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Latin was the language of the Romans from the earliest known period. Writing under the first Roman emperor Augustus, Virgil emphasizes that Latin was a source of Roman unity and tradition.
Nov 11, 2017 · The Romans of the western half of the empire never stopped speaking Latin, but Latin diverged, eventually becoming the Romance languages of today. So what language did the Romans speak? Some of them spoke Latin. Some spoke Greek, Punic or Oscan. Some spoke two or more languages. Some learned Latin at school, or in their free time.
Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed. How and when Latin came to be spoken has long been debated.
Nov 13, 2015 · Yet there is another question, less frequently discussed but certainly no less important: how did Latin become the language of the Roman Empire in the first place? After all, it was hardly the only language in the Apennine peninsula (modern Italy) when Rome was rising to power.
Oct 22, 2024 · Latin language, Indo-European language in the Italic group and ancestral to the modern Romance languages. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes.
Sep 11, 2023 · The ancient Romans predominantly spoke different dialects of Latin, but they also spoke a number of other languages over the centuries. Over the course of its long and varied history, the Roman Empire was a richly complex society composed of many different people of varying nationalities.
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Feb 26, 2023 · Latin was once the language of the great Roman Empire. However, it began to die out in the 6th century, shortly after the fall of Rome in 476 AD. The fall of Rome precipitated the fragmentation of the empire, which allowed distinct local Latin dialects to develop.