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There was never an official language of the empire, however, Latin and Greek were the main languages. [16] During the early years of the Roman Empire, educated nobles often relied on their knowledge of Greek to meet societal expectations, and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. [17]
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages.It was also the administrative language in the former Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidia and Africa Proconsularis under the Vandals, the Byzantines and the Romano-Berber Kingdoms, until it declined after the Arab Conquest.
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.
During and after the adoption of Christianity into Roman society, Christian vocabulary became a part of the language, either from Greek or Hebrew borrowings or as Latin neologisms. [84] Into the Middle Ages, Latin incorporated many more words from surrounding languages, including Old English and other Germanic languages.
Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges. [3] The Roman Empire would go on to dominate the Mediterranean region for the next several centuries, spreading the Latin language and Roman culture. The Latin-speaking Western Roman Empire ended in AD 476, while the Greek-speaking eastern half survived on until 1453.
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.
The term Romance derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, "in Roman", derived from romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, "to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of the language used in writing and formal contexts ...
Education in the Middle Ages relied heavily on Greco-Roman books such as Euclid's Elements and the influential quadrivium textbooks written in Latin by the Roman statesman Boethius (AD 480–524). Major works of Greek and Latin literature, moreover, were both read and written by Christians during the imperial era.