When was Latin last spoken as a community's vernacular?

triviapaul

Somewhere in the 7th or 8th century, common people stopped being able to understand Latin texts. "It seems certain that in the sixth century, and quite likely into the early parts of the seventh century, people in the main Romanized areas could still largely understand the biblical and liturgical texts and the commentaries (of greater or lesser simplicity) that formed part of the rites and of religious practice, and that even later, throughout the seventh century, saints' lives written in Latin could be read aloud to the congregations with an expectation that they would be understood. We can also deduce however, that in Gaul, from the central part of the eighth century onwards, many people, including several of the clerics, were not able to understand even the most straightforward religious texts." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Latin#History Jun 26 08, 2:34 PM

truefaithmom

Latin was used by the Ancient Latin tribe, and then by the Ancient Roman Empire (which the Latins were absorbed into). It was originally used much in daily speech, but as the Roman Empire grew larger, the language started to change. Some ethnic Romans and the elite in Roman society spoke classical Latin (the pure form of the language), and the common citizen in both the conquered lands (e.g. Modern day Spain, France, Italy, Romania, Portugal, et cetera) and even in Rome spoke 'Vulgar' Latin, also known as Romance. This Romance language changed over time as the Roman empire crumbled and as the Germanic and Slavic tribes started expanding through Europe. Eventually, only the Roman Catholic church and intellectuals spoke true Latin, while the countries born out of the Roman Empire spoke the new 'Romance' languages (as another user said, like offspring languages). As time has gone on, different languages have come into contact with the Romance languages, changing their words and grammar considerably. However, sometimes the languages use different words with different (original) meanings for the same thing. E.g. 'Merci' (French) = Mercy, and 'Grazie' (Italian) = Grace. Both are used for 'Thankyou'. For most of the Romance languages, the Germanic languages (e.g. Old English, German, Norse) changed them a lot, and for Romanian the Slavic languages (Russian, Bulgarian, Czech) did the same thing. If you want a time frame for when common Classical Latin speech died out, I would say roughly 300 AD (just before Rome started to crumble). http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080612022724AANwzt2 Jun 26 08, 2:37 PM