Branches
The Italic family has two known branches:
- Latino-Faliscan, including:
- Faliscan, which was spoken in the area around Falerii Veteres (modern Civita Castellana) north of the city of Rome and possibly Sardinia
- Latin, which was spoken in west-central Italy. The Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire.
- Romance languages, the descendants of Latin
- Osco-Umbrian or Sabellian including:
- Oscan, which was spoken in the south-central region of the Italian Peninsula
- Umbrian (not to be confused with the modern Umbrian dialect of Italian), which was spoken in the north-central region
- Volscian
- Marsian, the language of the Marsi
- South Picene, in east-central Italy
- Sabine in Lazio and the central Appennines
In addition, Aequian (spoken by the Aequi just east of Rome) and Vestinian (spoken by the Vestini in northeast Italy) are Italic but too poorly known to be further classified. Sicel in Sicily was reported to have been similar to Latin, but too little is known of it to verify that claim.
As Rome extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian Peninsula, Latin became dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century AD. From Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged.
Read more about this topic: Italic Languages
Famous quotes containing the word branches:
“It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one’s bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one’s head under the cover, giving one’s self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“A woman is a branchy tree
And man a singing wind;
And from her branches carelessly
He takes what he can find.”
—James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)