# Folk / Vulgur (Vulgus)



## Alxmrphi

Hi all,

I've just been listening to something explaining sound shifts across the worlds languages, and part of it was about consonant weakening about how voiceless stops become voiced stops, then voiced fricatives, to nasals, liquids, glides and then a disappearance of the consonant all together.

Then the narrator said something about Vulgur Latin, and gave an explanation of it being the language of the people, _of the common folk_, and as soon as he said folk something switched on in my head so I grabbed a piece of paper and tracked through some of the rules that the narrator had just mentioned.

About how, through tracking consonants through time in comparative reconstruction (through Romanian / Sardinian / Spanish) and the Polynesian languages that a voiceless sound tends to become voiced and therefore a common (but not concrete) idea was out of a voiced/voiceless pair, it is usually expected that the voiceless one precedes the voiced.

Then he gave an example of Sicilian and how through Latin in certain circumstances (no details given) an [o] can become , so then, immediately noticing the g/k consontant pair as both velar plosives, applying the same rules and assuming voiceless comes first and then goes to voiced, my mind just linked *vulg(ur) *and *folk*.

As the unvoiced counterpart to [v] is [f], and the unvoiced counterpart of [g] is [k], given the nature that [o] can become  I thought there's a strong chance maybe this was a development into Latin.

So I went to etymonline and saw this:



> *folk* O.E. folc "common people, men, tribe, multitude," from P.Gmc. *folkom (cf. O.Fris. folk, M.Du. volc, Ger. Volk "people"), from P.Gmc. *fulka-, perhaps originally "host of warriors;" cf. O.N. folk "people," also "army, detachment;" and Lith. pulkas "crowd," O.C.S. pluku "division of an army," both believed to have been borrowed from P.Gmc. Some have attempted, without success, to link the word to Gk. plethos "multitude;" L. plebs "people, mob," populus "people" or vulgus. Superseded in most senses by people.


My question was, how come it was without success?
I'm extremely new to this so I am eager to apply the rules and thinking I had discovered something by myself I was quite happy, then I saw that etymonline didn't think this was a correct reconstruction, but it didn't give a reason why, does anyone else know?

Looking back at Proto-Germanic the vowel is actually thought to be "u" anyway (*fulka-), so maybe it's possible the shift to 'u' doesn't need to be explained.

Anyway, this is just a general query, if anyone has any insight / things to teach I'd be more than happy to know!

Alex


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## DenisBiH

From what I can see on Wiktionary, they are reconstructed to two different PIE roots. One can clearly see the Grimm's law in action in the Germanic reflex of **pl̥h₁go*. On the other hand I assume the form vulgus can be derived regularly from **u̯l̥k-* by known changes from PIE to Latin.



> Old English folc, from Proto-Germanic *folkom (cf. Dutch/German Volk), from Proto-Indo-European **pl̥h₁go* (cf. Welsh ôl 'track', Albanian plog 'barn, heap', Lithuanian pulkas 'crowd', Old Church Slavonic plŭkŭ 'army division'). Related to follow.





> Middle English, from Latin vulgāris, from volgus, vulgus 'mob; common folk', from Proto-Indo-European **u̯l̥k- *(cf. Welsh gwala 'plenty, sufficiency', Ancient Greek halia 'assembly', eilein 'to compress', Old Church Slavonic velkŭ 'great').


A side note: it was never clear to me why Proto-Slavic *pъlkъ has p- if it is, as assumed, a borrowing from Proto-Germanic *fulkaz. Or was there perhaps a phase such as *pfulkaz?


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## phosphore

Alxmrphi said:


> I've just been listening to something explaining sound shifts across the worlds languages, and part of it was about consonant weakening about how voiceless stops become voiced stops, then voiced fricatives, to nasals, liquids, glides and then a disappearance of the consonant all together.


 
You have on one side the question about how natural a sound change is, and it is usually agreed upon that consonant changes voiceless stop>voiced stop>voiced fricative>approximant>zero in the intervocalic position, stop>fricative>zero in the coda position, voiced obstruent>voiceless obstruent in the final position, etc. are natural, while those in the other sense are not. On the other side, you have the question whether the supposed sound change is general or not. If in a whole series of examples you find that /w/ in Italic corresponds to /f/ in Germanic then you might have a sound law. In any case, just because some sound change seems natural that doesn't mean it really happened that way.


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## Alxmrphi

Hi phosphore, 

Yeah that's pretty much what I expected, nothing is ever concrete and there are always exceptions to rules, I just thought it was a possibility given the common meaning and a possible sound change connection going back to a possibly-similar root, it seemed to _fit the bill_, so-to-speak. Just because that's a common rule doesn't mean it happens with everything, for example Latin -> Italian has elements of assimilation of articulation (Latin octo -> Italian otto), while this isn't the case in Spanish, but Spanish has elements of assimilation of voicing (i.e. between vowels) (Latin maturus -> Spanish maduro) while Italian keeps the unvoicing.

So basically the patterns exist, but yeah it doesn't mean all languages / words / consonants have to take that root (it'd be impossible), all I was trying to establish was whether in this case, it could be true, because it seems to fit a pattern I had read about and seemed possible for this to be one set of rules we could apply and get back to a "folk" root.

Do you know why etymonline says it is unsucessful?


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## Lars H

Hej!
From a Scandinavian point of view, "Folk/People" makes more sense than "Folk/Vulgus", although, according to etymonline, neither ot these two have been proven.

A possible connection could be "people/plebs" from greek "Plelhos" (amount) with the PIE root "*pele" (fill, being full, complete).
And the Germanic words "Full"/"folk"/"follow" all from the same root, first meaning "amount"/"flock". The word "full" means the same as "complete".

From Hellquist (1922) I catched the following line of possible relations:
"Folk", previously meaning "flock of warrriors" goes from germ. "*fulka-"; lithau. "pulkas" (crowd, flock) anc. slav. "pliiku", (crowd of warriors) PIE *plgo-;


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## Alxmrphi

> From a Scandinavian point of view, "Folk/People" makes more sense than "Folk/Vulgus", although, according to etymonline, neither ot these two have been proven.


 
Hi Lars, can you explain what you mean here I don't get you?
The word I am working with is _Vulgus_, and tracing its roots, it has nothing to do with the word _people_, I'm trying to find if it links to a_ folk_-root or not.

I know* fólk* means people in Icelandic and* folk* means people in Old English... but I'm not sure what you mean by it makes 'more sense', they all have a semantically close meaning, so I'm not sure what you're saying. I think it's easier to see a connection between Vulgus -> Folk than it is to see People -> Folk. But in any sense my question isn't about what the word "People" traces back to, so probably best to avoid that for now.


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## phosphore

Alxmrphi said:


> Hi phosphore,
> 
> Yeah that's pretty much what I expected, nothing is ever concrete and there are always exceptions to rules, I just thought it was a possibility given the common meaning and a possible sound change connection going back to a possibly-similar root, it seemed to _fit the bill_, so-to-speak.
> 
> Do you know why etymonline says it is unsucessful?


 
I suppose the second criterion failed to be fulfilled. I don't know much about Indo-European linguistics but Germanic /f/ is usually connected not to Italic /w/ but /p/, as in father-pater. Like I said, a sound change needs not only to be natural but also to be applicable to a whole series of words, if it is to be accepted as a valid hypothesis.


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## Alxmrphi

> but Germanic /f/ is usually connected not to Italic /w/ but /p/, as in father-pater.


 
Yeah, but what I am talking about doesn't concern Germanic, the /p/ and /f/ (Great Fricative Shift) was after Proto-Germanic and went down into the Germanic branch.
What I was looking at was Pre-Germanic (PIE) (from where *folk* comes from) and how that word might have developed in the Italic branch down to *vulgus*.
So by the time the Germanic speakers had fricativised the /p/, the development had already started in the Italic branch, going down to vulgus (if my hypothesis was correct).

But as it's not, then I decided to ask why they don't view it as correct.

But I actually see what you're saying, that maybe the cognate would be /p/ in the other languages given it's /f/ in the Germanic ones, but the Proto-Germanic word that is estimated to be the origin of folk is *fulka-, so it's independent of the /p/'s going to /f/'s in Germanic.

Actually, is that part of what you were talking about Lars? That the /f/ has this /p/ counterpart that links it to _people_?

I'm too confused now I wish I hadn't asked!


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## DenisBiH

Lars H said:


> Hej!
> From a Scandinavian point of view, "Folk/People" makes more sense than "Folk/Vulgus", although, according to etymonline, neither ot these two have been proven.



Interesting. Wiktionary also traces people to Latin populus and stops there with the assumption it's Etruscan / Non-Indo-European. To my amateur eyes this looks like it could be reduplication from *pel-h1-, but how many other PIE words show reduplication in nouns/adjectives (from what I see it's mostly in verb forms). So far I've seen *kʷekʷlos "wheel".


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## DenisBiH

Alxmrphi said:


> But I actually see what you're saying, that maybe the cognate would be /p/ in the other languages given it's /f/ in the Germanic ones, but the Proto-Germanic word that is estimated to be the origin of folk is *fulka-, so it's independent of the /p/'s going to /f/'s in Germanic.



It's not independent of it, it's the result of it. You've got the reconstructed PIE root above (*pl̥h₁go).


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## Alxmrphi

I realised that now, what I thought said PIE in the dictionary was actually Proto-Germanic, so what I said didn't really work.
The Proto-Germanic would have been influenced by the p->f shift so that's where it threw me a bit, what I was trying to say was if it was *f- in PIE then there wouldn't be a shift bringing in folk in the Germanic languages, but like I said, I misunderstood it as PIE and didn't realise it said Proto-Germanic.

But please before we all go off topic, the question was about having the word *vulgur* today, and tracing that back, since others have tried to do it I thought there must be some logic behind it, but I wanted to know why the dictionary says it isn't true.


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## Ajura

Alxmrphi said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I've just been listening to something explaining sound shifts across the worlds languages, and part of it was about consonant weakening about how voiceless stops become voiced stops, then voiced fricatives, to nasals, liquids, glides and then a disappearance of the consonant all together.
> 
> Then the narrator said something about Vulgur Latin, and gave an explanation of it being the language of the people, _of the common folk_, and as soon as he said folk something switched on in my head so I grabbed a piece of paper and tracked through some of the rules that the narrator had just mentioned.
> 
> About how, through tracking consonants through time in comparative reconstruction (through Romanian / Sardinian / Spanish) and the Polynesian languages that a voiceless sound tends to become voiced and therefore a common (but not concrete) idea was out of a voiced/voiceless pair, it is usually expected that the voiceless one precedes the voiced.
> 
> Then he gave an example of Sicilian and how through Latin in certain circumstances (no details given) an [o] can become , so then, immediately noticing the g/k consontant pair as both velar plosives, applying the same rules and assuming voiceless comes first and then goes to voiced, my mind just linked *vulg(ur) *and *folk*.
> 
> As the unvoiced counterpart to [v] is [f], and the unvoiced counterpart of [g] is [k], given the nature that [o] can become  I thought there's a strong chance maybe this was a development into Latin.
> 
> So I went to etymonline and saw this:
> 
> 
> My question was, how come it was without success?
> I'm extremely new to this so I am eager to apply the rules and thinking I had discovered something by myself I was quite happy, then I saw that etymonline didn't think this was a correct reconstruction, but it didn't give a reason why, does anyone else know?
> 
> Looking back at Proto-Germanic the vowel is actually thought to be "u" anyway (*fulka-), so maybe it's possible the shift to 'u' doesn't need to be explained.
> 
> Anyway, this is just a general query, if anyone has any insight / things to teach I'd be more than happy to know!
> 
> Alex




Voicing normally happens intervocally.


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## phosphore

Alxmrphi said:


> But I actually see what you're saying, that maybe the cognate would be /p/ in the other languages given it's /f/ in the Germanic ones, but the Proto-Germanic word that is estimated to be the origin of folk is *fulka-, so it's independent of the /p/'s going to /f/'s in Germanic.


 
For father too the Proto-Germanic word is *fader with [f], the sound change /p/>[f] had taken place already in Proto-Germanic, so there is no difference between father and folk on that matter.

I'm telling you, on one hand you do have a natural sound correspondence between /f/-/o/-/l/-k/- and /w/-/u/-/l/-/g/- and you do have a very close correspondence in meaning, but on the other hand there is no systematic relation between /f/ in Germanic and /w/ in Italic and that's where the hypothesis fails.


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## Alxmrphi

phosphore said:


> I'm telling you, on one hand you do have a natural sound correspondence between /f/-/o/-/l/-k/- and /w/-/u/-/l/-/g/- and you do have a very close correspondence in meaning, but on the other hand there is no systematic relation between /f/ in Germanic and /w/ in Italic and that's where the hypothesis fails.


 
This answers my question 
Thanks.


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## DenisBiH

Alxmrphi said:


> But please before we all go off topic, the question was about having the word *vulgur* today, and tracing that back, since others have tried to do it I thought there must be some logic behind it, but I wanted to know why the dictionary says it isn't true.




But you've got a possible etymology for vulgus as well, above. What could potentially be done there is to check whether it can be regularly (as in by sound changes attested in other Latin words) derived from the PIE root **u̯l̥k-*.

From what I've read, generally you first try deriving the form as a native reflex, only if that is not possible or requires some extra juggling (as in ad-hoc assumption of a number of additional sound change laws or weird semantic shifts) then you go for possible borrowing. Someone please correct me.

There may be people who don't agree with that, or the derivation of Latin vulgus from *u̯l̥k- may be uncertain, either in terms of sound shifts or semantically.

We'd need someone who's well versed in the historical development of Latin.


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## Alxmrphi

Dennis can you link me to your PIE roots, I don't think I have the right font installed and it's coming up with blocks, so I can't read the letters. Just so I can see what you're referring to can you link me to a page with them on so I can see?


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## Lars H

Alxmrphi said:


> Hi Lars, can you explain what you mean here I don't get you?
> The word I am working with is _Vulgus_, and tracing its roots, it has nothing to do with the word _people_, I'm trying to find if it links to a_ folk_-root or not.



Hej

Hopefully I am not as far away from your thread as it first appears. My point is that there might be a conncetion Folk/People and this has relevance to your initial question. 

If there is a Folk/People connection, and if your assumption that there is no Vulgus/People connction is correct (and I believe there is no such connection), then the answer of your initial question would be no, it would be less likely with a connection Folk/Vulgus.

Sorry if I am unclear, this is not my mother tongue.


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## DenisBiH

Alxmrphi said:


> Dennis can you link me to your PIE roots, I don't think I have the right font installed and it's coming up with blocks, so I can't read the letters. Just so I can see what you're referring to can you link me to a page with them on so I can see?




Hm, strange that it doesn't appear. Here's for folk and here's for vulgar.


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## sokol

Lars H said:


> Hej
> 
> Hopefully I am not as far away from your thread as it first appears. My point is that there might be a conncetion Folk/People and this has relevance to your initial question.


Yes, if there were a relation this would be relevant indeed.
The point made so far was that historical linguists have tried, and failed, to prove a relation between "Volk/folk/..." and "people/populus/...".

Actually, etymonline says that the etymology of "people (populus etc.)" is unclear but that "populus" might have been an Etruscan loan in Latin.

And Kluge (Etymologisches Wörterbuch) also agreed that both Germanic "Volk" and Greek "plethos" essentially are derived from meanings "full, to fill" - so that the semantic formation ("a people = all humans of a society = the FULL amount of human beings) is similar, but that this is only a guess and that no connection has been proven.
Duden (Herkunftswörterbuch) also makes that connection but also notes that this is not proven but a guess.

If it were the case that "Volk/folk/..." essentially were derived from the IE root *ple- then it would be related to Latin "plebs" (and several other words in several IE languages), but still not to "people" as the etymology of the latter also is still unclear.

I hope this answers the question; if it doesn't I'm sorry but I do not have more background on this specific topic.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> As the unvoiced counterpart to [v] is [f]...


As mentioned before, Latin "vulgar" does not start with a [v] but with a [w] which is not a counterpart of [f] in any sense of the word.


sokol said:


> If it were the case that "Volk/folk/..."  essentially were derived from the IE root *ple- then it would be related  to Latin "plebs" (and several other words in several IE languages), but  still not to "people" as the etymology of the latter also is still  unclear.


Here you find it related to "follow". This corresponds to what I learned. The old Germanic word for "people" is "þeuda" as in "þeudisc", the OE word for OE, i.e. "the language of the people" which is also the origin of "Deutsch" (German) and "Dutch". "Folk" or German "Volk" is then derived from a word with a military meaning having nothing to do with "people" in an ethnic sense or in the sense of "common people". If what I learned is correct, "folk" was a group of warriors in an expedition, i.e. "those who followed the army". The word would then have acquired the meaning of "people" only during or after the migration period where new tribes were formed based on groups of warriors and their families who joint in a campaign.


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## koniecswiata

I've also read what berndf says, that "folk" comes from a more military base--a group of warriors on an expedition.  This would seem to go in line with the Slavic meaning:  pulk (a military grouping), pulkownik (coronel).  Also, the f used in German would probably come from IE p.  This tends to happen, IE p remains p in Slavic, and becomes f in Germanic.  Furthermore, the conection between Germanic f and Latin "w" (original pronunciation of "v" in vulgus) is not backed by systematic sound correspondence data.


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## Alxmrphi

berndf said:
			
		

> As mentioned before, Latin "vulgar" does not start with a [v] but with a [w] which is not a counterpart of [f] in any sense of the word.


 
All right all right  
To someone who doesn't know anything about Latin, but assumed since Italian has [v] it might have been the same as Latin, the assumption is forgivable.

I found Latin Pronunciation Demystified which explains a lot...



> Its biggest peculiarities are that v is pronounced like English w, and* ae* like English *ai* in aisle.


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## berndf

Alxmrphi said:


> All right all right
> To someone who doesn't know anything about Latin, but assumed since Italian has [v] it might have been the same as Latin, *the assumption is forgivable*.


Absolutely.


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## djmc

*Lewis and Short* Latin Dictionary links the Latin populus with the root PLE i.e. fill. It would be related to plebs. While this authority is no longer of the most recent it was written by Classical scholars and I see no reason to disbelieve them.


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## Lars H

berndf said:


> The old Germanic word for "people" is "þeuda" as in "þeudisc", the OE word for OE, i.e. "the language of the people" which is also the origin of "Deutsch" (German) and "Dutch". "Folk" or German "Volk" is then derived from a word with a military meaning having nothing to do with "people" in an ethnic sense or in the sense of "common people". If what I learned is correct, "folk" was a group of warriors in an expedition, i.e. "those who followed the army". The word would then have acquired the meaning of "people" only during or after the migration period where new tribes were formed based on groups of warriors and their families who joint in a campaign.



Somewhere I have read that in spite of a great number of tribes/political entities in ancient Germania, there was only one "þeuda", the word used to point out that the different tribes were all Germanic, not Latin. If this is correct, there would still be need for a name for the different tribes, Alemannen, Saxen, et cetera. My guess is that in a violent and tribal world, the perceived difference between the people of a tribe and its warriors would be rather small. 

In Scandinavian history I know only of two examples of "þeuda". In "Svíþjóð" name of the dominating tribe in todays Sweden (and the current Icelandic name of the country), and in "Stora (Great) Svíþjóð", a loosely defined larger area in todays Russia. Larger political entities, that is.

So, making myself guilty to a severe case of oversimplification, could "þeuda" possibly mean a greater entity "a people" (or even a group of peoples with the same or similar language) and "folk" be just "people" or "the people (all individuals or warriors) of a tribe/smaller political entity"?


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## berndf

Lars H said:


> Somewhere I have read that in spite of a great number of tribes/political entities in ancient Germania, there was only one "þeuda", the word used to point out that the different tribes were all Germanic, not Latin. If this is correct, there would still be need for a name for the different tribes, Alemannen, Saxen, et cetera. My guess is that in a violent and tribal world, the perceived difference between the people of a tribe and its warriors would be rather small.


Most historians now believe that the Germanic "Völker" who emerged during the migration period weren't tribes in an ethnic sense but were groups of warriors and their families from different villages/tribes who came together to form an army to find new land to settle, a bit like the "treks" to colonize the West in the US. That's why it is believed that "folk"/"Volk" originally meant a military group or a trek and only later acquired the meaning of an ethic entity.


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