volgare

Volgare is a term used in Romance-language contexts, most commonly in Italian, to denote the vernacular or common language spoken by ordinary people, as opposed to Latin or the formal, learned languages of literature and administration. The word derives from Latin vulgus, meaning the crowd or common people, and came to designate the everyday speech that different communities used in daily life. In historical usage, volgare often referred to the spoken language that later developed into the region’s vernacular literatures and national languages.

Historically, the concept of lingua volgare appeared across medieval Europe to describe the vernaculars that evolved from Latin into the Romance languages. These languages began to gain literary prestige from the 12th to the 14th centuries, contributing to the emergence of national literatures. In Italian, authors such as Dante Alighieri, along with Petrarch and Boccaccio, promoted writing in the vernacular, helping to standardize Italian literature. Similar discussions occurred in other regions, with terms like langues vulgaires in French and their equivalents in Spanish and Portuguese, reflecting a broad shift from Latin to vernacular expression in writing and scholarship.

In contemporary Italian, volgare retains two senses. It can mean the neutral, descriptive term for the vernacular or common speech, or it can carry a pejorative sense of vulgar or crude. In linguistic usage, it is contrasted with forms labeled as Latin or classical and is linked to the broader history of vernacular languages and the formation of standard languages from regional speech. Related concepts include Vulgar Latin, the spoken form of Latin that gave rise to the Romance languages.