Vernacular refers to the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to lingua francas, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language. For instance, in Western Europe up until the 17th century, most scholarly work had been written in Latin, so works written in a native language were said to be in the vernacular. Also, In the history of European literature, there can be said to have been various periods of “vernacularization” when, for example, those languages now referred to as Romance languages started to produce literatures of their own. The Divine Comedy, the Cantar de mio Cid, and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in those languages that would one day be called Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia (1305), which he wrote before the Divine Comedy, was an important justification of the need to start writing literature in the vernacular, the language of the people. (See Vernacular literature)
The vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language (in linguistics, the relationship between these "High" and "Low" languages or varieties of a language is referred to as diglossia). For example, until the 1960s, Latin Rite Roman Catholics held Masses in Latin rather than in local vernacular language, to this day the Coptic Church holds liturgies in Coptic; though parts of Mass are read in Amharic, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds liturgies in Ge'ez, etc. The Reformation was spread by the publication of Bibles and other religious writings in the vernacular, and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular liturgies in Roman Catholicism.
Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit (long after its use as a spoken language) or in Tamil in the Tamil land (since Sangam era). With the rise of the bhakti movement from the 1100s onwards, religious works started being created in other languages Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and many other Indian languages throughout the different regions of India. For example, the Ramayana, one of Hinduism's sacred epics in Sanskrit had vernacular versions such as Ranganadha Ramayanam in telugu by Gona Buddha Reddy in telugu in 15th century, Ramacharitamanasa a Hindi version of the Ramayana by the 16th century poet Tulsidas.
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