I just read your explanation of roots of Latin words, I would like to ask why did Latin die out as a spoken language? Thank you.
babyclytie
Latin did not die out in the sense of all the people who spoke it being killed or having moved away. What happened to it was what happened to all languages - it slowly changed over the years. Within each separate region where it was spoken it changed in a different way. By 1000 A.D., the Latin spoken in Rome of 1 A.D. was probably no longer understandable by any of the language that was descended from it. By 2000 A.D., the Latin spoken in Rome of 1 A.D. was hopelessly incomprehensible to the speakers of the languages descended from it. The languages descended from Latin are called the Romance languages. The largest of them are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian:
There are, of course, no true boundaries between the periods of these languages. Latin slowly changed and evolved into the various Romance languages in the various regions where it was spoken. Even if it had been confined to a small region where everyone talked to each other, it would have evolved over 2000 years. That’s what languages do. They change over time, sometimes slowly and sometimes faster.