Graffiti — the scourge of inner cities and municipal authorities; an ugly, vulgar blight on the urban landscape that costs cities millions every year to clean. Such is hardly a “hidden gem.” But think about this for a moment: Despite the modern image of vandals armed with spray paint tagging private property with vulgar slang, graffiti is as old as writing itself. Although it is often crude and even ugly, graffiti is one of history’s most valuable gems, especially for historians and linguists. Today, we will explore the role of graffiti in reconstructing the pronunciation of one of the world’s most important classical languages, Latin.
The Problem of Ancient Language
The written word, as seen in literature and formal correspondence conforms to a standard language codified through consensus or by a language academy. Standards, however, do not usually reflect colloquial speech, as many an English speaker can testify. We see this phenomenon in other languages as well, with Persian and Arabic being two salient examples. With this in mind, imagine that all voice recordings. were all suddenly lost in some sort of cataclysm, leaving behind only written texts. This is precisely the situation philologists and linguists face when reconstruction the pronunciation of long-extinct languages. However, for some, such as Latin and Greek, we have graffiti, little mementoes (perhaps similar to our tweets) scrawled onto the walls of buildings, personal effects, and gravestones. Much like modern graffiti, these poorly-written and mistake-ridden samples give us an insight into the languages’ pronunciation among everyday people who in many ways, were remarkably similar to us.
Sources of Latin
Traditional academic paradigms have defined three types of Latin: Classical Latin, the Roman literary language, Ecclesiastical Latin, the fossilized literary Latin of the 4th century AD now used in the Roman Catholic Church, and Vulgar Latin, a catch-all name for the numerous dialects spoken throughout the history of the Roman world, which continues to exist today in various forms that we now call the Romance languages. Obviously, there is a major problem with this characterization, namely that “Vulgar Latin,” was different depending on when and where it was spoken, so it is impossible to reconstruct a single pronunciation of the Latin language because there were many, just as we have numerous dialects of English today. What we do know of the pronunciation of Latin dialects comes in part from graffiti, which provide us a glimpse into the speech patterns of everyday people.
The Graffiti
Our sources are a mix of graffiti, scrawls on personal effects, and grave epitaphs. Several of them are sexual, and were found in what was likely a brothel, as they describe sexual encounters in sometimes lurid detail. Some others are equivalent to signs we have today that forbid certain activities. In our case, we have one that expressly forbids urinating. The epitaphs are mostly gravestones and contain an inscription that sometimes laments the misfortune of the person buried, including several that belonged to children whose lives were cut short. Another one claims that the dead man raised his hand against the gods, and a final one describes a man bemoaning his dead lover’s untimely death. These inscriptions describe situations that are relatable to modern sensibilities. Their informal writing makes it possible for us to determine the actual sound and pronunciation of the writing and determine some sound changes that had taken place during the imperial period, heralding the beginning of the Romance languages.
Among the graffiti we see the attitudes of individuals expressed, from greed, to lust and desire, to grief and sorrow over the loss of a loved one. One graffiti says simply Salve lucru, a saying that literally means “hello profit!” In Pompeii, there are several graffiti left behind that are sexually related. One reads “Resitutus multas sepe decrepit puellas (Restitutus often deceived many girls). This one accuses a man named Restitutus of infidelity with multiple women, while another one, which perhaps was written by the woman mentioned, says that a certain Serena hated Isidorus (Serena Isidoru fastidit).
Graffiti were also used for marking objects, and in some cases, they are amusingly written as if the objects are the ones speaking. Written on a lamp, we have ne atigas non sum tua, Marci sum. This says “do not touch, I am not yours. I belong to Marcus. I find this one particularly amusing as it reminds me of children who write very similar things in their books, and on their toys or bedroom doors.
One last use of this graffiti was in the place of signs. Although this is not graffiti per se, as it is not vandalism, they are still written colloquially and reflect the spoken language instead of the formal written one. One amusing example comes from a gravestone belonging to a soldier, which carries the following warning for travelers: Ne quis hic urina faciat. This idiomatically in English translates to “Do not urinate here,” a similar problem that many of us living in cities can attest to.
All of these graffiti carry various small spellings and errors that show the very beginning of the transition of Latin into the Romance languages. The most obvious one is the dropped –m at the end of words, which in Latin usually indicated a direct object. In the formal language, one would expect lucrum instead of lucru and urinam instead of urina. In our example relating to infidelity, we see sepe instead of the formal saepe. This likely means that the Latin –ae (also the plural marker for feminine nouns), originally pronounced -ai, had become an –e. This is preserved today in at least two Romance languages, Italian and Romanian, which pluralize feminine nouns with a final –e.
The Value of Graffiti
Despite our aversion to graffiti, this small analysis of Latin graffiti shows the value it has for linguists and philologists, as seen in this small analysis of a few samples. Without these acts of vandalism and everyday scribble, our only source of Latin pronunciation would be reconstructions based on Romance languages and the few clues left in the writings of ancient Latin grammarians. While we may hate graffiti today, sometime, in the distant future, linguists attempting to reconstruct the pronunciation of American English may turn to street graffiti, text messages, and tweets, making these acts of vandalism and poor grammar, ironically gems of history and language.
Sources and Further Reading
All examples in this post come from the book By Roman Hands, by Matthew Harnett. This gem gives Latin learners the opportunity to explore the informal inscriptions such as gravestones, graffiti, and other writings that are not classical authors that many of us are used to from Latin classes.