Macaronic forms of French

Macaronic language uses a mixture of languages, particularly bilingual puns or situations in which the languages are otherwise used in the same context (rather than simply discrete segments of a text being in different languages). Hybrid words are effectively "internally macaronic." In spoken language, code-switching is using more than one language or dialect within the same conversation.

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 New Latin ''macaronicus'' which is from the Italian ''maccarone'' ("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 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 uinedvs 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 pecatoris' 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.

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".The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford University Press (1996)

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:

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 (, literally "speckled", plural ''molamma‘āt'' ), 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 the famous poet Amir Khusro and played a major role in the rise of the Urdu

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