Romanic
languages are all the languages that, originary of the Latin, have been constituted in the
Roman provinces.
The
Latin that more substantially contributed for the formation of these languages was the one
spoken by the colonists and the soldiers.
When the Romans conquered other people, soldiers went side by side with tutors, employees and other people necessary to the consolidation of the conquest.
The language was, evidently, taught in established schools, at the same time that was being infiltrated in the popular mass, imposing itself as an instrument of bigger culture and language of the conqueror.
It seems that the Romans did not directly impose the Latin language, but the fact is that the general circumstances and being they conquering them determined the predominance of the Latin on the nativa languages.
One way or the other, the truth is that these languages were absorbed by the spoken Latin.
But the absorption could not occur without consequences and, similar to what happens to any language for a foreign colectivity, the Latin was being modified in function of the regional necessities, the phonetic habits of the conquered people and the time of romanization of the province.
While the politic
unity and the conservative influence of the schools lasted, those alterations were changing things in a discrete way. However, the invasion of the Barbarians, in the V century, and the consequent loss of politic unity of the empire accented the regional differences.
The Latin, strongly shaken, yielded to the incresing prestige of the new forms of expression, breaking up itself in diverse languages.
They are the neolatin or
Romanic languages: the Portuguese, the Gallego, the Spanish, the Catalan, the French, the Italian and the Rumanian. Several causes contributed for the Latin''s modification:
- the language spoken by the Roman soldiers was not the scholar Latin; it was the popular Latin, a language therefore in constant evolution;
- the Roman conquests occurred at different times and in a vast geographic extension.
More summaries about the Origin of the Romanic Languages