Why Did Latin Become A Popular Language

Latin is an extremely important and influential language. It was the official language of the Roman Empire, fathered languages like Spanish and Portuguese-two of the most spoken languages in the world, French-lingua franca from the 17th century until the middle of the 20th and Italian-the language of the Renaissance. In fact, it was so influential that even today it is taught in schools though it has long been a dead language. But how did Latin become such a language? At first, Latin was a language spoken in a small region of Italy. Then the people living there in a city called Rome began to invade the world. It began slowly with an invasion of the local cities but by 117 CE the Roman Empire stretched across much of Europe, all of the Middle East and some of Africa.
However, though Latin was the main spoken language in each region it took upon some of the attributes of the languages spoken in that region. Thus, Latin became a multitude of dialects spoken across much of the world collectively known as Vulgar Latin. Vulgar Latin was very different from the Latin spoken before, in Italy, which is the Latin most often taught in schools nowadays which is called Classical Latin. Firstly, it wasn’t just one dialect but many. Secondly, it was spoken principally by the illiterate and so was not often written down. Plautus, who wrote plays about the lives of common people, was an exception and it is from him we know much about earlier Vulgar Latin. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Vulgar Latin, as mentioned before, took on many of the attributes of the languages of the region it was spoken in and so changed greatly from Classical Latin, the language now spoken chiefly in the Upper