vernacular

来自拉丁语verna,家仆，尤指出生在主人家的仆人后代，引申词义本土的，地方的，后用于指地方性语言，即方言。比较family.

vernacular (adj.)

c. 1600, "native to a country," from Latin vernaculus "domestic, native, indigenous; pertaining to home-born slaves," from verna "home-born slave, native," a word of Etruscan origin. Used in English in the sense of Latin vernacula vocabula, in reference to language. As a noun, "native speech or language of a place," from 1706.

For human speech is after all a democratic product, the creation, not of scholars and grammarians, but of unschooled and unlettered people. Scholars and men of education may cultivate and enrich it, and make it flower into the beauty of a literary language; but its rarest blooms are grafted on a wild stock, and its roots are deep-buried in the common soil. [Logan Pearsall Smith, "Words and Idioms," 1925]

1. There are many strange words in the vernacular of the lawyers.

律师的术语中颇有些怪字.

2. Most of these new sermons were recorded in literary Sanskrit rather than in vernacular language.

这些新的布道稿本大部分是用书面梵语而不是方言记载的。

3. To use the vernacular of the period, Peter was square.

用那时的土话讲，彼得是个老古板。

4. Paraphrase the ancient Chinese prose in vernacular language.

把这篇古文译成白话文。

5. He speaks an incomprehensible vernacular.

他说的是一种无法听得懂的方言.