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Does anyone know if ever there was usage akin to slang in the ancient root languages? (And no, I am not referring to the 'spucatum tauri' kind!)  The thought came to me from the word, 'concoct'. Informally, we commonly say, 'These are cooked up facts'. Concoct could easily replace ‘cooked up’ in that sentence. I now find that concoct has a Latin root, (?Concoquere), which literally means cooked together. It seems interesting that there are proper, dictionary-ratified words, with roots that literally translate into current day slang. Almost as if, some words that might have once been in informal usage (slang even), gradually converted over the years, into more respectable dignified forms, only to revert all over again to their former selves. Is there a name for words like this? Can we think of some more such words? (My apologies, for inflicting such a hideously uncreative title on all of you)  Edit: First, she creates a terrible title; then, she discovers a typo in a neologism and edits it. 
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The Latin normally taught in schools is very formal, and some people doubt whether anyone ever actually spoke quite like that at all and suspect that it was only ever used for writing.
There was certainly a more slangy street dialect, which we can catch glimpses of in the plays of Plautus, and in graffiti in Pompeii.
Bingley
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I haven't read any of the plays that you mention, Bingley. Would you give us some examples of such usage? And, is there then, a formal-informal-formal cycle with the lexicon?
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We can also thank early prescriptivists for their rantings about "improper" usages of their contemporaries. Check out the book Vox Latina. The book The Latin Sexual Vocabulary is another good source of examples of slang. We have evidence of slang in Latin; to assume it did not exist in other languages borders on the incredible.
BTW, I like Slangium much better than Slangum.
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We have evidence of slang in Latin
Faldage, do you know of words then that are rooted in this slang, and moved over time into formal speech? Does the root of concoct (?is it concoquere) classify as slang?
And I agree; they are both terrible, but the 'i', in retrospect, seems to make a bit of a difference, eh? :-)
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Sorry, I just remember the facts, the references with examples are all back in Inggris. But try this article I found by googling: http://makeashorterlink.com/?L398214C3I don't think there's a cycle as such. Some slang words make it, others don't. Some words have always been neutral or formal. Bingley
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Thanks much, Bingley. It appears to be an excellent review article; have quickly scanned the contents and shall peruse later tonight.
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an excellent review article
And it has at least two examples of slang terms that became the standard word in Romance languages.
Post Edit
Now I'm thinking that fromage/formaggio might be one, too.
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Enjoyed the read, Bingley. Thanks once again. I had no idea that the Romance languages have their origin in informal Latin!! I don't know that I am right here, but cotidianus seems like the root for quotidian and sermo for speech (sermon). If this is correct, then the term for literary Latin translates into, 'everyday speech? Sounds self-effacingly pompous, doesn't it!? The dates on my page underneath the periods were somehwat jumbled up. It probably should read as: The Early Period (240 - 70BC) The Golden Age (70BC - 14AD) The Silver Age (14BC - 130AD) Faldage, please will you expound your thoughts on Fromage. I only know the humble cheese meaning.
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Sermo cotidianus would be what the upper class spoke at home. Imagine, if you will, William F. Buckley lolling around home, speaking as he normally does but without the rhetoric. Sermo plebeius would be like, "Me an the boys wenn to the race Sunday. Hoowee! Traffic wad backed up all the way down Peachtree St. at 7 inna mornin."
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It's actually rather hard to believe that Latin didn't have some form of rhyming slang although I have no evidence to support its existence. I remember reading some years ago that Latin seems to have generated at least some of its slang by shortening words by dropping the endings off. Originally this was believed to be simple written shorthand, but the argument ran that it was too consistent, and that this was just writ as it was spoke.
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Latin seems to have generated at least some of its slang by shortening words by dropping the endings off.
I think that Vulgar Latin (AKA plebeius sermo) relied more on word order than on inflectional endings to indicate those relationships between words that we refer to as case.
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And I imagine that context played a large part in understanding, too. It would be interesting to read things written by people who used the vulgar forms of the language to see if they wrote as they spoke as a matter of course, or whether, like us, they understood the difference between Latin as spoken and Latin as written formally.
- Pfranz
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I think most of what we know about sermo plebeius is from written sources, i.e., grafitti. You know, stuff like Poppaea bene futuit.
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Pooh-Bah
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You meant: Poppaea bene futuit, salutas: V-V-V-I-III-VIII-IV-VII-IX, surely?
Kinda carving out a reputation for herself ...
- Pfranz
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salutas: V-V-V-I-III-VIII-IV-VII-IX
Sommat like that.
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Pooh-Bah
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Did I get the number wrong? Do you know the right one? Poppaea is in great demand, you know. A wrong number could be ... Neroian!
- Pfranz
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*rimshot*
or however *they used ta say it...
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