The ancient Roman Empire went down in human history as one of the greatest civilizations in the world, which gave people so much: from the basics of law to sewerage. The locals used Latin as their main language, a language that is now considered dead, used only by doctors, priests and historians (yes, unfortunate philologists study). The center of the Roman Empire was located in the lands of modern Italy, and many people have a question: how did the Italian language come into being, if the ancestors of the Italians always spoke Latin?
History of Latin in Rome
More than 3,000 years ago, on the banks of the Tiber River, which is located in the center of the Apennine Peninsula, there lived speakers of Latin - or Latin. The people who lived here were called Latins, and the region itself was called Latium. 200 years later, the tribes of Latium decided to unite into one nation and form their own country – this is how Rome appeared. Latium became the main region of the country, and the Latins themselves strengthened on the peninsula and began to develop the state. Some time later, the inhabitants of the Roman state began to call themselves Romans, and continued to communicate in Latin.
The hegemony of the Roman Empire in Europe was phenomenal, and the country annexed vast territories. Due to the fact that the Romans came into contact with other peoples, Latin was enriched with new words, local dialects appeared - their inhabitants of the empire called vulgar, or folk Latin. There were so many dialects that they were spoken by most of the people of the empire, even in its central part, in the territory of Latium. In the lands of present-day Italy, classical Latin almost lost popularity, and the main dialects of the language were Neapolitan, Sicilian, Calabrian and Lombard.
In 476, the Western Roman Empire fell, which led to the formation of many states on its territory. As languages, the locals of the new states began to use their own "vulgar" dialects, and classical Latin almost ceased to sound on the streets, the language was used only in writing official documents or among Catholics in the church. Experts believe that it was the dialect of Latin that became the parent of all the languages that make up the Romance group: it includes Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian and other languages of modern Europe. Italian, surprisingly, is the youngest in its group. Historians attribute this to the collapse of the Roman Empire – the peoples of the peninsula were separated and lost the need to communicate in one language. The political commonality in the region disappeared, and the common speech did not appear for a long time. The dialects of disparate peoples were almost identical, because they came from Latin, so people from different countries and tribes understood each other almost without difficulty.
The modern Italian language appeared only in the XIV century. It is believed that Italian speech originated from the Tuscan dialect, which was used by Alighieri, Petrarch and Boccaccio in their works. Dante Alighieri believed that with the help of Tuscany it is possible to write a work on any topic, touching on both religious and artistic themes. Over time, the Tuscan dialect became increasingly popular in the country, and by the XVII-XVIII centuries it began to be used everywhere. The dialect was now used both in philosophy and in ordinary life, and other dialects began to fade into the background.
The official language became in 1870, when Rome united with the Kingdom of Italy. Despite the fact that the language has become the state language, on the territory of Italy there are still old dialects, which are spoken by hundreds of people and which have many differences from the classical speech of the Italians.
