Extremely interesting.
Readers of this blog will be aware of my fascination with all things linguistic. So, I just had to share Susanna Viljanen’s and Dan Toler’s answers on Quora on what happened to Latin once Rome was no more.
It may surprise many to realize that Latin is alive and well over fifteen centuries later. Latin never disappeared. It simply evolved. But it evolved differently in different places, and that’s how we ended up with the diverse set of modern Romance languages.
What Happened to Latin After the Fall of Rome (476 AD)?
After the Western Empire’s collapse, Latin continued to exist just as ever. People from Lusitania to Dacia continued to speak Vulgar Latin as their everyday language and to write Classical Latin in their letters.
But languages are living things. While many modern people think of Latin as a single, standard language, that wasn’t the case. Ecclesiastical…
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Thanks for the share, Marina! You’re already familiar with several of the languages mentioned here, right?
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Yes, I speak Romanian, Spanish and French. Based on this, I understand about 60% Portuguese, Italian and Catalan, enough to get by (or to read something, even better). We learn in school Latin in 8th grade, just the basics because they are our ancestors. Only those who are in high school classes focused on languages and history learn Latin further in high school.
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Quite the polyglot, then! Impressive!
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