Latin and Italian

Q: When the Roman Empire fell, was it the end of Latin as a speaking language? When did Italian become the speaking language of Italy?
https://www.quora.com/When-the-Roman-Empire-fell-was-it-the-end-of-Latin-as-a-speaking-language-When-did-Italian-become-the-speaking-language-of-Italy/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Answer requested by

Christopher Panzner

Hans-Georg Lundahl

none/ apprx Masters in Latin (language) & Greek (language), Lund University

8.VI.2025

Pentecost Sunday of 2025

No.

Let’s first distinguish spoken and written language.

In spoken language, there is a slow gradation between Latin and Italian. Already 100 AD “Homo vidit Caesarem” would have been pronounced, no longer “homaw weeditt kyessarem” but “homoh veedit kayssarem” (English values for “ye” and “ay”). Those changes persist into modern Italian. As late as 1300, I think, one would have in Italian called a king “rege” inherited from Latin “regem” which was later shortened to “rè” that being the modern version in Italian.

However, there was a definite shift from when the spoken language was still, more and more awkwardly, spelled as Latin, and when one started to spell it as Italian instead. As in France such a shift came between 813 (change of Latin pronunciation to way older versions still surviving in England) and something like 880 (Canticle of St. Eulalia), in Spain and Italy that shift came about 200 years later. In Spain it also took decades between a council in Burgos, parallel to the Council of Tours and precursors, and a first literary text (El Cantar del mio Cid).

However, I think in Italy, importation of French and Provençal literature gave an impulse to writing in the actual regional vernacular where one was. The oldest known poem is Salv’a lo vescovo senato[1] which mentions two bishops both of whom ceased to rule in 1157, some 40 years earlier than El Cid.

Imagine writing the English of Chaucer. But you pronounce it in Modern English. This means, your spoken language is not giving you all the necessary clues to write it correctly. This is how writing Latin was before this kind of shift (in France, Italy, Spain, as said).

Also, the Roman Empire fell, if it did, in 1918. The last East-Roman Emperor, also known as Czar, was shot with his family. The last West-Roman Emperor, also known as Kaiser, left the Hofburg of Vienna. But obviously, after the date you think of, 4 September 476 (initiating a lack of West-Roman Emperors up to Charlemagne), Latin was still the written language, and spelling your native spoken language as Latin was not much harder than it had been some decades earlier for St. Jerome when he translated the Vulgate.

EDIT: My bad, 813 didn’t mark the attempt to restore Latin pronunciation, that had begun in Tours in 799 or 800, it marked the date when one realised the new (old) Latin was not being learned by common people. Imagine an Anglican reading from King James were to take up the Middle English Wycliff Bible instead (if the extant Middle English Bible is from Wycliff), and pronouncing it with correct Middle English pronunciation (example from Chaucer provided in footnote[2] ) and tried to teach it to the congration and failed … 813 is when he gave up.

EDIT II: While the fall of the Roman centralism in the Latin Western part didn’t exactly change the language over night, it speeded up change, by removing part of the structures previously teaching Latin in its most classic form and that means, changes were no longer restrained by that curriculum.

Footnotes

[1] bibliotheca Augustana [R i t m o l a u r e n z i a n o]
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVG77xTPH6E