Why Did Latin Die

Why Did Latin Die
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Ken Black

Last Modified Date: October 03, 2022

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Calling Latin dead language is a matter of semantics . There are those who would suggest Latin is not dead, that it lives on in everyday language used by billions of people across the globe. Others argue that because there are routine updates to Latin published by the Roman Catholic Church, it is still alive and developing.
However, Latin is no longer used, on a daily basis, by the vast majority of people outside of specific religious settings, where tradition dictates its use. It is no longer anyone's native language. While its use is still taught, Latin is no longer considered to be a developing language to the degree of most modern languages.
The reasons for Latin dying out are numerous. Perhaps the most significant one has to do with the decline of the Roman Empire. During the Roman time period, language was standardized to a greater extent. Just as learning English is vital to those living in the United States today, to really succeed during the Roman times, one needed to learn Latin.
Because Rome was the most powerful political entity in the western world at the time, most of those who had any ambition to thrive within its vast system had a desire to learn Latin. As a result, the language spread rapidly. However, that rapid expansion would eventually begin to plateau and finally decline.
Latin continued to be used during the Medieval time period. Throughout Europe, it remained the language of choice. However, with nothing to unite the continent, there was no need for a uniform language. So slowly, over a period of hundreds of years, Latin began to change as different regions developed their own dialects and idiosyncrasies.
Eventually, these dialects would become unique enough to be named their own languages. Today, we know them as the Romance languages. The most commonly spoken and recognizable of these related languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. Romansh, a little- spoken language used in a very small part of Switzerland, may be the modern language that most closely resembles classical Latin.
Though not directly related to the Romance languages, Latin still has had an effect on many other languages. English, for example, which is not one of the Romance languages but a Germanic one, can trace nearly two-thirds of its words back to Latin roots. In addition to the Roman Catholic Church, Latin is also used in the science and mathematic communities extensively.
Romance languages are the evolutionary forms of Latin, whether the formal Latin of Cicero or the so-called Vulgar Latin (meaning common spoken form). The article is totally wrong to state that Romance languages are not directly related to Latin - they are the successors. Latin was always evolving. The verb conjugational system was still intact as late as 500 AD but the vocabulary and pronunciation had changed more like today's Italian and Spanish. By 700 AD people had to learn it as a second language. Latin was dead as a spoken mother-tongue. Instead there is proto-Romance the mother of all the modern Latin-derived languages. See Vulgar Latin by Joszef Herman.
I have a one-word answer to the question: illiteracy.
Who still uses it? The Catholic church. Why? Because they kept reading and writing. Latin didn't evolve for them because it was written in ink for their referral.
The Middle Ages are called dark because literacy mostly vanished, with only the church to keep it alive. The Dark Ages came, and by the time they left, Latin had evolved into something else.
When I visited European monasteries, the monks showed visitors beautiful paintings of biblical scenes which were used to teach the Bible without having to read. So even though people attended church and learned the Bible, they could do so without being literate.
In fact, they became quite skilled at teaching using that and other methods. It's a shame they didn't put all that ingenuity into keeping literacy alive, but when survival becomes a struggle the luxuries fall away. And I imagine reading must have seemed an unnecessary waste of time under those conditions.
I studied Latin for four years in high school, and now I can roughly translate at least five other languages because of it. Italian is about the closest modern language to original Latin, followed closely by Portuguese. Latin may be dead in the sense of how many people are walking around speaking and writing it daily, but it is not dead in the sense of understanding how all language works. I probably knew more about Latin grammar rules than English back when I was in Latin IV class.
"Does anyone else notice that the article does not actually tell about the decline of the usage of Latin language but tells about the emergence of Romance languages?"
That's because there never was any decline in the usage of Latin. People never stopped speaking Latin and all of a sudden came up with an entirely different language to speak. The Italians didn't just wake up one day and say "Mama mia! We speaka Italian!" It happened gradually over the centuries.
Think of this in evolutionary terms. There is no exact copy of the first mammalian-like creature walking around today. But that's not because it went extinct, it was wildly successful, having a ridiculous number of child species that now dominate the world. This is much different than the passenger pigeon, which just died out, and has no modern species can call its ancestor.
Latin is "dead" in the same way that Ancient Greek, Old English, or Classical Chinese is - the language evolved into what we speak now over a period of time. It always bemuses me to see people bemoan poor, dead Latin, that people just stopped speaking one day. They don't do this for either of the other two ancient languages I mentioned.
I think there is some confusion, just because there isn't a modern language called "Latin", with the ancient form being "old latin", it's just given a name all on its own. But this is because it was so wildly successful that we'd have to call it "Old Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Aragonese, Aromanian, Arpitan, Asturian, Catalan, Corsican, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Friulan, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Lombard, Mirandese, Neapolitan, Occitan, Piedmontese, Romansh, Sardinian, Sicilian, Venetian and Walloon".
Please, people, there are languages much more deserving of your pity out there. Latin isn't any more "dead" in the sense of total language death than Greek is dead because people stopped speaking Ancient Greek.
When the Roman Empire fell apart, much of Europe (western and southern Europe in particular where Latin was introduced) went into a long period of decline. 500-700 years of economic, social and political upheaval, devastating plagues and isolation lasted until the Renaissance.
The Romans conquered lands that were populated by tribes of people with their own distinct languages and cultures. These conquered peoples incorporated Latin and formed distinct dialects with a mixture of their own tribal tongues. The evolutionary results were French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. They are very similar, yet distinct languages in their own right. The one common element that remained in the collapse of Rome was the spread of Christianity. The Catholic church preserved the Latin language during this period of time through tradition and strict doctrine. However, most people were not involved in church hierarchy or the nobility and were usually illiterate with little or no education.
Latin, outside of religious ceremony, had no practical application. Because the church controlled formal education and the preservation of antiquity during the dark ages, math and science found Latin. The modern reasoning for using Latin in scientific fields is uniformity in names or terminology. It's similar to why the metric system is preferred in science.
Does anyone else notice that the article does not actually tell about the decline of the usage of Latin language but tells about the emergence of Romance languages?
After reading the article, I guess that there are some attempts to write books/articles/ poems in Latin in modern days. If so, please inform me if this is so.
@anon176508: The Philippines have been a colony of Spain for three centuries. Over time, the Spanish taught by Spaniards and friars evolved due to other cultural influences, such as the language Chinese, since China traded with the Philippines way before its colonization, and English, because the U.S was one of the last colonizers to handle it.
As such, the accepted grammatical standards of Spanish have diminished, resulting in the dilution of the already-loose language with one of its local dialects, but the vast majority of its roots can still be seen until today.
Without having studied Latin, a native English speaker cannot understand Latin. In here it says two-thirds of English has its roots on Latin. England became a global power without using Latin.
So why do the Filipinos in the USA claim that they can understand and easily learn to speak Spanish because their national language is near Spanish (one of the Roman languages). I speak Spanish well enough to know that their national language is not that near to any Romance languages.
Haha, typical. I am an American, and trust me, I know we have our share of problems, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't just as ugly. I have traveled extensively throughout the world over the past 30 years and have come to realize no one country or government is to blame for anything. Humans are evil in their core. So stop being ignorant and try looking in the mirror before pointing fingers.
I think the reason the Latin language died out is that it was a material language, language of science. People speak a language to express their feelings, thoughts in the first place, not the science facts. There is no sensitivity in Latin language. That is why nobody used/s it.
I gave this some thought after one American dude was complaining about football rules in the World Cup 2010, saying that the judges are bad, not counting the goals, and that there should be new rules created, goals should be re-counted even after the game. I was frankly shocked.
I wanted to say, "Please leave football alone. It's the last thing in the world you didn't touch and you didn't mess up with your cruel-propaganda politics, force and money". But, I didn't say anything as there is no benefit of it. So, the reason I tell this is that Americans, like Romans, are the nation who always want to materialize everything in the world. That is why the world doesn't get their soft-hand-egg game, and this is the reason why they hate football, which is fine and nobody blames them for that. Just stop changing the world. Relax. There are about 250 countries in the world, and they will figure it out themselves.
Sorry if I touched anybody's feelings.
Wow. i learn new things every day. Thanks.
Well-written and believable. thanks.
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When the Catholic Church gained influence in ancient Rome, Latin became the official language of the sprawling Roman Empire. Latin was king of the world -- the language of international communication, scholarship, and science. So what happened? Jules Suzdaltsev investigates in today's Seeker Daily report.
Latin is now considered a dead language , meaning it's still used in specific contexts, but does not have any native speakers. (Sanskrit is another dead language.) In historical terms, Latin didn't die so much as it changed -- into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. These are known as the Romance languages -- "Rome" is the root term -- and while other tongues developed from Latin, these are the most common.
All five of these languages incorporate grammar, tenses and specific intricacies from Latin. Not coincidentally, each language developed in former territories of the Western Roman Empire . When that empire failed, Latin died, and the new languages were born.
Part of the reason that Latin passed out of common usage is because, as a language, it's incredibly complex . Classical Latin is highly inflected, meaning that nearly every word is potentially modified based on tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and mood. With no central power promoting and standardizing usage of Classical Latin, it gradually passed away from everyday usage.
Vulgar Latin , essentially a simplified version of the mother tongue, survived for a while but diverged more and more as it folded in various local languages. By the end of the sixth century, people from different sections of the former empire could no longer understand each other. Latin had died as a living language.
Still, due to the overwhelming prevalence of Latin in early Western literature, medicine and science, Latin as a language of antiquity never quite went extinct -- a term which has its own particular meaning in linguistics. Today, Latin is still used in many technical fields, medical terminology and taxonomy , the scientific classification of species.

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The Latin language used to be spoken all over the Roman Empire. But no country officially speaks it now, at least not in its classic form. So, did Latin really peter out when the Roman Empire ceased to exist?
Rome used to be one of the largest empires in the world , but gradually Rome's sway over its colonies dwindled until it completely lost control. Despite this, Latin continued to be the lingua franca throughout much of Europe hundreds of years after that happened. The answer to the question of when Latin, ancient Rome's language, died is a complicated one. There's no date in the annals of history to mark the end of Latin as a spoken language, and some would argue that's because it never really died.
The Vatican may still deliver some masses in Latin, but virtually no one in Italy is using Latin on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, this doesn't equate to the death of Latin, said Tim Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics and classics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
"Latin didn't really stop being spoken," Pulju told Live Science. "It continued to be spoken natively by people in Italy, Gaul, Spain and elsewhere, but like all living languages, it changed over time."
Crucially, the alterations to Latin were particular to the many different regions of the old Roman Empire, and over time these differences grew to create entirely new but closely related languages. "They gradually added up over the centuries, so that eventually Latin developed into a variety of languages distinct from one another, and also distinct from classical Latin," Pulju said. Those new languages are what we now refer to as the Romance languages, which include French , Italian , Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish.
Such linguistic evolutions happen with every language. Take English, for example. "English has been spoken in England for over a millennium, but it has changed over time, as is obvious if you compare present-day English to Elizabethan English, as seen in Shakespeare," Pulju said. "Elizabethan English, from about four centuries ago, is still mostly comprehensible to us, but Chaucer's English, dating from the 14th century, is much less so. And the English of 'Beowulf,' from about the year 1000, is so different from modern English [it's] not comprehensible to us today." But no one would say English is a dead language — it simply changed very gradually over a long period of time.
The only difference between English and Latin is that old English developed into modern English and modern English alone, whereas classical Latin diversified and gave rise to a number of different languages. That's why people tend to think, perhaps erroneously, of Latin as an extinct language.
Languages can go extinct, though; sometimes native speakers of a language all die, or over time their first language switches until eventually there are no fluent speakers left.
This happened with the Etruscan language, originally spoken in what is modern day Tuscany in Italy. "After the Romans conquered Etruria, succeeding generations of Etruscans continued to speak Etruscan for hundreds of years, but some Etruscans, naturally, learned Latin as a second language; moreover, many children grew up bilingual in Etruscan and Latin," Pulju said. "Eventually, the social advantages of speaking Latin and havin
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