Editing Carolingian Renaissance (section)

== Reform of Latin pronunciation ==

According to [[Roger Wright (linguist)|Roger Wright]], the Carolingian Renaissance is responsible for the modern-day pronunciation of [[Ecclesiastical Latin]]. Up until that point there had been no conceptual distinction between [[Latin]] and [[Romance languages|Romance]]; the former was simply regarded as the written form of the latter. For instance in early medieval Spain the word for 'century'—which would have been pronounced */sjeglo/— was properly spelled ⟨saeculum⟩, as it had been for the better part of a millennium. The scribe would not have read aloud ⟨saeculum⟩ as /sɛkulum/ any more than an English speaker today would pronounce ⟨knight⟩ as */knɪxt/ rather than /naɪt/.<ref>Wright, pp. 44–50</ref>

Non-native speakers of Latin, however—such as clergy of Anglo-Saxon or Irish origin—appear to have used a rather different pronunciation, presumably attempting to [[Spelling pronunciation|sound out]] each word according to its spelling. The Carolingian Renaissance in France introduced this artificial pronunciation for the first time to native speakers as well. No longer would, for instance, the word ⟨viridiarium⟩ 'orchard' be read aloud as the equivalent [[Old French]] word */verdʒjǽr/. It now had to be pronounced precisely as spelled, with all six syllables: /viridiarium/.<ref>Wright, pp. 104–7</ref>

Such a radical change had the effect of rendering Latin sermons completely unintelligible to the general Romance-speaking public, which prompted officials a few years later, at the [[Council of Tours#Council of Tours 813|Council of Tours]], to instruct priests to read sermons aloud in the old way, in ''rusticam romanam linguam'' or 'plain roman[ce] speech' (while the liturgy retained the new pronunciation to this day).<ref>Wright, pp. 118-20</ref>

As there was now no unambiguous way to indicate whether a given text was to be read aloud as Latin or Romance, and native Germanic speakers (such as church singers) numerous in the empire might have struggled to read words in Latin orthography according to Romance orthoepy, various attempts were made in France to devise a new orthography for the latter; among the earliest examples are parts of the [[Oaths of Strasbourg]] and the [[Sequence of Saint Eulalia]]. As the Carolingian Reforms spread the 'proper' Latin pronunciation from France to other Romance-speaking areas, local scholars eventually felt the need to create distinct spelling systems for their own vernaculars as well, thereby initiating the literary phase of Medieval Romance.<ref>Wright, pp. 122–32, 143–4</ref> Writing in Romance does not appear to have become widespread until the [[Renaissance of the 12th century|Renaissance of the Twelfth Century]], however.<ref>Wright 2002, p. 151</ref>