News Catalogue Contact & About Partners Downloads Scroll up Scroll down Scroll up Scroll down Scroll up Scroll down Scroll up Scroll down The linguistic situation of medieval Europe has sometimes been characterized as one of diglossia: one learned language, Latin, was used for religion, law, and documents, while the various vernaculars were used in other linguistic registers. Informing the relationship between Latin and the vernaculars was the choice of Latin as the language of the Western Roman Empire and the Roman Church. This choice entailed the possibility of a shared literary culture and heritage across Europe, but also had consequences for access to that heritage. Scholarship on the Romance languages has contested the relevance of the term diglossia, and the divergence between written or spoken Latin and Romance is a subject of energetic debate. In other linguistic areas, too, questions have been voiced. How can one characterize the interaction between Latin and the various vernaculars, and between the various vernaculars themselves? To what extent could speakers from separate linguistic worlds communicate? These questions are fundamental for anyone concerned with communication, the transmission of learning, literary history, and cultural interaction in the Middle Ages. This volume contains contributions by historians, cultural historians, and students of texts, language, and linguistics, addressing the subject from their various perspectives but at the same time trying to overcome familiar disciplinary divisions. Table of Contents; abbreviations Trace Elements of Obliterated Vernacular Languages in Latin Texts - MICHAEL RICHTER Qu?une femme ne peut pas etre appelee homme: Questions de langue et d?anthropologie autour du concile de Macon (585) - A. DEMYTTENAERE Wie gross war der Einfluss des Griechischen auf die Sprache der (ersten) lateinischen Christen? - ARPAD ORBAN Die Figur des Dolmetschers in der biographischen Literatur des westlichen Mittelalters (IV.-XII. Jh.) - WALTER BERSCHIN Nordic Digraphia and Diglossia - INGER LARSSON The Non-Classical Vocabulary of Celtic Latin Literature: An Overview - ANTHONY HARVEY The Cena Adamnani or Seventh-Century Table Talk - MICHAEL W. HERREN Latin and Old English in Ninth-Century Canterbury - NICHOLAS BROOKS A Sociophilological Study of the Change to Official Romance Documentation in Castile - ROGER WRIGHT L?ancien francais (archaique) et le fonctionnement de la communication verticale latine en Gaule (VIIe-VIIIe siecles) - MARC VAN UYTFANGHE Quelques exemples de compromis morphologiques au VIIIe siecle en Francia - MICHEL BANNIARD Latin Grammars and the Structure of the Vernacular Old Irish Auraicept na nEces - RIJCKLOF HOFMAN From Monks? Jokes to Sages? Wisdom: The Joca Monachorum Tradition and the Irish Immacallam in daThuarad - CHARLES D. WRIGHT Writing in Latin and the Vernacular: The Case of Old High German - DENNIS GREEN Volkssprachige Glossen fur lateinkundige Leser? - ROLF BERGMANN Rustice vel Teodisce appellatur oder: Warum schreibt man Glossen? - AREND QUAK Typen und Funktionen volkssprachiger (althochdeutschen) Eintragungen im lateinischen Kontext - ELVIRA GLASER Liturgical Latin in Early Medieval Gaul - ELS ROSE Sprach Ludwig der Deutsche deutsch? - DIETER GEUENICH Latin and Three Vernaculars in East Central Europe from the Point of View of the History of Social Communication - ANNA ADAMSKA