The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

5.18 Regionalisms
An interesting point of departure is the presence of lexical features that could be
described as specifically Iberian. It is often remarked by modern observers how few
references there are by Roman authors to the diversity of spoken Latin. Unfortunately, this is
usually taken to imply that there was none. Modern linguistics teaches that this is considered
highly unlikely, if not an impossibility; there is absolutely no reason why Latin should have
been able to retain diatopic homogeneity over such vast distances. Instead, it is perfectly
possible that the Romans did not write about the topic because it was considered to be of no
interest. Those who were capable of observing and writing on such a theme would have been
able to travel from one end of the empire to the other communicating only in their learned
and educated Latin with other educated speakers. The average peasant from Galicia who
might have found it difficult to understand the average peasant from Pannonia has
unfortunately not left any records for posterity.
Adams (2007) has demonstrated recently to be incorrect the view that Latin was
immutable, despite the fact that the homogeneity of written Latin shows it to have been prima
facie resistant to substantial diatopic variation. He begins his study: “It has sometimes been
thought paradoxical that the Latin of the Roman period seems to lack regional variations yet
was able to generate in little more than a millennium a diversity of Romance tongues that are
usually classified as different languages” (ibid.: xv). However, he continues throughout his
study to demonstrate the presence of regionalisms, concluding that “we should get away from
the idea that Latin was monolithic until a very late date, when some catastrophic event caused
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