Philip Newton's conlang blog

I think I could also do with a dictionary of Vulgar Latin… occasionally, I come across etymologies of French, Romansh, or other Modern Romance words, but they typically go to Vulgar Latin.

The dictionary I have is of classical Latin, and I think it’s a bit too “pure” for these purposes.

For example, apparently Romansh “pledar” (to speak) comes from PLACITARE, but my dictionary has no entry for that so I’m unsure what it was supposed to mean in Latin.

Or how French “commencer” is said to come from COMINITIARE — also not present.

At least AFFLARE was there (the root for the Sursilvan word for “to find”).

When I visted the public library in Chur, I saw in the small Romansh-and-Italian section a dictionary listing Surselvan words alphabetically from the end.

That could be used as a simple rhyming dictionary, but IIRC one of the motivations for compiling the book was to enable some study of the derivational and inflectional morphology of the language.

That might come in handy for my Engadinese project, if I could only remember what the book was called.