Indo-European Languages
Italic Family
Carol Justus and Jonathan Slocum
The Italic languages of Italy included Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, and the more familiar Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Of the Italic languages, Latin is well preserved in many different text genres from periods before, during, and after the Roman Empire. As Latin evolved through periods of the Late (post-Classical) Latin often referred to as "Vulgar Latin" (the spoken idiom of the people as opposed to Classical written forms), two things happened. On the one hand, Latin spoken in different parts of the Roman Empire evolved into the Romance languages of today, which include Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian. On the other hand, during language reforms of the late 8th and early 9th century in the court of Charlemagne under the influence of the English ecclesiastical scholar Alcuin of York, a form of Latin now known as Medieval Latin arose and was preserved in Christian church traditions.
From Roman conquests of Britain before 400 AD, the later spread of Latin as the language of Christianity, and the Anglo-Norman French conquest of England in 1066 AD, Latin exerted a multi-layered impact on English. The prestige of Latin as a learnèd language has continued to make it a fertile source for loan words to this day.
Recommended Reading
- Baldi, Philip. 1999. Foundations of Latin. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Basics on Italic languages and Latin)
- Mallory, J.P. & Douglas Q. Adams, eds. 1997. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. (As the name suggests, a large encyclopedia; cf. "Italic Languages" article)
- Pulgram, Ernst. 1958. The Tongues of Italy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. (Older, very readable basics)
- Sihler, Andrew. 1995. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Comparative Indo-European handbook of Greek and Latin)
- Wheelock, Frederic M. 1984. Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors. New York: Barnes & Noble. (A much-revised textbook)
See Online:
- Indo-European Languages: Evolution and Locale Maps;
- Latin Online (language lessons);
- Old French Online (language lessons);
- Web Links to Italic resources (Latin language & texts).