All this evidence means Latin appeared in writing shortly after Rome was founded. Written Latin is at least two and a half thousand years old, and possibly even older.
How did the Romans develop writing so quickly? Well, they had a little help. They did not develop their own original alphabet. Instead, they borrowed the Etruscan alphabet and tweaked it slightly. They spoke their own language. It did not belong to the Indo-European language family like the Italic languages. In fact, Etruscan is not related to any other known language, dead or alive! The Romans were mostly farmers, so they had much to gain from the more advanced Etruscans.
From an early point, the two peoples developed a close relationship and traded a great deal. Not only did the Romans borrow the alphabet from the Etruscans, but they also acquired a few new vocabulary words, like persona person and fenestra window. These vocabulary words indicate other things the Romans gained from their relationship with the Etruscans — like new technology!
From the Etruscans, the Romans learned how to build houses with fenestrae — windows. The Etruscan word persona originally meant a theatrical mask. This suggests that the Etruscans also introduced the Romans to theater, which would become a major part of Roman culture. Today, this alphabet is known as the Roman alphabet, even though the Romans did not invent it. However, because of the influence of Latin, this alphabet has been inherited by all western European languages — including English.
The Romans of Latium adopted the Etruscan alphabet as well as their technology and culture. What happened? After murdering his brother, Romulus became the first Rex , or King, of Rome. He would be succeeded by six kings before a revolution ended the monarchy. While still a monarchy, Rome depended a great deal on its powerful neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. While Rome was a monarchy, it had been conquering its neighbors and slowly expanding until its walls were rebuilt to enclose the Seven Hills of Rome.
Rome was becoming more powerful. He was overthrown and with him, the monarchy fell. Rome transitioned from a Kingdom, under a Rex , to a Republic. The word Republic comes from two Latin words: Res thing, affair and Publica the people. Beneath the Consuls, a few hundred other men formed a Senate. According to legend, the Republic was founded in BC.
When Rome became a Republic, her expansion into an empire really took off. Since the 5th century, Rome fought war after war with her neighbors. As her borders absorbed the neighboring states, the Roman tongue gradually became the standard language across the region. By BC, the Romans were the undisputed masters of the entire Italian peninsula. This meant that the Roman language was now coming into its own as a real, respectable language. It was now the language of the entire region of Latium.
In fact, nobody called it the Roman language anymore. Now it was the Latium language — that is, Latin. Most of these languages no longer exist. How did they disappear, and how did their speakers learn Latin? There were no Latin grammar books or dictionaries at this time. Not even Romans taught Latin in their schools. In fact, the Romans did not seem to be much interested in writing at all in these early centuries.
The first individuals who could be called writers do not appear until the 3rd century BC, and what we have of these are mostly fragments. He died in BC. From it, you can learn how to build an olive press or how to bake a honey cake. Cato gives us a small glimpse into what ancient Romans valued. In addition to farming, the other most important job in ancient Rome was soldiering. In fact, the biggest reason the Roman language spread throughout Latium was Romans were very good at both of these.
After Rome conquered a new territory, parcels of land would be awarded to Latin-speaking soldiers who had completed their military service. The soldiers would trade in their weapons for farm tools and move in with their entire families to cultivate the land and build homes. These islands maintained contact with the Roman capital while trading and socializing with their non-Roman neighbors. Because Latin was the language of power and trade, conquered peoples learned to pick it up quickly.
After a few generations, Latin gradually became the vernacular language of the peoples the Romans had subjugated. A soldier, miles in Latin, could become a colonus , or grower. A group of such coloni formed a colonia , which is a number of Romans living together in a conquered country.
Roman expansion spelled the death of many languages. The works of Sallust, Caesar, Cicero and others reflect a pristine form of Latin with careful attention to detail and grammatical structure. The writing style characterized by Plautus and Terence reflects a more base form of Latin.
This is beneficial to modern students of Latin because it may more fully represent the spoken language of the time. Law and religion tend to have a more elevated writing style which is distinguishable from colloquial speech Palmer Thus, a high level of formality and archaic language may arise due to the nature of the writing, although this may also be interspersed with some colloquial usages.
Characteristic of the Golden age are the Ciceronian-like oratories and the Vergilian-like epics in written records Palmer This is believed by many to have been the height of the Latin language. As Latin became used over larger and larger areas, regional differences in pronunciation and usage became more common. The increase in rustic and common usage of Latin contributed to its change. Interestingly, the written text of Latin appears to have been understood and used with various of the Romance Languages, though pronunciation differed greatly enough to suggest new languages emerging:.
If we take mutual intelligibility of verbal messages to be a basic criterion of language identity, then the decisive linguistic gap between the language of a Latin text and the spoken usage of the population manifested itself some time between and the middle of the 8th century, or soon thereafter.
Herman To bring hope and comfort, to banish evil and dispel darkness, the missionaries used the homely speech of everyday life. Palmer Thus, even from the beginning the Christian Latin diverged from the more pristine forms of Classical Latin and contributed to the spread of Vulgar Latin, ultimately leading to distinct languages.
The clergy periodically attmepted to make the Christian Latin more uniform in pronunciation and usage which required training the clergy clear up through medieval times. Ultimately, even this was not enough to prevent the linguistic diversity from separating the Latin from the vulgar languages that emerged. During the Carolingian Renaissance, Charlemagne, an illiterate king from France, but with great influence, sought to revive Latin in its Classical form with special attention given to the pronunciation of Latin Radice He was fluent in spoken Latin and understood some Greek, and enjoyed the Classical forms of art, architecture, and language.
He had a school set up by an Englishman, Alcuin of York, in which to teach and promote the rebirth of Latin Yet despite the reforms he initiated to revive these things, it was short lived. Latin continued mainly as a vehicle for religion and religious reforms, law, and medicine. Concerning the retention of sounds and pronunciation, Wright argues that the forms used in law are pronounced in the Latin vernacular.
This could be very significant due to its repetition and its use even today. This could be one of the few forms in which original Latin pronunciation is maintained.
Most linguistic historians concur that Latin ceased being spoken as a native tongue in the 8th-c. AD Herman It is summarized well that:. Thus, Latin gave way to its daughter languages and was relegated to being the language of science, law, and learning for the next few centuries. According to Pei Latin was displaced gradually in spoken form between It happened that the peoples who created the Roman Empire spoke Latin. This Italic variant moved around much more than the typical language did or even does today.
This is a transcript from the video series The Story of Human Language. Watch it now, Wondrium. The Roman Empire was relatively unique in that as the Romans spread and conquered beyond their original boundaries, they imposed their language on other people—a relatively new concept at the time.
An empire could prosper without subjects speaking the language. That has often been the case throughout human history. Compared to the Romans, the Persian Empire, now Iran, used to be a major geopolitical player in the world. It extended westward all the way to the shores of Greece and a considerable degree eastward of present-day Iran. If subjects were brought to Persia, then they probably learned Persian. But as far as other parts of their territories, Persian was used only for very official purposes.
As rulers, the Persians accommodated the languages of their subjects. Learn more about how changes proceeded differently in each area where the Romans brought Latin. The Romans, however, were interested in spreading Roman culture and Latin. As Latin spread to various Western and Eastern European locations, it was imposed upon those who spoke other languages. Suddenly Latin was all over this vast region. New versions of Latin were developing in different directions across the empire.
Once that process was started, the Latin varieties evolved so differently from each other they became new languages. Great evidence reveals their relation; if you learn one, learning one of the others is fairly easy.
Learn more about how the meaning of a word changes over time. The word for grass in Latin was herba. That same word exists in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian, but over the centuries a sound change has created a different rendition of the word in each language.
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