De Vulgari Eloquentia

Dante wrote this treatise in Latin — the language of scholars — to argue for the dignity of the language everyone actually spoke, the "vulgar" or common tongue. It was written in the first years of his exile, at about the same time as the Banquet*. He planned four books; he finished only the first and broke off the second in mid-sentence. It is the first work of linguistics in a modern European language tradition, and the first serious study of Italian dialects. Its two books are given here as one episode, condensed, keeping Dante's first person; the English is made fresh from the Latin.*

Book One: The Search for the Illustrious Vernacular

Since I find that no one before me has treated the doctrine of eloquence in the vernacular in any way, and since we see that such eloquence is necessary to everyone — for not only men, but even women and little children strive for it, as far as nature allows — I will try, with the help of the Word that comes from above, to be of some use to the speech of the common people. I will draw water not from my own wits alone, but taking and mixing better things, so that from them I may pour the sweetest mead.

By "vernacular" I mean the speech which children learn from those around them when they first begin to distinguish sounds — the language we acquire without any rule, by imitating our nurses. We have also another, secondary speech, which the Romans called grammar: a language governed by rules, which few people learn, and only with long study — Latin, and Greek, and some others. Of these two, the nobler is the vernacular: because it was the first to be used by the human race; because the whole world uses it, though divided into different words and pronunciations; and because it is natural to us, while the other is artificial.

Man alone among all creatures was given speech, because he alone needs it. The angels do not need it, for they can show their thoughts to one another directly, by their pure intelligence, or see them in the divine mirror; the beasts do not need it, for those of the same species have the same actions and passions, and know one another by those. But man is moved not by instinct but by reason, and reason differs in each individual; and so, to express to others the thoughts of his mind, he needed a sign that was both rational and sensible: rational, to carry meaning from reason to reason; sensible, because nothing can pass from one mind to another except through the senses. That sign is speech: sound, which is sensible, and meaning, which is rational, by convention.

Who spoke first? Scripture says the first to speak was the woman, Eve, answering the serpent. But it is more reasonable to think that it was a man, Adam; and that he spoke first not to Eve, nor to the animals, but to God. And his first word, I think, was the name of God: El, perhaps as a question, perhaps as an answer — "for it is not reasonable that anything should have been said by man before God."

God created, with the first soul, a certain form of speech — a fixed set of words, constructions and pronunciations — which every tongue of speakers would have used, if it had not been scattered by the fault of human presumption. In this form of speech Adam spoke, and all his descendants, until the building of the tower of Babel. Then the confusion of tongues came upon men.

For man, incorrigible, persuaded by the giant Nimrod, presumed to surpass nature, and even its Maker, by building a tower to reach heaven. Almost the whole human race was gathered to the work: some gave orders, some designed, some built the walls, some measured, some plastered, some cut stones, some carried them by land and some by sea; and they were all struck from heaven with such confusion that, where they had all spoken one language, they were now made strangers to one another by many languages, and could no longer work together. To each group engaged in one particular task, one language was given: one to the architects, another to the stone-carriers, another to the stone-cutters, and so on. And the more skilled the work, the more crude and barbarous the language they now spoke. Only the Hebrews, who had not taken part in the work, kept the original language, so that our Redeemer, who was to be born of them, might use the language not of confusion but of grace.

And let not the reader be offended that I, a Florentine, speak this way: