The development of Latin language and Romance languages

The development of Latin language and Romance languages.

Originally Latin was spoken by a small group of people who settled in Latium (west Italy) around the 1st millennium BC. Afterwards it became the spoken language of ancient Roman people. With the rise of the Roman political power the Latin language became popular. The languages that developed from Latin were called the Romance languages and were spoken in those countries that were once a part of the Roman Empire. The main Romance languages are: Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. ‘To speak in a Roman way’ in Latin is, fabulare romanice. That’s how it got the name Romance. There were two forms of Latin: classical and the locally spoken vernacular. The first one was popular among educated people and the second one was the spoken language of the common people. The Romance languages were developed from the dialects of the vernacular Latin (called Vulgar Latin) over a period of several centuries, and around 1200 AD most of the western Europeans were speaking Latin or Romance language (especially Italian, French and Spanish). All of the Romance languages had their own dialect as spoken in different parts of the country and had their own history of development as to how their style of writing, grammar, phonology and vocabulary changed and developed in 1,000 years and how they received their modern shape.