Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as being of lower social status in contrast to standard language, which is more codified, institutional, literary, or formal. More narrowly, a particular variety of a language that meets the lower-status perception, and sometimes even carries social stigma, is also called a vernacular, vernacular dialect, nonstandard dialect, etc. and is typically its speakers' native variety. Despite any such stigma, modern linguistics regards all nonstandard dialects as grammatically full-fledged varieties of a language.
The oldest known vernacular manuscript in Scanian (Danish, c. 1250). It deals with Scanian and Scanian Ecclesiastical Law.
An allegory of rhetoric and arithmetic, Trinci Palace, Foligno, Italy, by Gentile da Fabriano, who lived in the era of Italian language standardization
Allegory of Dante Alighieri, champion of the use of vernacular Italian for literature rather than the lingua franca, Latin. Fresco by Luca Signorelli in the cappella di San Brizio dome, Orvieto
Literary language is the form (register) of a language used when writing in a formal, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. It may be the standardized variety of a language. It can sometimes differ noticeably from the various spoken lects, but the difference between literary and non-literary forms is greater in some languages than in others. If there is a strong divergence between a written form and the spoken vernacular, the language is said to exhibit diglossia.
Samuel Crowther's Yorùbá grammar led to Standard Yoruba becoming a literary language.
