The fascinating thing about Latin is that it didn’t actually die out. It just changed in all the areas where it was spoken into many different languages. What I love about languages is how they can almost be viewed as a living thing. Languages evolve and mutate producing changes and additions that are not seen in other related languages.
But at the end of the day, they are all just Latin dialects that because of social and political forces have been recognised as separate languages. The line between language and dialect is never clear. Swedish and Danish are mutually intelligible but are seen as separate languages, yet Mandarin and Cantonese are seen as dialects of Chinese even though they aren’t mutually intelligible.
And what’s interesting to think about is what Europe would be like now if the Romans never existed. Latin is part of the Italic family of languages. Unfortunately, all other Italic languages besides Latin’s descendants have died out. Maybe they would still be around. And many of the indigenous languages of Europe, like Gaulish (a Celtic language related to languages like Irish Gaelic and Cornish) would still be around.
