Vernacular: Difference between revisions
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A '''vernacular''' is the dialect or variety of language that is spoken by the common people of a particular place. Vernaculars are distinguished from official bureaucratic or religious languages, trade languages and any [[lingua franca]] or language of the elites that is also spoken in the same region. For example, [[Latin]] was the official language of the Church and state in medieval Europe, but most people did not understand Latin and those who did learned it as a second language. It was not until the sixteenth century that many writers began to use their own languages, their vernaculars, instead of Latin.<ref>Benedict Anderson. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. p. 18.</ref> | A '''vernacular''' is the dialect or variety of language that is spoken by the common people of a particular place. Vernaculars are distinguished from official bureaucratic or religious languages, trade languages and any [[lingua franca]] or language of the elites that is also spoken in the same region. For example, [[Latin]] was the official language of the Church and state in medieval Europe, but most people did not understand Latin and those who did learned it as a second language. It was not until the sixteenth century that many writers began to use their own languages, their vernaculars, instead of Latin.<ref>Benedict Anderson. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. p. 18.</ref> | ||
In imperial China, bureaucrats and other educated elites wrote official and scholarly texts in Classical or Literary Chinese (''wenyan'' or "cultured speech"), which was relatively concise and slow to change, while the rest of the population spoke ''bai hua'' ("unadorned speech" or "vernacular"), which is more usefully redundant and which changed more quickly over time. Beginning in the Tang period (618-907 CE), and especially from the 1700s onward, fiction, how-to manuals, and other types of unofficial, popular literature were published in a written version of the vernacular. After the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the monarchy, the government and many intellectuals adopted the vernacular as the standard written form of the language.<ref>Endymion Wilkinson, ''Chinese History: A Manual,'' rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard U. Asia Center, 2000), 19-20.</ref> | |||
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Revision as of 15:21, 24 January 2011
A vernacular is the dialect or variety of language that is spoken by the common people of a particular place. Vernaculars are distinguished from official bureaucratic or religious languages, trade languages and any lingua franca or language of the elites that is also spoken in the same region. For example, Latin was the official language of the Church and state in medieval Europe, but most people did not understand Latin and those who did learned it as a second language. It was not until the sixteenth century that many writers began to use their own languages, their vernaculars, instead of Latin.[1]
In imperial China, bureaucrats and other educated elites wrote official and scholarly texts in Classical or Literary Chinese (wenyan or "cultured speech"), which was relatively concise and slow to change, while the rest of the population spoke bai hua ("unadorned speech" or "vernacular"), which is more usefully redundant and which changed more quickly over time. Beginning in the Tang period (618-907 CE), and especially from the 1700s onward, fiction, how-to manuals, and other types of unofficial, popular literature were published in a written version of the vernacular. After the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the monarchy, the government and many intellectuals adopted the vernacular as the standard written form of the language.[2]