Which ancient Indo-European language was spoken by the Romans?

On 50 BCE, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (ancient France) and Britain was also conquered about a century later by the emperor Claudius. As a result, this large Celtic-speaking area was absorbed by Rome, Latin became the dominant language, and the Continental Celtic languages eventually died out. The chief Continental language was Gaulish.

The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes. Until the latter part of the 20th century its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The oldest example of Latin extant, perhaps dating to the 7th century BCE, consists of a four-word inscription in Greek characters on a fibula, or cloak pin. It shows the preservation of full vowels in unstressed syllables—in contrast to the language in later times, which has reduced vowels. Early Latin had a stress accent on the first syllable of a word, in contrast to the Latin of the republican and imperial periods, in which the accent fell on either the next or second to the last syllable of a word.

 

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