Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Vernacular shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Vernacular offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Vernacular at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Vernacular? Wrong! If the Vernacular is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Vernacular then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Vernacular? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Vernacular and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Vernacular wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Vernacular then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Vernacular site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Vernacular, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Vernacular, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
Vernacular refers to the
native language of a country or locality. In general
linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to
Lingua franca, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language.
For instance: in
Western Europe up until the 17th century, most scholarly work was written in
Latin, so works written in a native language were said to be
in the vernacular.
The vernacular is also often contrasted with a
liturgical language (in linguistics, the relationship between these "High" and "Low" languages or varieties of a language is referred to as
diglossia). For example, until the 1960s,
Latin Rite Roman Catholics held mass (liturgy) in Latin rather than in local vernacular language, to this day the Coptic Church holds
liturgy in
Coptic language; though parts of mass are read in
Amharic, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez language, etc. The
Reformation was spread by the publication of Bibles and other religious writings in the vernacular, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular liturgies in Roman Catholicism.
Similarly, in
Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit long after its use as a spoken language. With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in Tamil language,
Hindi,
Kannada, Telugu language and many other Indian languages throughout the different regions of India. For example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such as
Ramacharitamanasa, a Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th century poet
Tulsidas, and
Kambaramayanam in Tamil language by the poet Kambar.
Vernacular in sociolinguistics
Within the subcategory of sociolinguistics, the term
vernacular has been applied to several concepts, leading to confusion among scholars regarding what is actually being referred to. This term had not been heard in the western world until the late 1800's.One use of the term, as exemplified by Poplack (1993) and
Labov (1972), defines vernacular varieties as casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously. It could also be described as informal talk used in intimate situations. Linguists consider the vernacular to be the first form of speech acquired by a person.
Wolfram and
Schilling-Estes (1998) on the other hand define vernacular varieties as nonstandard, local dialects, particularly because of the nonstandard
grammatical features that they contain. They also state that there is a continuum between the vernacular and the standard.
Similar approaches have been made to define vernacular culture:
Cheshire (1982) sees vernacular culture as a non-standard or counter culture that is expressed through participation in particular activities or clothing styles, whereas
Edwards (1992) defines it as a local culture determined by the connectedness to a certain neighbourhood.
First vernacular grammars....
Through metalinguistic publications vernaculars acquired the status of
official languages. Between 1437 and 1586 the first grammars of
Italian language, Spanish language,
French language, German language and English language were written, though not always immediately published.
Italian grammar
Leon Battista Alberti’s
Grammatichetta vaticana was written between 1437 and 1441, but not printed until 1908, which is why its influence is debated.
Alberti was concerned with showing that dialects also had structures by mapping them onto Latin, whereas his fellow grammarians Giovanni Francesco Fortunio (
Regole grammaticali della vulgar lingua, 1516) and
Pietro Bembo (
Prose della vulgar lingua, 1525) strived to establish a norm dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language.
Spanish grammar
The first (contrastive) Spanish grammar by Antonio de Nebrija (
Gramática Castellana, 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each: Books 1-4 describe the Spanish language language grammatically in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish speaking readers. Book 5 contains a phonetical and morphological overview of Castillian for nonnative speakers.
French grammar
The first (methodical) grammar of French was not written in France but in England and aimed at foreign speakers intending to learn the language. An interest in learning French had already been expressed before
John Palsgrave wrote
Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse in 1530 by his contemporaries
Alexander Barclay (
Here begynneth the introductory to wryte and to pronounce frenche, 1521), Pierre Valence (
Introductions in frensshe, 1528) and Giles du Wes (
An introducterie for to lerne to rede to prononce and to speke Frenche trewly, 1532-1533).
Palgrave’s instructive work was based on literary examples, following the model of
Theodorus Gaza’s grammar of Greek (1495).
German grammar
In Germany, the first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects. Like Nebrija,
Valentin Ickelsamer (
Ein Teütsche Grammatica , 1534) stresses the importance of understanding the structure of the national language in order to learn other languages, above all Latin.
English grammar
William Bullokar (
Pamphlet for Grammar, 1586) was the first to write a proper English grammar, preceded only by Richard Mulcaster’s general plea for mother tongue education in England,
The first part of the elementary, 1582. Bullokar followed leading Latin grammarians in England to prove that English was, like Latin, governed by rules.
First vernacular dictionaries
The first vernacular dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars. As can be seen from the section above, many of the new grammars were based on traditional Latin ones, comparing the structure of both languages. This preservation of traditional form does not apply for the new type of dictionaries. Although they kept the macrostructure and elements of the microstructure of old dictionaries, there was more drastic change than in the case of grammars.
Up to the mid-fifteenth century,
glosses and dictionaries were mostly bilingual and served the teaching of Latin. For reading and translation of Latin texts, dictionaries would usually display the sequence Latin lemma (unknown) followed by explanatory vernacular expression (known). Dictionaries with reversed order would serve the more active tasks of speaking and writing. Both types were solely concerned with the study of Latin, but at the same time they unintentionally documented the development of vernaculars at a time that these were not considered worth writing about.
With the emergence of monolingual dictionaries vernaculars arrived at their breakthrough. The gradual formation of nation states and the growing importance of national languages (that are briefly explained in the section
Early Vernacular Studies) led to the publication of
multilingual vernacular dictionaries in various combinations.
Some early bilingual vernacular dictionaries include:
Italian/French- Nathanael Duez :
Dittionario italiano e francese/Dictionnaire italien et François, Leiden, 1559-1560
- Gabriel Pannonius:
Petit vocabulaire en langue françoise et italienne, Lyon, 1578
- Jean Antoine Fenice :
Dictionnaire fraçois et italien, Paris, 1584
Italian/English-
John Florio :
A Worlde of Words, London, 1598
-
John Florio:
Queen Anna’s New World of Words, London, 1611
Italian/Spanish-
Cristobal de las Casas:
Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana, Sevilla, 1570
- Lorenzo Franciosini:
Vocabulario italiano e spagnolo/ Vocabulario espanol e italiano, Roma, 1620.
Some early
monolingual vernacular dictionaries:
Italian- Francesco Alunno:
Le richezze della lingua volgare, 1543
-
Francesco Alunno:
La fabbrica del mondo, 1548
- Giacomo Pergamini:
Il memoriale della lingua italiana, 1602
-
Accademia della Crusca:
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 1612
Spanish- Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco:
Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, 1611
French-
Maurice de la Porte:
Epitheta, 1571
- Jean Nicot:
Thresor de la langue fracoyse, tant ancienne que moderne, 1606
- Pierre Richelet :
Dictionnaire françois contenant les mots et les choses, 1680
- Académie française :
Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694
German-
Georg Heinisch:
Teütsche Sprache und Weißheit, 1616
-
Johann Christoph Adelung :
Versuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches Der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774-1786
Language can blur into vernacular architecture, where the local vernacular is sometimes reflected in the form of the styles of naive/vernacular
typography & hand lettering seen on signs and shopfronts. Similarly the word may be used to describe local craft - e.g. "vernacular ceramic wares".
In
literature, it may apply to works that have been written to emulate the everyday speech of the
middle class or the working class. Sometimes, this means that
slang and
colloquialism is included.
Such material may also use different rules of grammar and punctuation than other writings, both academic and literary.
In the
Three Stooges' film short
Disorder in the Court, the prosecuting attorney admonishes Curly, who his holding a Derby hat, for using slang while on the witness stand. He asks Curly to "Please drop the vernacular", whereby Curly points at the hat and responds, "Vernacular? That's a Derby."
See also
Vernacular refers to the
native language of a country or locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to Lingua franca, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language.
For instance: in
Western Europe up until the 17th century, most scholarly work was written in Latin, so works written in a native language were said to be
in the vernacular.
The vernacular is also often contrasted with a
liturgical language (in
linguistics, the relationship between these "High" and "Low" languages or varieties of a language is referred to as diglossia). For example, until the 1960s, Latin Rite Roman Catholics held mass (liturgy) in Latin rather than in local vernacular language, to this day the Coptic Church holds liturgy in Coptic language; though parts of mass are read in Amharic, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez language, etc. The Reformation was spread by the publication of
Bibles and other religious writings in the vernacular, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular liturgies in Roman Catholicism.
Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in
Sanskrit long after its use as a spoken language. With the rise of the
bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in
Tamil language,
Hindi,
Kannada,
Telugu language and many other Indian languages throughout the different regions of India. For example, the
Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such as
Ramacharitamanasa, a
Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th century poet
Tulsidas, and
Kambaramayanam in Tamil language by the poet Kambar.
Vernacular in sociolinguistics
Within the subcategory of sociolinguistics, the term
vernacular has been applied to several concepts, leading to confusion among scholars regarding what is actually being referred to. This term had not been heard in the western world until the late 1800's.One use of the term, as exemplified by Poplack (1993) and Labov (1972), defines vernacular varieties as casual varieties used spontaneously rather than self-consciously. It could also be described as informal talk used in intimate situations. Linguists consider the vernacular to be the first form of speech acquired by a person.
Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (1998) on the other hand define vernacular varieties as nonstandard, local
dialects, particularly because of the nonstandard grammatical features that they contain. They also state that there is a continuum between the vernacular and the standard.
Similar approaches have been made to define vernacular culture: Cheshire (1982) sees vernacular culture as a non-standard or counter culture that is expressed through participation in particular activities or clothing styles, whereas
Edwards (1992) defines it as a local culture determined by the connectedness to a certain neighbourhood.
First vernacular grammars....
Through
metalinguistic publications vernaculars acquired the status of
official languages. Between 1437 and 1586 the first grammars of
Italian language,
Spanish language,
French language, German language and
English language were written, though not always immediately published.
Italian grammar
Leon Battista Alberti’s
Grammatichetta vaticana was written between 1437 and 1441, but not printed until 1908, which is why its influence is debated. Alberti was concerned with showing that dialects also had structures by mapping them onto Latin, whereas his fellow grammarians Giovanni Francesco Fortunio (
Regole grammaticali della vulgar lingua, 1516) and Pietro Bembo (
Prose della vulgar lingua, 1525) strived to establish a norm dialect that would qualify for becoming the Italian national language.
Spanish grammar
The first (
contrastive) Spanish grammar by
Antonio de Nebrija (
Gramática Castellana, 1492) was divided into parts for native and nonnative speakers, pursuing a different purpose in each: Books 1-4 describe the Spanish language language grammatically in order to facilitate the study of Latin for its Spanish speaking readers. Book 5 contains a phonetical and morphological overview of Castillian for nonnative speakers.
French grammar
The first (methodical) grammar of French was not written in France but in England and aimed at foreign speakers intending to learn the language. An interest in learning French had already been expressed before
John Palsgrave wrote
Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse in 1530 by his contemporaries
Alexander Barclay (
Here begynneth the introductory to wryte and to pronounce frenche, 1521), Pierre Valence (
Introductions in frensshe, 1528) and Giles du Wes (
An introducterie for to lerne to rede to prononce and to speke Frenche trewly, 1532-1533).
Palgrave’s instructive work was based on literary examples, following the model of
Theodorus Gaza’s grammar of Greek (1495).
German grammar
In Germany, the first grammar evolved from pedagogical works that also tried to create a uniform standard from the many regional dialects. Like
Nebrija,
Valentin Ickelsamer (
Ein Teütsche Grammatica , 1534) stresses the importance of understanding the structure of the national language in order to learn other languages, above all Latin.
English grammar
William Bullokar (
Pamphlet for Grammar, 1586) was the first to write a proper English grammar, preceded only by
Richard Mulcaster’s general plea for mother tongue education in England,
The first part of the elementary, 1582. Bullokar followed leading Latin grammarians in England to prove that English was, like Latin, governed by rules.
First vernacular dictionaries
The first vernacular
dictionaries emerged together with vernacular grammars. As can be seen from the section above, many of the new grammars were based on traditional Latin ones, comparing the structure of both languages. This preservation of traditional form does not apply for the new type of dictionaries. Although they kept the
macrostructure and elements of the
microstructure of old dictionaries, there was more drastic change than in the case of grammars.
Up to the mid-fifteenth century, glosses and dictionaries were mostly bilingual and served the teaching of Latin. For reading and translation of Latin texts, dictionaries would usually display the sequence Latin
lemma (unknown) followed by explanatory vernacular expression (known). Dictionaries with reversed order would serve the more active tasks of speaking and writing. Both types were solely concerned with the study of Latin, but at the same time they unintentionally documented the development of vernaculars at a time that these were not considered worth writing about.
With the emergence of monolingual dictionaries vernaculars arrived at their breakthrough. The gradual formation of nation states and the growing importance of national languages (that are briefly explained in the section
Early Vernacular Studies) led to the publication of multilingual vernacular dictionaries in various combinations.
Some early bilingual vernacular dictionaries include:
Italian/French- Nathanael Duez :
Dittionario italiano e francese/Dictionnaire italien et François, Leiden, 1559-1560
- Gabriel Pannonius:
Petit vocabulaire en langue françoise et italienne, Lyon, 1578
- Jean Antoine Fenice :
Dictionnaire fraçois et italien, Paris, 1584
Italian/English- John Florio :
A Worlde of Words, London, 1598
-
John Florio:
Queen Anna’s New World of Words, London, 1611
Italian/Spanish-
Cristobal de las Casas:
Vocabulario de las dos lenguas toscana y castellana, Sevilla, 1570
-
Lorenzo Franciosini:
Vocabulario italiano e spagnolo/ Vocabulario espanol e italiano, Roma, 1620.
Some early
monolingual vernacular dictionaries:
Italian- Francesco Alunno:
Le richezze della lingua volgare, 1543
-
Francesco Alunno:
La fabbrica del mondo, 1548
-
Giacomo Pergamini:
Il memoriale della lingua italiana, 1602
-
Accademia della Crusca:
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 1612
Spanish-
Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco:
Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, 1611
French- Maurice de la Porte:
Epitheta, 1571
-
Jean Nicot:
Thresor de la langue fracoyse, tant ancienne que moderne, 1606
- Pierre Richelet :
Dictionnaire françois contenant les mots et les choses, 1680
-
Académie française :
Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694
German-
Georg Heinisch:
Teütsche Sprache und Weißheit, 1616
- Johann Christoph Adelung :
Versuch eines vollständigen grammatisch-kritischen Wörterbuches Der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 1774-1786
Language can blur into
vernacular architecture, where the local vernacular is sometimes reflected in the form of the styles of naive/vernacular
typography & hand
lettering seen on signs and shopfronts. Similarly the word may be used to describe local craft - e.g. "vernacular ceramic wares".
In literature, it may apply to works that have been written to emulate the everyday speech of the
middle class or the
working class. Sometimes, this means that
slang and colloquialism is included.
Such material may also use different rules of
grammar and
punctuation than other writings, both academic and literary.
In the
Three Stooges' film short
Disorder in the Court, the prosecuting attorney admonishes Curly, who his holding a Derby hat, for using slang while on the witness stand. He asks Curly to "Please drop the vernacular", whereby Curly points at the hat and responds, "Vernacular? That's a Derby."
See also
Vernacular - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to linguae francae, official ...
Vernacular photography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vernacular photography refers to the creation of photographs by amateur or unknown photographers who take everyday life and common things as subjects.
Definition: vernacular from Online Medical Dictionary
The Online Medical Dictionary is a searchable dictionary of definitions from medicine, science and technology.
Yorkshire Vernacular Buildings Study Group
Researches and records the vernacular architecture of Yorkshire, organises conferences, dayschools and walkabouts, and publishes newsheets and an annual journal.
Vernacular Architecture Group
The Vernacular Architecture Group website: information on activities, conferences, membership and publications.
vernacular - Definitions from Dictionary.com
Definitions of vernacular at Dictionary.com. ... 13. the common name of an animal or plant as distinguished from its Latin scientific name.
AANHS - Vernacular Building
Vernacular Building in Ayrshire John R Hume Ayrshire Monographs No. 29 (2004) ISBN--0 9542253 2 5 80 pp, 104 illustrations £4.50. This is an expanded version of a booklet first ...
Vernacular housing in Inishowen - introduction
Stephen Roulston examines some of the house types found on this peninsula of County Donegal, Republic of Ireland.
International Vernacular Architecture Unit (IVAU)
This international centre within Oxford Brookes University hosts the Paul Oliver Vernacular Architecture Library. Lists publications, research expertise and current research ...
Open Research Online - Vernacular religion and nature: The “Bible of ...
In this paper I shall set out some of the basic ideas and terms underlying my views on the relationship between folkore and the study of religion, and on why I believe this can be ...
