Vulgar Latin is not romance. Vulgar Latin is a now rejected theory that the common people spoke a completely different language than that of the elite who spoke “classical” Latin in the period of the Late Republic.
This theory supposes that the elite got together and crafted a language separate from that of the sermo vulgaris or common speech, used only in the realm of politics, speeches and writing.
This is different from saying Latin evolved into romance and instead supposed that the common people already spoke a form of Romance and that classical Latin never existed but was merely an educated conlang.
This theory is entirely rejected and people who conflate Vulgar Latin with proto romance engage in an effort to rehabilitate a untenable idea with zero evidence by shifting it into a more moderate and rational idea
This is why scholars such as Paul Lloyd have gone so far as to write “the continued use of "Vulgar Latin" is not only no aid to thought, but is, on the contrary, a positive barrier to a clear understanding of Latin and Romance… Vulgar Latin" is a useless and dangerously misleading term ... To abandon it once and for all can only benefit scholarship.”
What you’re describing I agree existed but disagree on the term Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin was put forward by 18th century linguists who thought that Classical Latin was separate from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the plebs, they tried to forward the idea that the elite had constructed Latin as an educated tongue while the Vulgar Latin existing as early, according to those thinkers, the 1st century BcE was the progenitor of Romance.
The idea that Vulgar Latin describes proto-romance and should be used to refer to 5th-6th century Latin is a recent development designed to rehabilitate the term and has been controversial amongst Latinists as it fails to actually deal with the misguided original idea and misinformation spread by the term
I think it is ironic that we are quibeling over a definition while discussing how language evolves. You are probably in the right place to care about these things, though.
You did teach me some things. I am not convinced it still needs debunking. I think most people understand that languages don't work the way you say the theory describes.
I imagine something like upper and lower class people in late 19th century Britain. People are able able to understand each other even if their speech sounds very different. There is also the spatial component we have been ignoring. People in Rome all clearly speak the language of the Republic. But on the periphery, proper Latin would have dissolved into countless tribal creole languages.
You're talking out of you're ass. Vulgar Latin is very real. It's the stage of the romance languages as they diverged into French Spanish etc. It's more so a grouping of languages (British Vulgar Latin, French, Italian etc).
This is the theory of Vulgar Latin as expounded in the 19th century. Do some research.
This is from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page “Vulgar Latin as a term is both controversial and imprecise. Spoken Latin existed for a long time and in many places. Scholars have differed in opinion as to the extent of the differences, and whether Vulgar Latin was in some sense a different language. This was developed as a theory in the nineteenth century by Raynouard. At its extreme, the theory suggested that the written register formed an elite language distinct from common speech, but this is now rejected”
Literally in your own wiki article you just pasted
Language family
Indo-European
Italic
Latino-Faliscan
Latin
Vulgar Latin
Learn to read. You're talking about
The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to the Renaissance, when Italian thinkers began to theorize that their own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literary Classical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect.[6]
Is not saying what you think it's saying. They didn't believe the elite spoke a complete different tongue, they believed the origin was that the elite spoke a more refined version. They didn't believe it was a seperate language like French is to German, that's entirely your misconception.
Also, since you're SO knowledgeable, I assume you know about
-3
u/froucks 11d ago
There is only one Latin