Why did Latin Become a Dead Language?

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.

Well done, I agree.

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.

Concise and helpful.

Well-written and believable. thanks.