Macaronic language

Macaronic Latin in particular is a jumbled jargon made up of vernacular words given Latin endings or of Latin words mixed with the vernacular in a pastiche (compare dog Latin).

The word macaronic comes from the Neo-Latin macaronicus, which is from the Italian maccarone, or 'dumpling', regarded as coarse peasant fare. It is generally derogatory and used when the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical intent or effect but is sometimes applied to more serious mixed-language literature.

History

Mixed Latin-vernacular lyrics in medieval Europe

Texts that mixed Latin and vernacular language apparently arose throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics and university students, but was losing ground to the vernacular among poets, minstrels and storytellers.

An early example is from 1130, in the Gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey. The following sentence mixes late Old Dutch and Latin:

Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona
et omnium virtutum pleniter plena

Translated: This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues.

The Carmina Burana (collected c.1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German or French. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol In Dulci Jubilo, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many use the language mix for lyrical effect.

Another early example is in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (c.1460). In The Talents (play 24), Pontius Pilate delivers a rhyming speech in mixed English and Latin.

A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines, such as in MS Digby 196:

The taxe hath tened [ruined] vs alle,
Probat hoc mors tot validorum
The Kyng þerof had small
fuit in manibus cupidorum.
yt had ful hard hansell,
dans causam fine dolorum;
vengeaunce nedes most fall,
propter peccata malorum
(etc)

Several anthems also contain both Latin and English. In the case of 'Nolo mortem peccatoris' by Thomas Morley, the Latin is used as a refrain:

Nolo mortem peccatoris; Haec sunt verba Salvatoris.
Father I am thine only Son, sent down from heav’n mankind to save.
Father, all things fulfilled and done according to thy will, I have.
Father, my will now all is this: Nolo mortem peccatoris.
Father, behold my painful smart, taken for man on ev’ry side;
Ev'n from my birth to death most tart, no kind of pain I have denied,
but suffered all, and all for this: Nolo mortem peccatoris.

Translated: "'I do not wish the death of the wicked'; These are the words of the Saviour." An allusion to John 3:17 and 2 Peter 3:9.

The Scottish Chaucerian William Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris uses as a refrain for every four-line stanza the phrase from the Office of the Dead "Timor mortis conturbat me" ["The fear of death disturbs me"].

Latin–Italian macaronic verse

The term macaronic is believed to have originated in Padua in the late 15th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta or dumpling eaten by peasants at that time. (That is also the presumed origin of maccheroni.) Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi in mixed Latin and Italian, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.

Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by the vulgar folk without resorting to their speech.

An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna (1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book.

Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous texts in macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian, but also in many other European languages. An important Italian example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter".

Other mixed-language lyrics

Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism or language contact, such as Ireland before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs such as Siúil A Rúin are quite common in Ireland. In Scotland, macaronic songs have been popular among Highland immigrants to Glasgow, using English and Scottish Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. An example:

When I came down to Glasgow first,
a-mach air Tìr nan Gall.
I was like a man adrift,
air iomrall 's dol air chall.
[...]

translation:
When I came down to Glasgow first,
down to the Lowlands (lit. "out to the land of foreigners").
I was like a man adrift,
astray and lost.

Folk and popular music of the Andes frequently alternates between Spanish and the given South American language of its region of origin.

Some Classical Persian poems were written with alternating Persian and Arabic verses or hemistichs, most famously by Saadi and Hafez. Such poems were called molamma' (ملمع, literally "speckled", plural molamma‘āt ملمعات), Residing in Anatolia, in some of his poems Rumi mixed Persian with Arabic as well as the local languages of Turkish and Greek.

Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India, where the influence of the Muslim rulers led to poems being written in alternating indigenous Hindi and the Persian language. This style was used by poet Amir Khusro and played a major role in the rise of the Urdu or Hindustani language.