This month we begin a six-part series to explain how and when Italian became the language of Italy. We begin by dispelling a myth: ancient Romans did not speak Latin, or at least not the Latin that we know and study today. That Latin was the language of the cultured people, of literature, liturgy, and the government.

All Romans, and people living in the territories governed by Rome, spoke other languages. Some were forms of “vulgar” Latin, that is, dialects and languages strictly related to Latin, but others were completely different languages. Even on the Italian peninsula, many people spoke Etruscan languages, now extinct, and in Roman dominions such as Sardinia or Iberia, people spoke local languages, unrelated to Latin.