Veronese Riddle: Encyclopedia II - Veronese Riddle - Text analysis and comments

Veronese Riddle - Text analysis and comments

Many more European documents seem to confirm that the distinctive traits of Romance languages occurred all around the same time (e.g. France's Serments de Strasburg). This may well be the earliest document in Italian, though the Placito Capuano, dating to 960 AD, is the one to give official status to the new language, being the first verdict of a judge ever spoken and recorded in an Italian court. Objections have been raised as to whether the Indovinello Veronese (which shows far more archaic traits) is really Italian, or, rather, late Latin: much obviously depends on what we mean by Latin and Italian at this stage.

Some words stick indeed to the rules of Latin grammar (boves with -es for the accusative plural masculine, alba with -a suffix for the plural neuter). Yet more are distinctly Italian, or belonging to the Veronese language, with no cases and producing the typical ending of Italian verbs: pareba, araba, teneba, seminaba instead of Latin parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat. Albo versorio and negro semen have replaced Latin album versorium and nigrum semen. Versorio is still the word for "plow" in today's Veronese dialect. Cortellazzo and Paccagnella say that the plural -es of boves may well be considered Ladin (a Romance language of spoken in parts of Veneto, Trentino and Friuli) and therefore not Latin. Albo is early Italian, especially since German blank entered Italian usage later.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Text analysis and comments", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki