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Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were regionally important. Latin was the original language of the Romans and remained the language of imperial administration, legislation, and the military throughout the classical period. [ 2 ]
The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. The Romance languages have more than 700 million native speakers worldwide, mainly in the Americas , Europe , and Africa , as well as in many smaller regions scattered through the world.
The ancient pronunciation of Latin has been reconstructed; among the data used for reconstruction are explicit statements about pronunciation by ancient authors, misspellings, puns, ancient etymologies, the spelling of Latin loanwords in other languages, and the historical development of Romance 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.
Fragmentary military diploma from Carnuntum; Latin was the language of the military throughout the Empire. The native language of the Romans was Latin, an Italic language of the Indo-European family. Several forms of Latin existed, and the language evolved considerably over time, eventually becoming the Romance languages spoken today.
Old Latin, also known as Early, Archaic or Priscan Latin (Classical Latin: prīsca Latīnitās, lit. 'ancient Latinity'), was the Latin language in the period roughly before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. [1]
Along with Latin and a few extinct languages of ancient Italy, the Romance languages make up the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. [11] Identifying subdivisions of the Romance languages is inherently problematic, because most of the linguistic area is a dialect continuum, and in some cases political biases can come into play. A tree ...
Thus Old Latin, Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, etc., are not considered different languages, but are all referred to by the term, Latin. This is an ancient practice continued by moderns rather than a philological innovation of recent times. That Latin had case endings is a fundamental feature of the language.