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Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering vernacular usage or dialects of the Latin language spoken from earliest times in Italy until the latest dialects of the Western Roman Empire, diverging significantly after 500 AD, evolved into the early Romance languages, whose writings began to appear about the 9th century.
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin [1] or Neo-Latin [2] languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin. [3] They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are:
The spoken Latin that would later become Romanian diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. Spoken Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear.
The so-called Latin War ended in 338 with a decisive Roman victory, following which Rome annexed most of Latium Vetus. A few of the larger Latin states, such as Praeneste and Tibur, were allowed to retain a degree of political autonomy, but only in a subordinate status as Roman socii ("allies"), tied to Rome by treaties of military alliance.
Latin was the official language of the Roman army until the mid-6th century, and remained the most common language for military use even in the Eastern empire until the 630s. [32] By contrast, only two bishops are known to have spoken Latin at the ecumenical councils held during the reign of Theodosius II (d. 450 AD). [33]
The term Latin Europe is sometimes used in reference to European nations and regions inhabited by Romance-speaking people. [15] [16] [17] Latin America is the region of the Americas that was colonized by Latin Europeans, and came to be called so in the 19th century. [18]
The Latin script originated in archaic antiquity in the Latium region in central Italy.It is generally held that the Latins, one of many ancient Italic tribes, adopted the western variant of the Greek alphabet in the 7th century BCE [1] from Cumae, a Greek colony in southern Italy – making the early Latin alphabet one among several Old Italic scripts emerging at the time.
It was spoken by a few people in Pesqueira in 1968. Loukotka (1968) 1968: Welsh-Romani: Romani: Wales, United Kingdom: with the death of Manfri Wood [160] before 1968: Sened: Afroasiatic: Tunisia: after 1965: Barngarla: Pama-Nyungan: southern Australia: with the death of Moonie Davis [161] 24 July 1965: Barbareño: Chumashan: California, United ...