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Vernacular

Entertainment / Literature / Vernacular: The everyday or common language of a geographic area or the native language of commoners in a country as opposed to a prestigious dead language maintained artificially in schools or in literary texts. Latin, for instance, has not been a vernacular language for about 1250 years. Sanskrit has not been a vernacular language in India for more than 2000 years. However, Latin in medieval Europe and Sanskrit in ancient India were considered much more suitable for art, scholarship, poetry, and religious texts than the common tongue of everyday people even though (or perhaps because) only a small percentage of the learned could read the older languages. Usually, a race or culture writes in its native tongue during the early days of its civilization. For instance, the Chinese W????n Li was a vernacular language at the time of Confucius, and it would have been easily understood by most Chinese people in that dialectical area. Likewise, Saint Jerome translated the koine Greek of the New Testament into the 'vulgate' or common Latin familiar to Roman citizens. As time goes by, and the early writings take on special cultural prestige, these older writings tend to be preserved and taught even after the original language changes or dies out completely. Often the classical languages are no longer understandable by common citizens--but these dead languages would still be used in the courts, in government documents, in poetry, and in scripture. (from Latin vernaculus 'native, indigenous')
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