Italian Languages: Modern Italian
The modern Italian language developed from the various regional forms of Latin that evolved after the fall of the Roman Empire. As the Roman Empire expanded, people throughout the Italian Peninsula spoke Vulgar Latin, the everyday language of soldiers, merchants, and ordinary citizens. Over the centuries, this spoken Latin changed from region to region, giving […]
Italian Languages: The Roman Empire
During the rise and peak of the Roman Empire, the Italian Peninsula was a vibrant linguistic mosaic, far from the monolithic Latin-speaking territory often imagined today. Before Rome’s hegemony, Italy was home to a dense patchwork of distinct language families. In the central and southern regions, Italic languages closely related to Latin—most notably Oscan and […]