comprehensible to the general public, but by comprehensive dictionaries, often termed unabridged, which attempt to list all usages of words and the phrases in which they occur as well as the date of first use and the etymology where possible. These typically require many volumes, and yet not more so than the unabridged dictionaries of many languages.

Bilingual dictionaries and glossaries precede modern English and were in use in the earliest written English. The first monolingual dictionary wasRobert Cawdrey'sTable Alphabeticall(1604) which was followed byEdward Phillips'sA New World of English Words(1658) andNathaniel Bailey'sAn Universal Etymological English Dictionary(1721). These dictionaries whetted the interest of the English-speaking public in greater and more prescriptive dictionaries untilSamuel JohnsonpublishedPlan of a Dictionary of the English Language(1747), which would imitate the dictionary being produced by the French Academy. He had no problem acquiring the funding, but not as a prescriptive dictionary. This was to be a grand comprehensive dictionary of all English words at any period,A Dictionary of the English Language(1755).

By 1858, the need for an update resulted in the first planning for a new comprehensive dictionary to document standard English, a term coined at that time by the planning committee.The dictionary, known as theOxford English Dictionary,published its first fascicle in 1884. It attracted significant contributions from some singular minds, such asWilliam Chester Minor,a former army surgeon who had become criminally insane and made most of his contributions while incarcerated. Whether the OED is the long-desired standard English Dictionary is debatable, but its authority is taken seriously by the entire English-speaking world. Its staff is currently working on a third edition.

French

Surviving dictionaries are a century earlier than their grammars. TheAcadémie françaisefounded in 1635 was given the obligation of producing a standard dictionary. Some early dictionaries are:

• Louis Cruse, alias Garbin:Dictionaire latin-françois,1487
• Robert Estienne,alias Robertus Stephanus:Dictionnaire françois–latin,1539
• Maurice de la Porte:Epitheta,1571
• Jean Nicot:Thresor de la langue fracoyse, tant ancienne que moderne,1606
• Pierre Richelet:Dictionnaire françois contenant les mots et les choses,1680
• Académie française:Dictionnaire de l’Académie française,1694annis.

German

High Germandictionaries began in the 16th century and were at first multi-lingual. They were preceded by glossaries of German words and phrases on various specialized topics. Finally interest in developing a vernacular German grew to the point where Maaler could publish a work called byJacob Grimm"the first truly German dictionary",Joshua Maaler'sDie Teutsche Spraach: Dictionarium Germanico-latinum novum(1561).

It was followed along similar lines by Georg Heinisch:Teütsche Sprache und Weißheit(1616). After numerous dictionaries and glossaries of a less-than-comprehensive nature came athesaurusthat attempted to include all German, Kaspar Stieler'sDer Teutschen Sprache Stammbaum und Fortwachs oder Teutschen Sprachschatz(1691), and finally the first codification of written German,Johann Christoph Adelung'sVersuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches Der Hochdeutschen Mundart(1774–1786).Schillercalled Adelung anOrakelandWielandis said to have nailed a copy to his desk.

Italian

In the early 15th century a number of glossaries appeared, such as that of Lucillo Minerbi onBoccaccioin 1535, and those of Fabrizio Luna onAriosto,Petrarca,Boccaccio andDantein 1536. In the mid-16th the dictionaries began, as listed below. In 1582 the first language academy was formed, called Accademia della Crusca, "bran academy", which sifted language like grain. Once formed, its publications were standard-setting.

Monolingual

• Alberto Accarisio:Vocabolario et grammatica con l'orthographia della lingua volgare,1543
• Francesco Alunno:Le richezze della lingua volgare,1543
• Francesco Alunno:La fabbrica del mondo,1548
• Giacomo Pergamini:Il memoriale della lingua italiana,1602
• Accademia della Crusca:Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca,1612

Italian / French

• Nathanael Duez:Dittionario italiano e francese/Dictionnaire italien et François,Leiden, 1559–1560
• Gabriel Pannonius:Petit vocabulaire en langue françoise et italienne,Lyon, 1578
• Jean Antoine Fenice:Dictionnaire françois et italien,Paris, 1584

Italian / English

• John Florio:A Worlde of Words,London, 1598
• John Florio:Queen Anna's New World of Words,London, 1611

Italian / Spanish

• Cristóbal de las Casas:Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana,Sevilla, 1570
• Lorenzo Franciosini:Vocabulario italiano e spagnolo/ Vocabulario español e italiano,Roma, 1620.

Serbo-Croatian

• The first vernacular Serbian dictionary wasSrpski rječnik(Serbian dictionary) written byVuk Karadžićand published in 1818.
• Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Languagewas initiated in 1888 byStojan Novaković,still in the making

Spanish

The first Spanish dictionaries in the 15th century were Latin-Spanish/Spanish-Latin, followed by monolingual Spanish. In 1713 theReal Academia Española,"Royal Spanish Academy", was founded to set standards. It published an official dictionary, 1726–1739.

• Alonzo de Palencia:El universal vocabulario en latin y romance,1490
• Antonio de Nebrija:Lexicon latino-hispanicum et hispanico-latinum,1492
• Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco:Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española,1611
• Real Academia Española:Diccionario de la lengua castellana,1726–1739

Metaphorical usage

The term "vernacular" may also be applied metaphorically to any cultural product of the lower, common orders of society that is relatively uninfluenced by the ideas and ideals of the educated élite. Hence, vernacular has had connotations of a coarseness and crudeness. "Vernacular architecture",for example, is a term applied to buildings designed in any style based on practical considerations and local traditions, in contrast to the"polite architecture"produced by professionally trained architects to nationally or internationally agreed aesthetic standards. The historianGuy Beinerhas developed the study of "vernacular historiography" as a more sophisticated conceptualization of folk history.

See also

• Broad and general accents
• Colloquial language
• Dialect
• First language
• Folklore
• Glossary
• Language policy
• Literary language
• National language
• Patois
• Slang
• Sociolect
• Standard language
• African-American Vernacular English,a vernacular of English spoken by African Americans

References

Sources

• Bex, Tony (1999). "Representations of English in twentieth-century Britain: Fowler, Gowers, Partridge". In Bex, Tony; Watts, Richard J. (eds.).Standard English: the widening debate.New York: Routledge. pp. 89–112. 0-415-19162-9.
• Brachin, Pierre (1985).The Dutch language: a survey.Leiden: E.J. Brill.
• Champneys, Arthur Charles (1893).History of English: a sketch of the origin and development of the English with Examples, Down to the Present Day.New York: Macmillan and Co.
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External links

• Illich, Ivan."Vernacular Values".The Preservation Institute. Archived fromthe originalon 20 July 2016.Retrieved7 November2009.