Language of ancient Rome

[Dorothy1]

The written language of ancient Rome was latin.

1) Do we know if this was also the spoken language of the people? And if so,  was it used by all levels of society? (Seems a little 'high falutin' for the lower orders)

2) When and why did modern Italian emerge to supplant latin?

[rabet]

Yes, the people spoke in Latin I think. I don't understand why you think it is "high falutin". Latin is a simple language compared to many others.

[woofgang]

click here!

[Peter Pedant]

I am pretty sure that Latin was spoken in Rome - you may be confused with the observation that the language of the Roman empire was koine Greek

Nonetheless - all the graffitti in Rome as i recollect is Latin which I think is good evidence that the Chavs of the roman empire were speaking Latin.

Cena Trimalchionis (Petronius) has a bit of spoken dialogue, complete with wrong cases and wrong adjectives.

[Dorothy1]

For some reason I've always had the notion that Latin was a bit rarified / difficult. (Possibly because it only ever seemed to be taught - along with Greek - to schoolboys at private schools)

I couldn't figure out how this language of the Romans could come to be a 'dead' language. If it was - as it seems - spoken by all levels of society. ( Usually one language dominates and suppresses another by an external power moving in and imposing their culture, language etc on the subjugated people.) Some say that Scottish Gaelic is 'dying' (being slowly ousted by English) But it appears that modern Italian is very similar to latin so perhaps the language didn't really die but - as I always suspected - evolved into the language spoken today in Italy.

Anyhow - very interesting stuff - thanks everyone. 

[jno]

it evolved differently in different parts of the empire - as well as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian all derive from Latin. (But when the empire was divided into two parts, east and west, the eastern half - based at what is now Istanbul - went over to Greek, I think.) It wasn't a difficult language to them - they learned it from birth just as we learn English. But English probably owes more to Germanic languages than to Romance ones. (Romance is the word for the Latin-descended languages).

[maxi29]

Dorothy, Latin was not just taught in private schools. I'm state-educated and I suffered five years of the subject - and I know several other ex-state pupils who have studied the subject.
I wish we had studied some of the Roman chavs; the likes of Cicero and Livy were such bores.