# When did Latin "die"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 1, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307 "2010-01-01T18:02:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/61 "2014-04-04T08:45:34Z")
All the Romance languages have diverged from Classical Latin in different ways. Probably the one which has measurably diverged the least is Sardinian (look it up), which has very few speakers anymore – but even this is debatable. In terms of commonly used words and grammatical features, the fact that standard Italian retains Latin’s most common plural noun endings (-i for masculine, -e (formerly -ae) for feminine) makes it feel rather more Latinate than most of its cousin languages. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/62 "2014-04-04T08:52:57Z")
ETA: Romanian, like Italian, retains those “-i/-e” plurals, which may be part if why someone upthread found it to be more Latin-like than other a Romance languages. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Piranha_Brothers)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/63 "2014-04-04T10:23:42Z")
Igspay tillsay peaksay ay ormfay ofay atinlay. (Or is that “illstay eakspay”?) ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/64 "2014-04-04T10:26:16Z")
Correcting my post above: Apparently, about a million people claim to speak Sardinian, not “a very few.” ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/65 "2014-04-04T16:34:01Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > 1. The rise of other _Lingua franca’s_ (sp, again) _Lingua francas_, no apostrophe. Although that feels wrong. It should be _Linguae franca_, like “courts martial”, “attorneys general” … or “eggs Benedict” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/66 "2014-04-04T16:57:56Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Italian is almost mutually comprehensible with Vulgar Latin. In a sense, Vulgar Latin is, in fact, Italian; it’s changed quite a lot, but no more than English has. It really isn’t any more logical to consider English a continuous, constant language since the days of Ethelred the Unready than it would be to consider Vulgar Latin a continuous language from the days of Julius Caesar to today’s Italian. In fact, I suspect a modern Italian speaker might find Vulgar Latin easier to understand than an Anglophone would find pre-Norman English to understand. > do. If Italian is Vulgar Latin, aren’t Spanish, French, Romanian, Catalan, etc…? I mean, they are all languages that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken in their respective regions. I’d think that the point when the various proto-Romance languages ceased to be mutually intelligible would be the point that Latin really “died”. Classic literary Latin was the language of the Church, and thereby the language of scholarship in the Christian world from Roman times up through probably the 17th century or so, but it wasn’t really “living” in the sense of having native speakers. And, FWIW, having taken a bunch of Spanish in school was a LOT more useful in Italy than I’d ever imagined it would be. I could puzzle things out a lot easier in Italian with my Spanish knowledge than I can things in Dutch, which is linguistically pretty close to English. (best way to puzzle Dutch out was to actually read it out loud!) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/67 "2014-04-04T22:00:12Z")
> [@bump](#): > > If Italian is Vulgar Latin, aren’t Spanish, French, Romanian, Catalan, etc…? > > I mean, they are all languages that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken in their respective regions. > > I’d think that the point when the various proto-Romance languages ceased to be mutually intelligible would be the point that Latin really “died”. > > Classic literary Latin was the language of the Church, and thereby the language of scholarship in the Christian world from Roman times up through probably the 17th century or so, but it wasn’t really “living” in the sense of having native speakers. > > And, FWIW, having taken a bunch of Spanish in school was a LOT more useful in Italy than I’d ever imagined it would be. I could puzzle things out a lot easier in Italian with my Spanish knowledge than I can things in Dutch, which is linguistically pretty close to English. (best way to puzzle Dutch out was to actually read it out loud!) Indeed. It’s simply incorrect to say that Italian has not changed as much from Latin as Modern English has from Old English. In fact, I doubt you could find many (any?) European languages that have changed as much since 1066 AD as English has. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/68 "2014-04-04T22:14:23Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > _Lingua francas_, no apostrophe. > > Although that feels wrong. It should be _Linguae franca_, like “courts martial”, “attorneys general” … or “eggs Benedict” Since “lingua franca” comes from Italian (or from the original Lingua Franca), and not from Latin, the plural would be “lingue franche” – but that’s really far too obscure for most English-speakers, so “lingua francas” is fine as the plural. ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2014, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/69 "2014-04-05T02:07:43Z")
Roughly AD 800. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2014, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/70 "2014-04-07T06:47:13Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Since “lingua franca” comes from Italian (or from the original Lingua Franca), and not from Latin, the plural would be “lingue franche” thanks for the correction. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/71 "2014-04-08T03:18:28Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > All the Romance languages have diverged from Classical Latin in different ways. Probably the one which has measurably diverged the least is Sardinian (look it up), which has very few speakers anymore – but even this is debatable. In terms of commonly used words and grammatical features, the fact that standard Italian retains Latin’s most common plural noun endings (-i for masculine, -e (formerly -ae) for feminine) makes it feel rather more Latinate than most of its cousin languages. From what I’ve read, that being mostly the relevant Wiki articles, Sardinian is the most conservative phonetically speaking, as it retains some consonant clusters like /kt/ that have been lost in its sister languages. The incidence of this feature varies with the dialect. Morphologically, however, Romanian seems to be the most conservative as its case system (for ordinary nouns) still exists, although the four or five cases of Classical Latin have merged into two–if memory serves one for nominative and accusative, and the other for genitive, dative, and the rest. Speaking of languages dying, it was only a few years ago I read about some Native American language that was down to just two surviving native speakers–and they disliked each other intensely. Sometimes languages die before they die! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2014, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307/72 "2014-04-08T04:00:09Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > One interesting note is that the Roman elite, at least as early as the late Republic, had begun taking rather a dim view of Latin. Greek language and culture were tremendously popular, to the extent that one of the hallmarks of a rigorous education was knowledge of Greek. Moreover, many of the emperors - with varying degrees of enthusiasm and, well, sanity - were serious grecophiles. Augustus, Nero, and Hadrian were good examples - the latter two even made abortive efforts to grant the Greek territories autonomy. As early as the third or fourth century there appeared the _[Appendix Probi](https://archive.org/stream/sprachlicherkomm00baeh#page/6/mode/2up/search/mensa)_, or presumably so, since we only know it today from a transcription of centuries later. At any rate, it shows that features (or “mistakes”, as Probus thought them) already familiar to us from the Romance languages of today were already becoming evident, like _mesa_ for _mensa_[sup]1[/sup] as in modern Spanish. As it was a written document, I would imagine that the _Appendix_ was aimed at others who could read and write, which arguably would mean an elite of sorts–of education anyway, if not _the_ elite. Arguably not even educated classes were keeping Classical Latin alive by then, so we could say it was dead by the earliest days of the Empire, as someone already said. [sup]1[/sup]Page 7, line 152 of the link. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-latin-die/523307.md?page=3)