Many of western Europe's languages are derived from Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, plus the regional variations like Sicilian, Occitan, and Provençal. But many are Germanic, derived from the language (or languages) Germanic peoples spoke as they wandered west into the Roman Empire and its outskirts. The dividing line between Latin-derived and Germanic languages is roughly the Rhine river, which also formed the eastern boundary of the Empire.
(I'm leaving aside here languages like Hungarian and Finnish, which come from a very different tradition, as well as English, which in its modern form is a mix of French/Latin and German vocabulary, and I'm not discussing today the Nordic languages, which are a different version of Germanic.)
In the early Middle Ages, in the area that had been part of the Roman Empire (excluding Britain), everyone assumed they were speaking Latin. But as time went on the spoken language simplified, dropping Latin's case endings in favor of more use of prepositions, and using what we now consider the normal subject-verb-object sentence structure, rather than the classical Latin version where the verb often ended up in the final spot. Pronunciation also varied, so Latin "quatuor" (meaning 4) began to be pronounced more like "katre" (as in modern French).
The different "romance" languages (those derived from Latin) all evolved in different directions, depending on region. In Italy, where different regions had already developed different versions of their language before Rome conquered the whole peninsula, the different versions of what one might call Old Italian were as different as between, say, Spanish and Portuguese.
In the ninth century, Latin, real Latin, became a learned language. It was after all the language of the Bible in the West, so it was important to get it right. People studied the vocabulary, declensions, and verb forms and tried to write and speak using them. In the monasteries and, from the twelfth century on, in the universities, Latin was the normal spoken language. It was used for all legal documents until the thirteenth century, when occasionally a legal document would be written in the vernacular, though Latin persisted through the end of the Middle Ages. Sentence structure however was usually that of the romance languages, and new words were added for things where there was no classical Latin term (like the mould-board plow).
Also in the ninth century, those in regions where Germanic languages predominated started trying to write down their language. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Alfred had law codes and even parts of the Bible put into Anglo-Saxon, so everyone could understand them. The priests and learned folks in ninth-century England knew that their spoken language was very different from Latin, so they adhered more closely to real Latin than did many of their counterparts on the Continent, who were doing mix-and-match with Latin and (for example) Old French. The Carolingian court welcomed Anglo-Saxon scholars to improve their Latinity.
Meanwhile, over east of the Rhine, as the area was finishing being Christianized, it was important to have good Latin, but it was also important to be able to write down the local language. There were multiple versions of German in various regions, as is the case even today, where the Bavarian dialect is not the German taught in schools, and Dutch (Flemish) and Letzburgh (the vernacular language of Luxembourg) differ again. Those trying to write down Germanic languages had to deal with the various sounds, like -th- or -w- which have no appropriate letters in the Latin alphabet.
Even today we use T plus H for a sound that doesn't sound like T plus H, and W is made up of two U's put together (think of the name of the letter -- ever notice that before?). A Merovingian king had tried, three centuries earlier, to come up with new letters for sounds not used in Latin, and been mocked for not speaking pure Latin where you wouldn't need such letters. Anglo-Saxon England, less dismissive, came up with the "thorn" for the -th- sound, unfortunately not now used.
The ninth-century German priests trying to write Old German also had the problem that since spoken German varied from place to place, written German would too, unless they could figure out the "correct" spelling -- which one was it?
Most modern languages are relatively easy to pronounce if you see a word written out. Spanish and Italian have direct correlations between letter and letter-sound. French has a lot of letters that are not pronounced, but if you see a word written out you can say it, if you know some French.
Not modern English! Spelling and pronunciation are unrelated. Why do "frown" and "blown" not rhyme? Why are the present and past tenses of "read' spelled the same but pronounced differently? Why is the -g- treated differently in "finger" and "ringer"? Why are "sew" and "sow" pronounced the same, except when "sow" means a female pig, when it's pronounced differently? No one knows. And don't get me started on the six pronunciations of -ough- : "though, thought, through, rough, cough, bough" (oh, aw, oo, uff, off, ow). Don't bother having a first-grader try to "sound it out." Just teach them the dang word with its pronunciation.
© C. Dale Brittain 2025
For more on medieval language and other aspects of medieval history and culture, see my book Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other on-line platforms. Available as an ebook or paperback.
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