THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT ROME AND LANGUAGE                1600w

The literature of ancient Rome, the building in much of Western Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was written in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. With the expansion of the Roman people Latin came to the whole known world and became the dominant language of Western Europe. Latin was used in higher education and diplomatic relations until the XVIII century and remains the universal language of the Catholic Church, was not native language of Italy, but in prehistoric times Latin was brought into the peninsula of Italy by peoples who came from the north. Latin belongs to the Indo-European language family and is a member of the Italic subfamily, on the other side is the immediate predecessor of the modern Romance languages. In all Indo-European languages, which were not italicized, was related to the Sanskrit and Greek, and Celtic and Germanic subfamilies. Once introduced into Italy it was the dialect of the region of Rome. The Italic languages are comprised of the Latin group to which they belonged to; Latin and some other dialects, and on the other hand, the Oscan and Umbrian less documented (Ouch, 1981, 534). The earliest inscriptions in Latin are from the sixth century BC, while the first written texts are slightly above the third century BC was influenced by the Celtic dialects of Northern Italy, the Etruscan language, which was not Indo-European, and spoken in the central region of the Italian peninsula and the Greek spoken in the south before the eighth century BC Under the influence of Greek language and literature, translated into Latin and in the second half of the third century BC, became a cultural language with literature itself(David, 2001, 179).

Classic oral Latin

The cultivated form of spoken language is documented in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, as well as letters and speeches of Cicero, the Satires and Epistles of Horace and the Satyricon of Petronius. This is learned from speech, known as the sermo quotidianus or normal conversation, not to be confused with the popular conference, or sermo plebeius, who was speaking at the uneducated people and is characterized by a certain contempt for syntactic rules, which results in the search for simplicity in the order of words in prayer, at both levels of spoken language, are called Vulgar Latin. The languages from which Romance, at the time that had already developed the lingua Rome, which is late Latin. This explains why many Romance words do not come from a cult or classic term but for the level of popular slang. For example, the Latin word equus meaning ‘horse’ fell into disuse and was replaced by caballus which meant ‘hack’ and they come from the Spanish and French cheval horse, another thing happened with the word meaning ‘head ‘, a classical Latin caput, which was replaced by the head vulgar, meanin