Vernacular

The word vernacular (from Latin: vernacŭlus 'born in one's house') means proper to the place or country of one's birth, native, especially when referring to language. Thus, for most users of the Spanish Wikipedia, the vernacular language is Spanish or Castilian.

The term is used in the context of language when the language used in an area of knowledge is different from the mother tongue of the speakers (this is what is called vernacular). The "non-vernacular" language par excellence was for several centuries Latin, which was the language of the Romans. Then after the fall of the Roman Empire, while their own languages developed in different parts of what had been the Empire, the scholastics and the Church continued to use Latin for studies; in fact, the only version of the Bible authorized by the Council of Trent (the Vulgate) was in Latin. The translation of the Bible into vernacular languages was an important part of the Protestant Reformation.

Latin was also used as the lingua franca of science until the mid to late 18th century, when it was replaced by French, and then in some areas by German or English, which is now the predominant language of scientific communication. The use of Latin subsists in some areas, especially in plant taxonomy, where not only the names but also the official descriptions of species or other taxa are still compulsorily published in Latin. The same is not the case in zoology, where new descriptions are already published in the vernacular, although names are still formed according to the rules of Latin.^{[citation required]}

To qualify a name in a local language, the adjective vernacular is preferred to vulgar, due to the pejorative connotations of the latter (vulgar is relative to the vulgar).

Etymology

The word comes from the Latin vernaculus, meaning 'born in one's house', from vern, a slave born in the master's house.