Vulgar Latin

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: Many of us have some exposure to Classical Latin. Some of us had it in school, others have other exposure. But the thing that we tend to forget about Classical Latin is that just about nobody spoke it and only a few were able to write it. The language that Latin-speakers actually used was the one described here.

"Vulgar Latin" (a name that the author doesn't really like, even if he uses it for reasons of its being the best-known name for it) was the normal speech of the Latin speaking world, and as a result, the language that developed into modern French, Spanish, Italian, and the other Romance languages. If you want to know more about the history of those languages, you should read a book such as this one.

It is hard to tell how much of what I like about this book is due to its author and how much to the translator. The book was originally written in French in the 1960s, and an updated version (written also in French, but not published) was used as the basis both for a Spanish translation in the 1990s and for this one. Prof. Herman states in his own preface that his original French was turned into a much more readable English style by Prof. Wright, who is himself a professor of Romance languages in England. In consequence, much of the extreme readability of this book seems to be the translator's contribution.

In any case, I found the book informative, while yet relatively easy to read. There is not much about a book that can be considered negative when it is both of these. Thus, it deserves the highest rating.