The inscription reads:
“Not that secrita abboce”
We can translate it as “Don’t tell the secret out loud”.
The secret is actually prayer The secret of mass: the author may be Priest According to the custom introduced during the period of Charlemagne in the eighth century, he invited his colleagues to recite the Mass canon in a low voice, which can help us to set the inscription as a period after the eighth century, because things were not completed before that.
Even in the inscriptions in the Commodilla Catacombs, it’s hard to say with certainty that there are awareness The author said he wrote in one language vulgar, Similar to vulgar; anyway, it is interesting to observe the typical characteristics of speech. Let us analyze them.
In this inscription, we noticed the use of “Ille” (Ille secrita, secret), which means not “those secrets” (meaning secrets in Latin), but “secrets”. In fact, the Latin demonstrative pronoun “ille” (“that” in Italian) has changed, and its function has been reduced to a simple article.We obtained articles in Romance language from “ille”: Italian “il”, Spanish “el”, French “le” and quickly.
Also interesting is “ABBOCE”, which means “loudly”. Here, this represents a phenomenon that still exists today, called phoneme doubling. Don’t let this word scare you, it’s not difficult, I assure you.In the central and southern Italian dialects, including Florence, and then also in standard Italian, when we have some Structure For example, a preposition + another word (such as “by voice” in this example). The first consonant of the second word (in our example, the “v” of “voice”) is pronounced as double sound (or geminata, The linguist will say). For this reason, even in modern standard Italian, we say “avvoce” instead of “a voce” (v is not doubled when pronounced).
This phonetic phenomenon can be recognized in many Italian words Mirroring It is from the spelling, from the way it is written: think about “really” (from + true), “not at all” (to + complete), “but” (and + pure) and so on. This pronunciation is typical, as I said (“èttipica” as “hoddetto”), is the typical pronunciation of many south-central dialects and Tuscan dialects (or vulgar). As you know, Italian originates from In these dialects. If you go to the north, you should usually not hear much (based on the geographic origin of the person you are talking to and other factors), but since I use the “standard” pronunciation to record this podcast, I only say “advvoce” instead of ” oral”.
Well, this doubling of phonology is visible in “abboce”. But why does this phenomenon exist? Well, because it is not “a” but “ad” in Latin, it should be similar to “ad vocem”.Losing “d” is still a space filled Starting from the pause, if you think about it, it is a double syllable, and it makes the first “syllable” (if we treat “ad vocem” as a word, a compound word) as long as the original. “Advertising”/”Priest”. The duration is the same. The same phenomenon occurs with other words, such as “who” (“chissei”), “ho” (“hoddetto”), “è” (happens), etc.
Interestingly, if you look at the graffiti image, the second “b” was added later because it is smaller and String together Between the first “b” and the later “o”. Why did the author do this? Probably because he thinks (listen, “happensato”) spelling “abboce” better reflects the actual pronunciation.
Ah, about using “b” instead of “v”, “This is an example of “betacism”. This phenomenon leads to confusion between “v” and “b”. It is common in various Romance languages. Among other things, we It can also be observed in Spanish that even “b” and “v” have been completely merged into a single phoneme represented by two different letters. In Italian, verbs are regarded as “duties”, and their form is similar to ” I have “and v” and “we must” and b.
