Vulgarlatin

Vulgar Latin refers to the everyday spoken form of Latin used by ordinary people throughout the Roman Empire. It contrasts with Classical Latin, the elevated literary standard of authors such as Cicero and Caesar. Vulgar Latin was not a single fixed dialect but a continuum of regional varieties that varied by time and place.

In grammar and syntax, Vulgar Latin shows simplification compared to Classical Latin: loss or reduction of many inflectional endings, greater reliance on word order and prepositions to indicate grammatical relations, and the emergence of periphrastic constructions. Vocabulary expanded to include colloquial coinages and borrowings. Phonological shifts produced by time and contact with other languages also altered pronunciation. The result was a language in flux, gradually diverging from Classical Latin across the empire.

Evidence comes primarily from non-literary sources such as inscriptions, graffiti, private letters, and sundry Late Latin texts, as well as phonetic and lexical analyses of Romance languages. Regional varieties exhibited unique features; over centuries, the different strands of Vulgar Latin became the basis for the Romance languages.

By the late antique and medieval periods, Vulgar Latin had transformed into early Romance languages in speech. In formal writing, Medieval Latin retained some features of Classical Latin but often used colloquial syntax and vocabulary; the modern Romance languages descend from Vulgar Latin as transmitted and transformed through medieval vernacular literatures and spoken speech.