Articles / Aufätze
The Role of Vernacular Proverbs in Latin Language Acquisition, c. 1200–1600: An exploratory study

Christophe Geudens and Toon Van Hal
University of Leuven
Summary

This paper examines the continuities and discontinuities in language teaching between the Middle Ages and the early modern era by drawing attention to the role of bilingual Latin-vernacular proverb collections in premodern education, a subject that has hitherto been neglected in the historiography of linguistics. The focus is on bilingual collections that are of Dutch origin. The paper aims to show that there was an active culture of teaching Latin through vernacular proverbs in Western Europe from the 11th century to the 17th century. After presenting some collections and surveying the arguments in favour of classroom use, it investigates the impact of humanism and the reformation on proverb-based teaching.

Table of contents

This paper examines the continuities and discontinuities in language teaching between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by focusing on extra-grammatical learning practices. We will not be dealing with the persistent classroom use of older grammatical models. Instead, we concentrate on bilingual Latin-vernacular proverb collections and their significance for the medieval and early modern method of language acquisition. The attention and significance given to proverbs in present-day L2 teaching are, at least in the mainstream view, extremely limited (Fiedler 2015). We want to show that in the early modern period the practice of translating proverbs was seen as an excellent way to enhance one’s familiarity with a foreign language, in casu Latin; that this practice continued a tradition well-established in medieval times; and that the persistent use of bilingual Latin-vernacular proverb collections in education is an important, if not the main reason for the enduring popularity of this literary subgenre from the 11th through the 17th centuries.

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London, British Library: Add MS 37075

London, British Library: Add MS 10797

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