where the latin language come from?
Italic languages Indo-European languages
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 After the decentralization of political power in late antiquity , Latin developed locally into branches that became the Romance languages , such as Spanish , Portuguese , French , Italian and Romanian , and a large number of minor languages and dialects . Today , more than 900 million people are native speakers worldwide . 

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 As an international language of learning and literature , Latin itself continued as an active medium of expression for diplomacy and for intellectual developments identified with Renaissance humanism up to the 17th century , and for law and the Roman Catholic Church to the present . 

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 The dominance of Latin among the literate elite may obscure the continuity of spoken languages , since all cultures within the Roman Empire were predominantly oral . In the West , Latin , referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin , gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages that were related to it by a shared Indo @-@ European origin . Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated the adoption of Latin . 

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 Latin writers were immersed in the Greek literary tradition , and adapted its forms and much of its content , but Romans regarded satire as a genre in which they surpassed the Greeks . Horace wrote verse satires before fashioning himself as an Augustan court poet , and the early Principate also produced the satirists Persius and Juvenal . The poetry of Juvenal offers a lively curmudgeon 's perspective on urban society . 

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 The native language of the Romans was Latin . Although surviving Latin literature consists almost entirely of Classical Latin , an artificial and highly stylised and polished literary language from the 1st century BC , the actual spoken language was Vulgar Latin , which significantly differed from Classical Latin in grammar , vocabulary , and eventually pronunciation . Rome 's expansion spread Latin throughout Europe , and over time Vulgar Latin evolved and dialectised in different locations , gradually shifting into a number of distinct Romance languages . Many of these languages , including French , Italian , Portuguese , Romanian and Spanish , flourished , the differences between them growing greater over time . Although English is Germanic rather than Roman in origin , English borrows heavily from Latin and Latin @-@ derived words . 
