ry on the Epistle to the
Ephesians, says: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, as the vulgar
proverb has it." To the ancient grammarians the "mistakes" and vulgarisms
of popular speech were abhorrent, and they have fortunately branded lists
of words and expressions which are not to be used by cultivated people.
The evidence which may be had from the Romance languages, supplemented by
Latin, not only contributes to our knowledge of the vocabulary of vulgar
Latin, but it also shows us many common idioms and constructions which
that form of speech had. Thus, "I will sing" in Italian is cantero
(=cantar[e]-ho), in Spanish, cantare (=cantar-he), in French, chanterai
(=chanter-ai), and similar forms occur in some of the other Romance
languages. These forms are evidently made up of the Latin infinitive
cantare, depending on habeo ("I have to sing"). But the future in literary
Latin was cantabo, formed by adding an ending, as we know, and with that
the Romance future can have no connection. However, as a writer in the
_Archiv_ has pointed out,[18] just such analytical tense forms as are used
in the Romance languages to-day are to be found in the popular Latin
sermons of St. Jerome. From these idioms, common to Italian, French, and
Spanish, then, we can reconstruct a Latin formation current among the
common people. Finally a knowledge of the tendencies and practices of
spoken English helps us to identify similar usages when we come upon them
in our reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of
Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a
loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we
recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved
are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks:
"You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere
oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are
accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid survey which we have just made
of the evidence bearing on the subject establishes beyond doubt the
existence of a form of speech among the Romans which cannot be identified
with literary Latin, but it has been held by some writers that the
material for the study of it is scanty. However, an impartial examination
of the facts ought not to lead one to this conclusion. On the Latin side
the material includes the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and the comic
fragm